Official : Bendis gets both books

[Frontier]

Also, Jon in the Legion stuff, and hints to some big things down the line. The Legion will be using new reader friendly in universe pop up tags for everything in the world. So you'll know who is who, and you'll know a bit about them. And apparently they Legion members will back each other's tags for fun.

I mean, they'll probably need to have tags just for the amount of characters in there...although I wonder if Bendis will use the tags to fit in characterization for the Legion that he won't be able to fit in normally.

[Superlad93]

My bad, I meant to write that the Legion members will apparently be hacking each other's tags for fun. Looking forward to that

[Frontier]

My bad, I meant to write that the Legion members will apparently be hacking each other's tags for fun. Looking forward to that

Brainy's the only one who I could see doing that...I hope the tags are in good humor .

[DragonPiece]

I’ve been listening, he seems to hint Clark’s parents come back in the doomsday clock finale. Doesn’t outright say it but when asked about clark’s parents, he says he doesn’t want to spoil doomsday clock and Geoff’s storyline.

[Superlad93]

Brainy's the only one who I could see doing that

I don't see why. I mean, the way Bendis' talks about it, it sounds like it's a fairly common bit of tech in the 31st century like the mems in issue 2 of millennium. It seems like some aspects of social media have become even greater parts of the physical world in the 31st century, so I could very easily imagine fooling around specific to that, and I can imagine more than just a 12 level intelligence doing it.

[Vordan]

I’ve been listening, he seems to hint Clark’s parents come back in the doomsday clock finale. Doesn’t outright say it but when asked about clark’s parents, he says he doesn’t want to spoil doomsday clock and Geoff’s storyline.

The timeline leaked shows that Ma and Pa’s death by car crash will get undone, but Pa is still going to be dead from the events of Brainiac. Pretty sure Pa’s death was listed on that timeline. So we’ll be fully back to the Johns status quo, although with 5G I don’t see how the Kents could still be alive given Clark will have been active since the 1950s.

[DragonPiece]

The timeline leaked shows that Ma and Pa’s death by car crash will get undone, but Pa is still going to be dead from the events of Brainiac. Pretty sure Pa’s death was listed on that timeline. So we’ll be fully back to the Johns status quo, although with 5G I don’t see how the Kents could still be alive given Clark will have been active since the 1950s.

That timeline was confirmed not even be the latest one DC had and wasn’t mean to be shown, I wouldn’t take that into consideration much.

[Superlad93]

Who confirmed that? And it sounds like some signals got crossed on Didi's part and he jumped the gun. Bendis sounded like he didn't know that was going down at a con.

[Yoda]

I think BC said that the version shown was actually a version that was floating around at the time of SDCC and was out of date by the time Didio popped it up at NYCC.

Really liked the Word Balloon interview. Lots of interesting stuff. I loved how he put it in the context of Ultimate Spider-Man 13, which is one of my favorite comics. Just a great take on that type of thing. I also loved how he addressed the "how will he protect his loved ones" by basically acknowledging that Superman (not Clark) was more associated and known to be friends with the people at the Daily Planet already, so in that sense literally nothing at all will change. Even funnier was how certain people their will realize they knew Superman better than they knew Clark.

Bendis really does want to take this in directions that haven't been touched on before. The bit where they brought up a story with the secret identity, basically like you can't tell that story if he doesn't have it, and Bendis says point blank, "sure but you already told that story." Kinda really hits that point hard. Also, the little 5G nod was interesting. He danced around the Doomsday Clock bit as he always has.

[Vordan]

That timeline was confirmed not even be the latest one DC had and wasn’t mean to be shown, I wouldn’t take that into consideration much.

It was? I hadn’t heard that. Where’d you hear that? Regardless I’m still expecting a full return to the Johns continuity at the end of DDC. Pa dead and Ma alive is what I expect the status quo to be. I’d prefer them both staying dead but I can accept Ma being alive. But who knows how 5G will affect things?

[Sacred Knight]

Outside of what's to come after this, which I'll touch on in a sec, thing is they've already told the story of Superman outing himself too. Maybe not in the same way, but it has been done before. Simple fact is this character is over 80 years old. You're not going to find a lot that's brand spanking new to do, and indeed this isn't either. And you know what? Maybe that's okay. Maybe not trying to reinvent the wheel and take a mythos far past a specific lore's concept is fine. Maybe its okay to just try and tell good individual adventures, and at best just try a freshening every now and again. You may not have much to do in way of brand new, but you can find things that just haven't been done lately. There is a line between creative freedom and losing purpose. I think this loses the purpose of Superman as a concept.

