Superman #18 Review

Hello, I'm Clark Kent and I'm Superman

Written By: Brian Michael Bendis

Art By: Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Alex Sinclair, Dave Sharpe

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: December 11, 2019

The big issue is here!  The time when Superman's identity is revealed to the world and I'm not talking about when it happened in 2015, I'm talking about an all-new, all-different reveal of Superman's identity!  Yeah, I'm not happy about this, especially for how we just kind of did this a couple of years ago and it was terrible then, but this seems to be our status quo going forward and I guess we'll find out why it was a good idea that Superman kept his secret identity for as long as he did because nothing good can come from this.  Let's jump into this issue and see if Bendis can pull off this big reveal in a big way.  

For this issue of Superman we see Clark going through the motions of figuring out if he wants to reveal himself to the world, but through it all it seems that he made his mind up well before this issue and was just hemming and hawing until he could get his press conference going.  One of my problems with this issue beyond the actual idea is that we have Clark revealing himself to Perry White and Jimmy Olsen individually and while Perry's plays out well with a silent progression, the part with Jimmy feels off because Lois went and outed Clark to Olsen before he even had a chance and that felt like a shame to me.  I guess Bendis realized that like this concept, we did just have Jimmy find out Clark's identity a few years ago and didn't feel like doing it again...... sadly.... this story is still happening though.

Really though, the reveal to Perry White might be one of the best parts of this book because it's not bogged down with back and forth dialog and is played out well with just being a silent page, something that Bendis should continue to do from time to time, but for me the absolute best part of this book came out of nowhere for me in the interactions between Superman and Adam Strange.  For some reason, this part came off as a lot of fun to me as Clark starts telling Adam about his day job and Adam just couldn't fathom Superman being like an ordinary person.  

All in all, the art is great throughout this book and for the most part, that's never an issue when it comes to this title.  As for the dialog, which usually is a problem, that for some reason once you get past the first page really works well in my mind here and I wish that more of Bendis' books could be like this...... you know, just with a better premise.  What this issue comes down to though is Superman just going place to place and revealing himself for a big speech at a press conference and for the most part this all works rather well, especially the ending.  With this out of the way though now comes the hard part with Bendis where he actually has to tell a story based on this reveal and from what I've seen so far from him, I'm not sure if he'll be able to pull something interesting off from this that doesn't go on and on with little to no progression, that doesn't rely on death and destruction.

Bits and Pieces:

While I hate the idea of revealing Superman's identity, I have to admit that I didn't hate this issue for the way it was done.  Yeah, there's some aspects that could have been handled better, but all in all the art and the dialog came together this issue in a way that doesn't happen very often for Bendis in my mind.  Now we'll just have to wait and see what comes from this big reveal and if it flops just as hard as the last time Superman revealed his identity.

7/10