Jon Kent Appreciation 2019

[Yoda]

I guess I can understand why Jon shouldn't be a regular 17 year old. Although he and his mind still live those years, so he is still a true 17 year old (this is different from people who mind really stopped in childhood).

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if Bendis just use Jon being 17 to make him live apart from his parents. In the same way that he make Lois to live apart from Clark.

Yeah, I'm not really articulating what I'm thinking clearly. I just did my taxes so my brain is not firing on all cylinders!

I do think part of the age up was to make Jon, Lois, and Clark all a little more independent from each other. Until we know how they are going to address the age up and Jon's paternity in the context of the secret identity it's hard to say. Jon may end up living with "Clark" in metropolis or with "Superman" at the Fortress. All dependant on how that shakes out. We know Jon's paternity is going to be revealed publicly at some point. Those janitors overheard that part of it and it'll likely come out in the post-Unity Saga arc.

[Konja7]

I should have couched that more as I'm making some assumptions about what we are going to see. You're right that he seems far more self confident and mature in the superheroing sense. I think given that we now see that he actually spent a good chunk of his time away, if not the majority, stuck with Ultraman, he didn't have a lot of experience that you'd expect from 11-17. So in a sense, I expect that some of his optimism and attitude is a holdover from his old 11 year old outlook on life. The kinda picking up with Damian right away, or his eagerness to help his dad and be back with his mom. I'm having trouble articulating what I meant clearly I think, but I think we can kinda expect socially and whatnot, he's going to have a lot more of his 11 year old self still there than he would have had he aged "normally."

I understand.

It's true Jon shouldn't have much experience in life (maybe the time he was free from Ultraman could help a little in this).

[Superlad93]

I'm having trouble articulating what I meant clearly I think, but I think we can kinda expect socially and whatnot, he's going to have a lot more of his 11 year old self still there than he would have had he aged "normally."

Dude, I'm totally picking up what you're putting down. This is where the analogy to Big comes in, and I totally agree. In terms of being a superhero, he's a SUPERMAN due to his innate sense of right and wrong and his titanic strength of will being tested on the highest level, and him passing with top marks, but in terms of functioning like you'd expect a 17 year old to function when they don't need to save the world? Not so much. His only point of reference for what life outside of these past several years is what life was like at 11 years old. Like, the kid has gone from stopping intergalactic space conflicts every other day, then over to spending years on a hell Earth, and now he's about to go stop an intergalactic war just hours after getting home.

I'm expecting a moment of realization. The "how to be an adult" stuff from Big and Shazam! being played here by Jon and Damian makes a lot of sense in that context. Like, I'm betting Jon hasn't even had his first kiss yet. There's a lot of fun to be had with this sort of in between character. You can just imagine a scene where someone is coming onto him, and he intellectually gets it, but he's all like "man, fighting space dragons was simpler than this"

Or trying to have conversation with someone and he's all adorkable and like "did you a baby sun eater has the same density of a black hole?" lol

[Blue22]

The strength of Jon as a character comes from his authenticity. He's powerful in a way that all kids wish they could be, but he's also incredibly sensitive. This is the kid who was heartbroken after killing the family cat by mistake, the kid who worried whether he and his dad would make it home from Dinosaur Island, the kid who felt such extreme joy in being included on a Teen Titans mission, the kid who dealt with the emotional difficulty of moving to a big city when he's a country boy. Jon has such a large fanbase because he's incredibly emotionally connected and relatable while dealing with these incredible situations.

This isn't that. This is the exact opposite. Jon is not acting the way anybody would. And all this talk about him surviving 5 to 7 years of confinement after being kidnapped by an emotional unstable grandfather that for some reason your parents left you with being a sign of hope and resiliency is crap. No one can endure that and come out the other side okay. Extended solitary confinement is one of the most inhuman things you can do to someone and to come out the other side well-adjusted and fine is completely unrealistic.