Going back now to doing new things, the idea of someone else taking over as Superman and Clark himself becoming Earth President or something? Okay, yeah, that one is pretty new. I'll grant that. But is it even Superman anymore if its some other guy in the role and the real deal is playing politics and more-or-less retired from active duty (I'm assuming here, but to me a retirement scenario due to other duties is the only thing I can think of that gives the narrative reason for Jon to take over. Outside of the Crisis actually eliminating the classic characters somehow, putting them in limbo, which would be way worse)? In my opinion, no, its not. Its something else entirely.

[Yoda]

He acknowledges that they've told stories of him being outed and outing himself before as well. Cracking that they outed him in half the covers between 1950-1970. Essentially, it is what comes after that and the effect that has on the DCU at large that is where the story comes in. He also does sound off on secret identities in general and how they have taken on a different context in modern stories, meaning they aren't seen a good things necessarily anymore. He notes that the MCU has done away with it entirely and in Ultimate Spider-Man he addressed it early on with Peter revealing it to MJ. He does seem to feel you still will be able to tell Clark Kent stories even with the ID outed, the notion that Clark as an adult is used to interacting with people as Superman that he'll be able to be more authentic with them now as well.

The retirement angle is another thing. I don't know how that will play out or if that would work. But generally, the ID reveal seems to be being approached a lot different than things like Truth was. Or is at least coming at it from a different angle. I don't think it necessarily breaks the character fundamentally though it does remove a big piece of the mythos and one that I particularly am very fond of.

[Superlad93]

I also dug how he brought up how the most modern understanding of the concept of a secret identity is online anonymity/online personas.

I've long since had some to this tune going in my head about what a Clark Kent reads like to the modern viewer/reader.

The concept of the Instagram food pic, sunset pic, or "relatable" just woke up pic are all fabricated versions of something reminiscent of what that real person may have gone through.

Clark Kent, in most of his incarnations, is "put together." He gets mustard on his tie to promote an image. He wears glasses to promote an image. He stutters, trips, and pretends he's cold all to promote an image.

In a lot of ways Clark is a walking talking social media page compete with opinionated news.

The idea that Clark, the most real version of the guy, is about to "unplug" and basically go "naked" sound interesting. Especially because now the fact that Superman/Clark ever pretend to be human in the first place holds a whole set of implications that the collective world gets to wrestle with, and it fills Superman, the icon, out more as a person for better or worse to them, thus the reactions.

[DragonPiece]

It was? I hadn’t heard that. Where’d you hear that? Regardless I’m still expecting a full return to the Johns continuity at the end of DDC. Pa dead and Ma alive is what I expect the status quo to be. I’d prefer them both staying dead but I can accept Ma being alive. But who knows how 5G will affect things?

What I heard is what Yoda said in the post above, he worded what I saw better.

[Ascended]

5G soft confirm in there.

Pretty in depth convo about the discarding of the identity. I particularly like the case that Bendis' makes for it when he says that Clark coming to the big city at 20 something to prove himself is a much different person than Clark as a husband, father, and icon looking at the next step in life. That right there is what I needed to hear basically verbatim. I needed to hear that this story only works for this guy because he's at where he's at as a person.

The United Plates in the modern day is going to continue to be a large part of the equation for Clark.

Also, Jon in the Legion stuff, and hints to some big things down the line. The Legion will be using new reader friendly in universe pop up tags for everything in the world. So you'll know who is who, and you'll know a bit about them. And apparently they Legion members will back each other's tags for fun.

These are all the words I want to hear from Bendis.

Of course, I was super thrilled about what Bendis had to say about the Legion at first too, and that didn't work out (conceptually) as well as I wanted it to (dammit Clark, why cant you keep this part of your origin man? WTH?).

I'm down with seeing how this whole identity reveal/earth prez thing unfolds though. If Bendis really does play this as Clark taking the next step in life then it might work. This feels like a different kind of reveal than Truth or any of the other times it's been done. This is more like it's actually designed to come out of the character and his history as a matter of evolution instead of just a random change for shock value. And it even looks like Bendis has thought about how this impacts the franchise too, so he's probably given it more thought than most who've taken us down this road.

But still, as Yang said, the character of Superman is found in the tension between Superman and Clark Kent. (or words to that effect) and this is one of the core elements of the mythos' foundation that Bendis is toying with. I'm interested in where this is gonna go and how we'll get there, but it'll be awfully easy to f*ck this up.