#Sylvester Stallone you are one gorgeous bastard

[ayyyy-le-simp]

I was having a lovely conversation with my mom today at the dinner table while eating tacos. We were talking about fictional and celebrity hunks. She listed Chris Evans, Thor and Chris Pratt. I listed Harrison Ford/ Han Solo and Bucky Barnes.

“Who else do you find as a hunk?” My beloved mami (mom for Spanish, yes I still call her mami, let me act like a kid around her 🙄) asked.

I snapped my fingers and pointed to nothing but air “Hunter from The Bad Batch.”

My amazing Mami looked at me and said “That’s a cartoon character” She gave me a look and said “that’s…weird.”

I then showed her a picture of Hunter (even though she has seen him before). She then said “He looks like Rambo.”

My somewhat uncultured ass looked up Rambo.

Oh my gosh

Oh my gosh

Holy smokes-

MY MOTHER, MY AMAZING MAMI, WAS NOT LYING

Conversation with a friend of mine after looking up Rambo

RAMBO IS LITERALLY HUNTER BUT FROM THE 80S WITH A PEW PEW AND SWEATY ASS ABS AND SHOULDERS ANS BICEPS

Hunter, baby, honey, sweetheart, cream to my coffee, amor, mi corazón, please, take off your shirt and be Space Rambo. I’ll be your little housewife. I cook, clean, and I’m great with kids. Call me at 1-800-NEED-A-MAN

[davidmann95]

now that it's over, thoughts on Bendis' Superman as a whole?

pretenderoftheeast said: So, thoughts on Bendis' Superman and Action Comics' tenure altogether and separately now that it's over?

Anonymous said: Best and Worst things about Bendis' Superman run

Anonymous said: Now that it is over, what are your thoughts on Bendis' runs on Superman and Action Comics as a whole?

Anonymous said: Retrospective thoughts on Bendis' Superman as a whole now that it's, I guess, done?

Anonymous said: Hey so since Bendis’ Superman stuff seems to be done, what did you think of the run as a whole?

I decided to hold off a bit on writing on this one, if only so that I could reread the Action Comics side of it since Superman stood out in my memory a lot more. But now I have, and as we’re heading into a bold new era of Superman (and it’s coming in fast - just since I made my Superman in 2021 predictions we’ve gotten Ed Pinsent finally reprinting his legendary bootleg Silver Age Superman, Steve Orlando announcing his Superman analogue book Project Patron, an official shonen Superman redesign for RWBY/Justice League, PKJ’s Super-debut turning out far better than I ever expected, Superman & Lois’s first proper trailer largely taking people pleasantly by surprise, and my learning that there’s a Sylvester Stallone Old Man Superman analogue movie titled Samaritan coming out this summer) we’re ready to take a look back with at least a touch of perspective. I’ll lead with complaints, so everybody who’s been waiting for me to say that Bendis on Superman was Bad, Actually, savor this because it’s as close as you’ll get.

The Bad

* I hate to say it, but rereading that side of the run there’s no two ways about it: the structure of Action Comics as a whole is a mess. It baffled me from day one that it was the more acclaimed of the two books for so long - I guess people are hardwired at this point to think of ‘street’ stuff as where Bendis is supposed to be - because it was immediately clear that Superman had a well-defined story he wanted to tell, while Action was the usual Bendis off-the-cuff improvisation. It’s barely even a story in the same way, and it’s certainly not the ‘Metropolis crime book’ people took it as: it’s 28 issues of Superman and his supporting cast stuffed a pinball machine with the Red Cloud pinging off of each other as we wait to see who falls in the hole at the bottom, and partway through Leviathan and the Legion of Doom and 90s Superboy are tossed into the mix to keep it going a little longer. On an issue-to-issue basis it’s frequently really good, but the core plot of the book is *maybe* six issues stretched out over two and a half years.

