Last week brought us a pair of announcements about upcoming Superman books, both of which I’m happy about, although I’m slightly reserved about one of them.

First of all, Marvel Comics announced the creative teams for their half of the upcoming Spider-Man/Superman crossover. DC announced at the end of last year that Mark Waid and Jorge Jimenez will be doing the main story for their half, which comes out in March. Marvel’s side of the crossover will come out in April, and last week we learned that the main story will be by Brad Meltzer and Pepe Larraz, pitting the wallcrawler and the Man of Steel against Lex Luthor and Norman Osborn. I’ve been a fan of Meltzer for quite some time – I love his novels, I’ve shared his childrens’ books with my son, and I’ve always liked his comics. I was surprised, though, to discover that he’s done almost no work for Marvel in the past – save for a single page in 2019’s Marvel Comics #1000 special, I believe this will be his first Marvel work.

They also revealed the creators and characters that will appear in the back-up features. Dan Slott and Marcos Martin will team up the Golden Age Superman with Spider-Man Noir, Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman will pit Wonder Woman and the Jane Foster Thor against an army of symbiotes, Louise Simonson and Todd Nauck will turn John Henry Irons against the Hobgoblin, Joe Kelly and Humberto Ramos will chronicle a “campus crossover” between Gwen Stacy and Lana Lang, and Brian Michael Bendis will re-team with Sara Pichelli, with whom he co-created the Miles Morales Spider-Man, in a story where Miles meets Superman. The thing about that last one, though, is that I’m not actually sure WHICH Superman Miles is going to meet, Clark or Jon. The solicitation doesn’t make it clear, and there are variant covers featuring Miles with each of them. This is one of the many, many things that drives me crazy about aging Jon up, but I’m not going to belabor that point here. I’m excited about most of these stories, particularly to have Louise Simonson writing Steel again.

The second announcement that hit this week is for another project launching in April, a four-issue Bizarro: Year None miniseries, purporting to tell the “definitive, indefinitive” origin of Superman’s imperfect doppelganger. This one is going to be co-written by Kevin Smith and Eric Carrasco, with art by Nick Pitarra. I couldn’t think of a better team to do a Bizarro comic, and at the same time, I cannot help but be a bit trepidatious about this one. And anyone who’s familiar with Kevin Smith’s history in comics will know exactly why.

Look – I am a fan of Kevin Smith. I have been since 1999, when my buddy Jason introduced me to what was then still the “Jersey Trilogy” just in time for us to catch Dogma. And I’ve been into most of his comic book work too…when it actually gets finished. Once his film career was established, Smith broke into comics first with stories featuring his own characters, then on acclaimed relaunches of Daredevil and Green Arrow. In 2002, he came back to Marvel for a miniseries, Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do, which released three of six issues before it vanished. Smith got sidetracked on other projects, and it took three years before he came back and did the back half of that miniseries. But that’s nothing compared to Daredevil/Bullseye: The Target, a miniseries that also launched that year and never made it beyond a first issue. We’re sitting here 24 years later, and that story was never finished.

This became a bit of a theme for Smith. In 2009 he and artist Walter Flanagan (yes, that Walt Flanagan, if you’re a fan of Smith’s movies) produced the first six issues of what was supposed to be a 12-issue saga: Batman: The Widening Gyre. At the time, Smith promised that the second half of the story would be told after a brief hiatus. The hiatus is at 16 years and counting. 

To Smith’s credit, he’s totally aware of the problems he had, and in more recent years he’s gotten a lot better about it. Whether it’s because of working with co-writers or just making certain that he has the scripts for an entire project finished before it’s even announced, his work in the past decade has not suffered from the George R.R. Martin-esque disappearances that plagued his comics back in the day. But as someone who’s still curious as to how, exactly, that gyre was supposed to finish widening, it’s hard to hear his name attached to a project without at least THINKING “here’s hoping he’s got all the scripts finished already.”

I think he has. All the same, the Bizarro miniseries is scheduled to run for four issues, starting in April. So here’s hoping we’ll have all four of them by the end of July. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!