In Superman #18, the Man of Steel revealed to the DC Universe that he was mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent. The architect behind this shocking revelation is writer Brian Michael Bendis, who signed an exclusive deal with DC in 2017 after years working on some of Marvel Comics' biggest heroes. Now, Bendis is teaming up with such creators as Matt Fraction, Jody Houser, Greg Rucka, Kevin Maguire, Steve Lieber, Mike Perkins and Eduardo Pansica on Superman: Heroes and Superman: Villains, two specials that will explore how the Man of Steel's greatest allies and enemies reacted to the news.

CBR talked with Bendis by phone about Superman: Heroes, revealing the Man of Steel's identity to the world and what that act means right now.

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CBR: You've more or less been with DC for two years now, what have your highlights been?

Brian Michael Bendis: The highlights have been how well it's going. I left one family of creators and collaborators, and it was just a very safe place for me, and I was very welcome there. And this was a scary journey for me. It's the unknown. Who knows what could have happened, right? But I walked in there, and I met a whole new family of collaborators and like-minded, forward-thinking creators, some of whom I knew from different parts of my life, but I'd never worked with. And now, I'm in rooms with all kinds of new people who are pulling [and] pushing me in new directions, which is awesome.

That was the whole point of it -- to not play it safe -- to try something that would scare me creatively and bring about new kinds of ideas. And it's working; it's fantastic. So here we are two years later. We're as far into it as you can get it. And [DC has] allowed me to take some enormous chances with characters, kept every promise they made me and now we're dealing with all of what comes next.

You know, the whole point of all of this was [to see] what kind of new stories can we come up with for these characters. That was the whole point of the move. And really, you can do something like Superman #18, where you drop a bomb on a character. But really, the interesting stuff is what happened afterward. This is what we told DC we wanted to do, the Superman: Heroes and Superman: Villains specials are the start of it. And that's really all a reflection of what the last few years have been like, to be honest with you. People making good comics in a good environment.

What was DCs reaction initially when you pitched the idea of "Hey, let's reveal Superman's identity to the world."

Bendis: You know, having been a fan for my whole life, and now I'm in the room where he's discussed [...] I've obviously had this experience with Spider-Man and The Avengers -- when you get into the room and you realize that the people are asking the same questions as the fans are asking. You know, these conceits or cliches that follow a certain character are questioned at every level. So when you get to a level where you can actually affect change on the character, you ask the question again, and you really take a hard look at the world. And it wasn't so much the shock of Superman revealing his identity, it was really looking at this thing in the middle of a book that actually didn't make a lot of sense anymore and just for the character, for the world we live in. And so yeah, that was the pitch.

This comes back to my time at Marvel. What do you get out of it? That's the Joe Quesada voice in my head. You could blow up anything, but what kind of stories you get out of it? And from here, it was a laundry list of brand new stories, all of which spoke to Superman's truth but none that ruined anything. So yeah, we dove in. It just felt like the time was right.

I've literally been listening to jokes about Clark Kent's identity since I could talk; since I could understand words. It feels like the whole world's been screaming, "Maybe enough of this one!" Let's take it into a more honest place, and the conversations around it have been fascinating. [They] very much mirrored all the conversations we had when we were planning this. And I gotta say, my favorite reactions so far are the people who were very reluctant and then read it, and then are onboard. That's been my favorite part of it. That's my job, and it's nice when it works that way.

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CBR: I want to quote you a line from Superman: Heroes that really sticks out to me, which is spoken by Pa Kent. And what he says to a young Clark is, "All you have to do is ask yourself: What's the best thing I can do right now." And you were mentioning earlier that one of the reasons that this identity reveal came about was because of the world we live in. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how Clark Kent revealing his identity to the world is something that's important for the world we live in right now?

Bendis: [There are] a few things. Number one, it speaks to a larger truth that a lot of people have reflected. I personally haven't had to come forward with any truth in my life. I've been able to be who I am to everybody my whole life. So I've almost been able to take that for granted. I've literally [been] surrounded my entire life by people who haven't been able to be themselves publicly and from all kinds of walks of life, all kinds of orientations. And slowly but surely over the last years, a lot of my friends have found themselves able to step forward or come out or be who they are without any repercussions. That alone just shows me how much the world has changed over the last years. And there's Superman still living in this same kind of, "Well, I can't tell everybody because of this and this," and it was starting to feel wrong.

It's also a personal choice. That was the other thing, too. What Clark did was for Clark, but also, it helps Clark be a better Superman. He didn't feel like he was being his best self. So the only way he can show people how to be [their] best self is to be [his] best self by example. So once you feel that, there's no way to unfeel it until you fix it.

And as a parent, too -- and this is one thing Superman and Pa Kent absolutely share with -- is that there's this lesson in life that you have to instill in your kids, and you have to be there for them when the lessons sometimes are hard choices. And so this gives Superman an opportunity to express himself, which he has always wanted to do, and also to stand up for people who may have needed that extra level of "Yeah. If you can do it, I can do it." And there's a lot of that in the world. A lot of people feel empowered by other people's strength, so [the reveal] lets Superman stand for that as well. So all those things.

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CBR: I mean, I can't help but draw a comparison to, if you know Josie Antonio Vargas, who was a journalist and is an undocumented immigrant from the Philippines.

Bendis: Yes.