* I’ve gone into this some before, but structure-wise Unity Saga also has problems: Phantom Planet rules but either it needed to be cut or the back half needed to be a year all its own in order to accommodate the scale of what it’s attempting. It’s got an interstellar civil war leading into the formation of the United Planets, family drama, Rogol Zaar’s whole deal, and Jon’s coming of age, and I’d say only that last one is really properly served. Even Jon forming the United Planets, while contextually somewhat justified in terms of 1. The situation being so far gone he’s the only one who’d even think in those terms, 2. Things being bad enough that these assorted galactic powers would be willing to try it, and 3. Him having the S on his chest to sell it, isn’t at all built up to within the run itself.

* Rogol Zaar sucks. He’s made up of nothing but interesting ideas - he’s an ersatz warrior ‘superman’ of a bygone age of empires up against the new model, he’s the sins of Krypton as a conservative superpower come home to roost, he’s while not outright said to be definitely Superman’s tragic half-brother and the culmination of everything this run does with Jor-El - but none of them manifest on the page, he’s just a big punchy dude with a dumb design who screams about how you should take him seriously because he’s totally the one who blew up Krypton. Even a killer redesign by Ryan Sook for Legion of Superheroes can’t fix that. There are lots of bad villains with good ideas who are redeemed with time and further effort, but I can’t imagine Zaar getting that TLC to become a fraction of whatever Bendis envisioned him as.

* The second year of Action Comics, after establishing itself in its first as one of the most consistently gorgeous books on the stands, leads with Szymon Kudranski’s weak output and then concludes with John Romita Jr. turning in some career-worst work. The latter is particularly egregious because for that first year Bendis writes a really collected, gentle Superman so him getting pushed into being more aggressive should have an impact, but Romita draws such a craggy rough-looking Superman in the first place that it mutes any sort of shock value.

 * WE NEVER LEARN WHAT’S UP WITH LEONE’S CAR, WHAT THE HELL. You don’t just DROP THAT IN THERE and then NEVER FOLLOW UP.

The Good

* Superman got his real clothes back after 7 truly ridiculous years.

* Bendis fundamentally gets Clark’s voice in a way unlike almost any other writer - even all-around better writers of the character almost never approach how spot-on he is with having Superman speak and act exactly how Superman should.

* Supporting cast front and center! He writes a dynamite Lois, Perry, and Jimmy (even if many of Lois’s more out-there decisions in the run don’t end up retroactively justified the way you’d hope), Ma and Pa are more fun than they’ve been in decades in their brief appearances, he manages to turn having Jor-El in the mix into a positive, and the Daily Planet as a whole has an incredibly distinctive vibe to it like never before that I hope is taken as a baseline going forward.

* The non-Rogol Zaar baddies? All ruled. Invisible Mafia and Red Cloud are both brilliant ideas executed solidly if overextended. Zod as Kryptonian Vegeta, Mongul as a generational perpetual bastard engine primed to be incapable of self-reflection, and Ultraman as “what if Irredeemable but he’d never been a good guy and also he was a Jersey mobster” are the best versions of those characters by numberless light-eons. Lex is on-point in his sparse appearances. Xanadoth as a mystical cosmic monster older than time who still talks like a Bendis character is however unintentionally a hoot. The alt-universe Parasite is a more intimidating Doomsday than Doomsday ever was. And Synmar as an alien culture’s attempt at creating their own Superman and messing up the formula when they make him a soldier can and should be a legitimate major ongoing villain coming out of this run.

* Pretty much all the art other than what I mentioned already. Fabok does a good job bookending The Man of Steel and Ivan Reis does the work of his career anchoring Superman (special props to Reis as well for drawing the first ever non-Steve Rude interesting-looking take on Metropolis), and meanwhile you’ve got Jim Lee, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Doc Shaner, Steve Rude, Kevin Maguire, Adam Hughes, Patrick Gleason, Yanick Paquette, Ryan Sook, Brandon Peterson, and David Lafuente doing their own parts.

