Originally Posted by
Myskin
If it has become basically impossible to write a story about the titular character of a series without necessarily dealing with the whereabouts of one, or all, of the characters you mentioned, they can become/have become a burden. Maybe Lois would make an exception, because she has been such an important part of the Superman mythos from day one that it simply feels weird to write a Superman story without her. Even if there are very good Superman stories without Lois and somehow in contrast with her role as Superman's main love interest (the original Lori Lemaris adventure, for example).
Anyway, the examples you proposed don't hold much water. Jimmy Olsen and Perry White are easily ignorable (most of the time their characterization is so vague that I simply forget that they are there; especially Perry) and there have been literally years of stories without Supergirl or Superboy. Most of the time them can simply work as background characters or without really "being" there.
This doesn't apply to Jon at all. For reasons which the user Tzigone has perfectly summarized here:
Do I really need to add more here?
Just to be clear, one of the main issues I have with Jon (maybe the main issue) is not Jon per se (even if in most of his appearances in Rebirth I find him unbearable, but that's mostly because of Jurgens' writing) but the fact that they introduced an "unavoidable" character without fixing most of the problems and frailties of Superman as a character in the first place. In fact, those problems are still here. Just with one character more, whom you can't ignore.
I have read this justification a lot of times whenever someone brought up similar problems here on CBR forum (not me) and it has always sounded unconvincing. It's as if - once you have introduced a a character - you have ONE way to deal with him, ONE way to write his dialogues, ONE way to make him behave in ONE way. Nobody forced them to write a Superman who teaches that way. No one forced them to write a teaching Superman. And nobody forced them to introduce a son Superman had to teach to. Heck, no one forced them to write Jon as wide-eyed SuperLord Fauntleroy, either. And I really hope that we don't have to start nitpicking discussions about Jon being 11 or 12.
In Superman 2 (2016), just at the beginning of the Rebirth era, there is an exchange between Jon and Clark which summarizes their relationship pretty well. Clark gives him an extremely vague lesson about "doing the right thing when no one else will" and the powers which are not as important as having the right character, and Jon is humble and innocent and apologizes because he used his powers when Superman wasn't around. Well, even without being the most cringeworthy example (the war veterans story got plenty of them and, rather than jingoistic, it is unreadable: its only positive point is that everybody apparently forgot about it) this is a perfect example of why this type of lessons simply don't work in a comic book. The "right thing". As if there was a superhero who would teach his son to do the bad thing. "Right thing", like "hope", and "everything's well", belongs to the realm of the ethical lessons/words which mean zero and I hope not to see anymore in a superhero book (but I expect to see many times more, sadly). Besides that, the problem here (and that's a defining element of their relationship) is exactly that Superman is always represented as a hero all certainties and few/no doubts and Jon as a kid who sees his father as a God and never doubts his word.
"But Jon is an 11-year old kid and every kid sees his father as a God". I'd say that this is debatable (I speak from personal experience) but OK, let's say that this is the case. The problem is, even if Jon is a kid, the reader isn't. And - if the reader has a bit of critical spirit - he/she cannot but see how Superman's words don't mean much. What does "the right thing" mean? OK, superheroes shouldn't kill - that's obvious - but is, for example, not fighting world hunger the right thing? Is not battling sickness the right thing? What about racism? And we are dealing with a character whose entire editorial history in the latest 20+ years largely focused on posing this type of questions. It's as if Tomasi had forced the reader to identify himself/herself with Jon and make him/her accept simplistic answers instead of more complex, but also more interesting ones. Superman's lesson: be a good person. Yeah, without Superman nobody would have ever thought about that.
One thing's true, though. This is the typical approach to writing a "teaching" character in a mainstream superhero book. Mainstream as in Marvel or DC - a lot of Image books contains very complex life lessons without having the same tone. Unless you are a very good writer with a lot of freedom, most of ethical teaching you are allowed to include in a DC book have the same depth of a Masters of the Universe cartoon. The problem is, you have to be very careful when you add even more "teaching" traits to a character who for decades has been described as a paternalistic boy scout (and I hope that I don't have to demonstrate THAT such conception of Superman exists).
I don't think that the Super Sons sales were good enough to justify the series to continue. And no, the sales didn't go down because of the introduction of teen Jon (but this is something people with more patience with me have already discussed about in this forum).
Anyway, the upcoming Legion book will probably play the same role you are suggesting here. You don't like it? Don't read it. You don't have a version of Superman/Jon you like anymore? That's comics. It has always happened and it will happen as long as comic books will exist. How do you think New52 Superman readers felt when they introduced SuperDad? How do you think PostCrisis Superman readers felt when they introduced the New52? How do you think PreCrisis Superman readers felt when Crisis happened? And so on. If the new Legion proves successful and this version of Jon is appreciated by the readers, the Super Sons will simply become a thing of the past like thousands of other stories (and no, if it happens, it won't be because Didio/Bendis hate Rebirth Jon).