CBR: And he came forward with his story about that, and Superman is an immigrant story, fundamentally right, on some level.

Bendis: There are about 12 stories that hardcore, real-life stories that made me go, "Alright, we're doing this." Like this feels so right to me. And some of them are known, and some of them are not known. I'm working with my daughter. She's doing a book report on George Takei's graphic novel [They Called us Enemy]. And that is a true story that speaks to how much the world has changed through a man's life. And so there's no single person or story that I want to point at and say, "That was the impetus. But all of these were."

I was finding no stories that made me believe it was a good idea to stay where he was, if that makes sense. I was actively looking. All I could find were stories that empowered Clark to do this. I found no stories that said, "Eh, stay where you are."

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CBR: That's been a theme in a lot of your books lately, these themes of truth and identity.

Bendis: Yeah, and with truth comes all kinds of truth. You know, there's the truth of your words and the truth of your actions and the truth of who you are versus the truth of who you say you are. And again -- this is another parenting thing -- you could talk all day, but it's really what you do that defines who you are, if that's the choices you made as a person. So that kind of truth matters as well. It's easy to look at the camera and say something truthful. It's much harder to act on it.

CBR: You're teaming up with some pretty great writers and artists for Superman Heroes and Superman: Villains. What's working with them been like on these particular projects?

Bendis: Well, [when] this whole project came about, my dear friends, Matt Fraction and Greg Rucka, started coming over here every Tuesday just to make sure all our story beats are working in [Lois Lane] and [Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen] and Superman. And the whole point of getting these guys on those books is to, you know, if you get us in a room, I'm sure we'll figure something else out that wasn't there before. And so we get together and Matt Fraction started calling [us] the Metropolis City Council. And we literally go over every little angle of Metropolis and all the players and make sure everyone was getting their due diligence and that we had plans for everybody. And even if things weren't obvious at the moment, they were coming down the street. And also, [we were] surprising people with how much Jimmy Olsen is actually in continuity, as crazy as that book is.

From there came the conversations where Superman would out himself. Greg and I particularly would take different sides of it, which made the whole argument stronger. And from there, it became we have so many people reacting in our heads, like so many people in Superman's life are affected by this choice. And we're like, "Where are we going to do all this?" And [Dan DiDio] and [Bob Harras] smartly gave us these specials in which we could split up -- here are all the people in his life, the heroes, and how they're going to respond. And then [there's] another special coming up soon called Superman: Villains, you get to see all the villains respond. And it's not just them standing around going, "Huh." It affects their lives. It affects their whole world. Coming up in Villains, a villain will change sides because of this. Heroes will be confused about their place in it. Some will be thrilled, some will be frustrated, some will be aggravated. So we wanted to give all those moments a spotlight. And literally, we came up with like a laundry list of them and so that's where the specials came from.

CBR: Which DC character's reaction has been your favorite so far?

Bendis: I gotta tell you, I love all of them. And I'm not just saying that. I completely enjoyed this expression of their character, because they all deeply love each other and they're a family. And so they're just handling it like a real family among The Daily Planet.

And then the villains. Some of which, no matter what they thought about Superman's strength, a lot of them thought of themselves as smarter or clever than him. And this threw that all off. Now, they don't know what to do. The rulebook has been thrown out, and around the same time that Lex Luthor threw out his rulebook, too. That was separate. That was from [Scott Snyder], but Luthor is working on a different plane, and now Superman's working on a different plane.

Superman actually says the line in the Villains special, which you haven't seen yet, but he says, "You know, I guess, really for the first time, neither Lex or I knew what the other was going to do. And that's pretty frustrating." And then he says, "And refreshing." Like, it's both things.

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So everyone from Lex Luthor to Toyman to Bizarro gets to reflect and react. But the heroes -- all of them look up to Superman. He's the gold standard on which they all have to either, you know, apply or react; now see him differently and relate to him differently. Some feel closer to him. Some feel scared for him. Some heroes cannot help but think of the worst-case scenario. That's where most of their brains go, whereas Superman goes most of the time to the best-case scenario. So trying to maneuver a man who's looking at the world through the best-case eyes, while the real world might be coming for him is in itself a great story to tell.

And it's funny because it's actually a great Batman story to tell, too. Just Batman reacting alone is worth like 12 issues material. But I will say my favorite scene that I did not write in the Superman: Heroes special is by Greg Rucka. It's Batman and Wonder Woman's scene. It is very much a scene that friends have behind a friend's back, and I loved it.

And also, I just want to thank the fans for hoping in on this. We have a lot of people reading these books for the first time, and it's pretty exciting and trusting of us, which I deeply appreciate.

So I'll let you know that no choice that we're making any specials is going lightly. All of them are being planned meticulously for the future. And also, for those who still think this is all going to go away, it is not. It is not a magic trick. It is not a trick of the literary. This is what's going on in the Superman books going forward.

CBR: There's no Purple Man this time around.

Bendis: Yeah, you know, I see that online and I get it completely. But you know, I don't do that. I don't do fake outs. That's what I pointed out in my Daredevil run. I don't do them. So we're examining this in the long run and every time we open any door in Superman's life, it opens up all kinds of new stories that we haven't had before. So we're just getting to the good parts of what happens now in his journalism world and his superhero world.

So I just wanna tell people who are worried, don't worry. It's real.

Superman: Heroes #1 is available now.

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