MAN OF STEEL #1: Ballsy move to invite comparison to Jack Kirby and John Byrne (respectively) with the “Bendis is Coming!” ads and titling his revamp mini-series “The Man of Steel,” but I supposed that's appropriate.
I thought the Krypton scenes were a bit dark (in tone), but, surprisingly, I really liked the Superman/Clark Kent/ Krypton scenes. I haven't read any of his work in at least a decade, but this first issue didn't display any of the excesses that led me to avoid it in the first place.
So far, so good.
Any other thoughts?
Replies
It seemed to me that he isn't changing Superman radically, as I feared. But he had the good sense to leave alone what was working with the Action Ace, which was already hitting on most cylinders.
I read this a second time over the weekend, but I skipped the Krypton parts. Logically, those scenes shouldn't have any more to do with "today" than those scenes from "1,000,000 years ago" had to do with today's Avengers in the new Avengers #1 (except that the writer says so). It read better that way, but it was a quick read. Good thing this is a weekly.
I thought it was a lot of fun! Just what I wanted from a Bendis Superman.
I was pleasantly surprised by the first issue. Bendis took the scope and responsibility of being Superman to a believable level while still humanizing him. He went a little overboard on the "mild-mannered" aspect of Clark but that's a minor complaint.
And Superman is getting another cosmic foe who is trying really hard not to be Thanos!
MAN OF STEEL #2: I liked the second issue as much as I did the first, although I must admit I skipped the scenes set on Krypton years ago. If whatever’s going on ever becomes relevant to the present day story (which I assume it will), I find out about it along with Superman. The dialogue is really quite clever in some places, which I find unexpected because it was primarily his dialogue which drove me away from Bendis’ comics in the first place.