* Closely related to the art, all the little flourishes with the powers. Super-speed having a consistent visual with the background coloring changing, Clark internally putting numbers to the degrees of force behind his punches and what situations which numbers are appropriate for, ‘skidding to a halt’ mid-flight before crashing through a window, the shonen-ass major throwdowns as portrayed by Reis, how his super-hearing is handled as a prevalent element. Lots of clever bits that added flavor to what he does.

* While Unity Saga has problems, the whole of what Bendis does in Superman as a means of forward momentum for Clark and his world is excellent. The sort of three-act structure of: 

** Clark is led to question his place in things over the course of a few adventures

** Involvement in the larger cosmos and the impact it has had through and on his family makes him realize the answer to his questions is that he needs to step up in a bigger way because there’s no benevolent larger universe to welcome Earth with open arms, nor a cosmic precedent for everything turning out for the best without some help

** As a consequence of the lessons learned by this change in the status quo Clark is inspired to make his own personal change in revealing his identity (with Mythological basically being an epilogue showcasing a ‘standard’ standalone Superman adventure while simultaneously highlighting his new status quo and how it fits in as a summing-up of Bendis’s take)

…does a great job of shepherding through ideas that lend a lot of forward momentum to Superman of the kind he hasn’t seen in a long time. Not perfect, but far lesser stories with far lesser ambitions have made huge impacts, so I’d certainly hope at least some of this sticks around even if, say, regardless of any retcons to the main line there are always going to be stories with Clark as a disguise and Jon as a kid. Oh, speaking of whom,

* KISS MY ASS, EVERYTHING WITH JON KENT RULED

Ahem. Probably a less confrontational way of putting that.

Do I think there was more gas in the tank for Jon as a kid? Totally, making him likeable and viable was the one really good thing the Rebirth era accomplished for Superman and I expect we’ll continue seeing more of it in the future one way or another. But whether or not him being aged up was Bendis’s decision, or working with marching orders to set up the eventually-(kinda-)discarded 5G, the coming of age narrative here is fire. He keeps the essential Clark Kent kindness and bit of Lois Lane cheekiness that reminds you he’s still their kid, which is a combination Bendis is basically precision-crafted to write, but his trials by fire give him a background entirely unlike the by-the-numbers “and here’s how Superman’s great kid grew up to be a great superhero too” narrative you’d expect while still arriving at that endpoint. If superheroes live and die by metaphors then Jon in here is what it means to grow up written as large as possible: leaving home for the first time (and seeming to shoot up overnight!), getting into the muck of how the real world works, being beaten down by authority wearing faces you’ve been taught to trust, scrambling to get through with the whole world against you, and in the end getting through by learning to rely on your own strength while keeping your soul intact and your head held high, and even managing to speak some truth to power. It gives him a well-defined life story with room to go back to and explore the intricacies of each leg of for decades to come in a way Superman hasn’t had since the original Crisis - someone someday is going to write a The Life & Times Of The Son Of Superman miniseries and it’s going to be one of the greats - and negates any question that he’s earned his stature as the heir apparent.

* Coming out of this, Superman’s world is fascinating. He’s out but rather than giving up his day-to-day life he’s openly spending part of his life as CLARK KENT: SUPER-REPORTER and part of his job on the cape-and-tights side of things is now KAL-EL: SUPER-SPACE-DIPLOMAT, Lois Lane coruns a foundation helping people whose personal continuities have been fucked over by Crisis shenanigans, Jimmy Olsen owns the Daily Planet but is still doing Jimmy Olsen stuff because that’s how he gets his kicks, and Jon Kent is going to college in the future. I’m not anywhere near naïve enough to think that’s how things are going to be forever, or shortsighted enough to think there’s no value left in the traditional setups, but god I hope these developments stick around for a long, long time to come and potentially become the new ‘normal’ as far as the ongoing shared universe stuff goes, because it all feels like the right and promising next steps to take for the lives of these characters. However it got here, for all the pluses and minuses along the way even if I maintain the former very much outweighed the latter as a reading experience, Bendis has a lot to be proud of if that’s the legacy he leaves on these titles.

* The recap pages at the desks!