“Man of Steel”

Brian Michael Bendis has begun his Superman run with his Man of Steel miniseries, which has somewhat divided fans by eliminating parts of his mythology and poor pacing. (Spoilers to follow.)

Long a major player at Marvel, Bendis jumped ship to DC Comics recently. This miniseries sets the stage of him to take over both Action Comics and Superman, the two big titles for the Big Blue Boy Scout.

Man of Steel miniseries reveals a new villain named Rogol Zaar, who hates Kryptonians for unknown reasons and is behind their home planet’s destruction; during the course of the series, he also destroys the bottled city of Kandor. Meanwhile, Superman’s wife and son are mysterious absent (with only Superman knowing where).

To many fans, this is the best writing that Bendis has done in years, while others question many of the choices that he made. For one, Rogol Zaar, while badass, is not a particularly compelling character; he is a powerful, ugly alien who hates all things Kryptonian and can go toe-to-toe with Superman and Supergirl, which basically means that he is Doomsday, but capable of speech. We also do not find out his motivation, though that will be explored in an upcoming Supergirl series.

Which is another problem: Bendis has a tendency to draw out stories and answer all the questions at the very end, or in this case, in a spin-off. Rogol Zaar us actually defeated pretty easily, just to make room for a new story about him that he may not even be in. The mystery about Lois and Jon is another issue: it turns out that they’re just off with Jor-El exploring the galaxy, but fans may question why it took until the very end of the miniseries to learn something a.) simple, and b.) interesting enough to have been a major subplot.

Keeping them out of this story, as well as destroying Kandor, is also questionable, as both moves eliminate (temporarily or permanently) important parts of Superman’s mythos. Another near genocide of the Kryptonian species certainly makes Rogol Zaar more threatening, but it also casually removes a plot point that has been around since 1958, and which could be used for many more stories in the future.

The miniseries’ quality is thus debatable, but hopefully Bendis has some moves planned to win over his detractors.