WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Event Leviathan #6, by Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev and Josh Reed, now on sale.

The sixth and final issue of Event Leviathan saw a pair of bombshells dropped; most notably, the reveal that Leviathan was masterminded by the original Manhunter, Mark Shaw.

Now, in an interview with CBR, writer Brian Michael Bendis has revealed the hints he peppered throughout his books that pointed to Leviathan's identity.

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"There's quite a few, number one, the design of his outfit actually builds upon the Manhunter technologies and designs from previous things without ruining them," Bendis said. "Another thing is I wanted to do this without dumping all over the history of the Manhunters. Walt Simonson is one of my heroes. and I didn't want to do anything to dismantle all that awesome stuff."

Bendis went on to discuss the amount of research he did before writing the miniseries, citing that DC fans who know their history could have picked up their clues on the Leviathan leader's identity. "We were diving into a lot of old Checkmate stuff and a lot of other classic stories and thinking literally about who would go, 'I have had enough, I'm going with new rules,'" he said. "There's actually a couple of amazing panels of Mark Shaw basically looking at the reader from decades ago saying this philosophy, just as a frustrated Manhunter and hero, and I was like 'Oh my goodness.'"

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Event Leviathan #6, by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev, is now on sale from DC.