Superman #25 Review

Keeping Tabs On Superman

Written By: Brian Michael Bendis

Art By: Ivan Reis, Julio Ferreira, Danny Miki, Alex Sinclair, Dave Sharpe

Cover Price: $5.99

Release Date: September 8, 2020

Who's ready for an over-sized anniversary issue of Superman where we introduce the newest threat to our Man of Steel in the form of Synmar? Ready or not, here it comes. Let's jump into this issue and see what Brian Michael Bendis has in store for the Man of Tomorrow in this brave new world, where not only is Superman's identity revealed, but where he's currently unemployed because the Daily Planet has been shut down. Let's jump into this issue and check it out.

I'm going to go out on a strange limb here where I'm going to give this issue the benefit of the doubt or possibly just a hope of positive things to come from this because even though this over-sized anniversary issue...... really just a milestone, don't know why DC goes with anniversary....... even though this issue isn't very good overall, it does come off to me like one of the best issues that Brian Michael Bendis has written for DC Comics. About the actual issue...... We essentially have Lana Lang interviewing Clark in a casual way as Bendis tries to show some sort of relationship between the two, but fails hard because from scene to scene it feels like Lana hasn't seen him in twenty years to they are close friends still. It's uneven overall and things don't get extremely better with our Synmar parts of the story either....... since the Synmar people are pretty similar looking and because Bendis wrote it, they essentially have a shit ton of dialog that all comes off sounding the same, not to mention we have a new alien species that we don't know anything about. The bit you need to know though is that they saw Krypton explode, a ship carrying a baby going to a world that would endow that baby with the powers of a god, the need to make sure that baby's not a threat and also....... why don't the Synmar people have a Superman?.... We should get on that.  

Now, as for why I think that this is one of the best issues that Bendis has written..... Superman is a mess. Let's face it, ever since Convergence happened we've been on a downward slope of continuity nonsense where nothing makes sense. We had a Pre-Flashpoint Superman and a New 52 Superman, we had a Superman Reborn where the two were combined, giving us a new timeline with small changes to both but still undefined, we had Doomsday Clock bring back the Kents and restore the Smallville Superboy timeline and we have Brian Michael Bendis who changed the history of Krypton. So with that, we really have no idea what Superman's continuity looks like because it keeps changing and I'm hoping with the sections of Clark talking to Lana in this issue that we are moving towards understanding Clark's relationships in our current timeline and what these people mean to him, not to mention what he means to them. It's a long shot that I'll get some kind of definitive continuity or understanding what this continuity means, but from what we got out of this issue I was struck with the feeling that it may happen and it's the first time that I've had a sense of hope when it comes to this book for a long time. As for the Synmar part...... With this one over-sized issue, Synmar is already more defined and relatable than any Bendis villain that he's brought to any of his books from his time at DC Comics, and with that, I really hope that we get an enjoyable story out of this because even though there are a lot of uneven aspects to this issue, it seems like it could be going in a cool direction.

All in all, I love the art in this issue, besides for the fact that all the Synmar people look so alike, but that could just be me not being observant enough or it's a feature of these aliens to look so similar, either way, I enjoyed what we got here and hope that I'm right in believing that Brian Michael Bendis plans on righting some wrongs that have happened to Superman over the past four years and giving us a definitive continuity that we can follow....... Yeah, that's a lot to ask for a writer that plans on leaving this book soon, but there were some moments here that felt like there was some forethought from not only Bendis but from DC as a whole to make something make sense after all the reboots, retcons and reborns that have plagued our Man of Steel for so long now and if there is even a sliver of truth to that, I'm down because we need Superman to fly high again and the way to start doing that is allowing the fans to understand who he is, what his relationships are like and what he's gone through. Also, I think that an alien version of Superman taking on our hero sounds pretty cool, especially with the tragic motives that we get in this issue.

Bits and Pieces:

While some of the writing still feels off like you've been getting out of this title, the themes, ideas that are presented here actually get me excited about what could be coming out of this book in the future. Overall I enjoyed the art and got the optimistic idea that Bendis might be trying for some sort of cohesive storytelling that lets the fans know what is actually going on with the Superman Family of characters.

7/10