So if you want to hold Jon up as an example of someone who can come out of the other side of that totally fine, that divorces him from the emotional reality that made his character so damn strong in the first place. That's why this Jon is unrecognizable. Because what he has gone through and become is so far from made his character unrecognizable. It turns him from one of the most wonderful characters to come around to DC in a while to a bland and boring empty shell.

Again, I don't want Jon angsting for the rest of his life as a character because he was trapped in a volcano for 5 years for stupid reasons. But I don't want him to be bland and boring and unrealistic either. This age-up story has basically ensured that he'll be one of the other as long as Bendis is writing him.

You hit the nail on the head, harder than I ever could.

A lot of Jon's appeal was that he's not only a child, but a child being raised by Superman. Part of the fun of him as a character should have been getting to follow his development. To see him go through all the trials and tribulations of growing up, but with the added hurdles of both living a double life and being the child of the world's most renowned superhero. And he'd go through all that **** in stride because he's Jon f*cking Kent! One of the most well written child characters I've ever come across in comics. Strong in so many unrealistic ways and yet he still managed to feel very real. He was everything but normal, yet he was still very much a normal child. Shooting him off into space and having him come back, a year away from being an adult and with most of his growth up there (which honestly didn't feel like much until the Ultraman thing. So the point of Jor-El taking him was what?) being relegated to two issues worth of explanation, just kinda cheapens all of that for me. Like Bendis just wanted to skip all the actual growth and jump straight to "Now Jon's a quirky teen with angst and trauma! Lois and Clark are a new, hip, modern couple! Everything's dramatic and unconventional! Nothing's normal!" when normal was honestly just fine.

That's what's always made Superman's family a nice parallel to Batman's. The fact that, underneath the capes and superpowers, they're still a normal family with the same issues that normal families have. That's something we don't even really have with the Fantastic Four, the poster-children for Superhero families. Even in their civilian lives, Bruce's family is not normal. Every Robin is their own special kind of f*cked up. Bruce is several different kinds of f*cked up. These drastic changes to the characters and their dynamic for the sake of unneeded drama sound more at home with the Batfamily (and that's not a knock at them. I love the Batfamily, dearly) than they do with Kents. The Super Family were great how they were. Let them grow and change naturally instead of doing all this **** at once.

If Bendis wanted to tell a cosmic story with Clark and Jon, there are some really interesting stories to tell there. Jon hadn't seen that much of the universe before Bendis took over and having him travel in space with Clark could have been an amazing story about a father opening his 10 year-old child's eyes to everything the universe has to offer, both the amazing and the horrible.

F*cked up part is, Supes had already started to do this back in Tomasi's run. And in an issue that was miles better for Jon's development as a character than anything we've seen from his time with Jor-El. Making SuperGramps come in and act like he's giving Jon something that Clark couldn't is even more confusing with that in mind. Clark can take him into space to teach him life lessons (and has) any time he wants.

[Artemisfanboy]

I hope that boycot isn't strong.

Knowing DC, that will only cause Jon to end up in the limbo. I would not want that.

I really like Jon, even aged up Jon


Another thing, Jon was a prisoner for years, but it wasn't exactly 7 years. Jon was 11 when he travel with Jor-El, while a time passed between his escape from Ultraman and his "fight" with Superwoman.

Of course, around 5 years is still pretty horrible.

I'm sorry to say that boycott is very strong, at least for me. Jon getting deaged is a non-negotiable condition for me to return to the Superman books. I don't want another universe wide reboot that would result in Jon Kent being erased from existence along with the marriage and who knows what else would be lost either. I can say I probably wouldn't be very well disposed to such a thing and would still be wanting a post-mortem fix like the Titans convergence special where Roy Harper got Lian back. But at that same time I'm not willing to compromise and support this status quo because of the argument that the alternative may be worse. I and that argument defeatist and supporting something I don't/can't enjoy to be waste of time and money.

Showing resilience in the face of extreme difficulty/tragedy should be the overall theme in all Super books. It began with a baby being shot through the universe when his home planet was destroyed. Enough with breaking the characters down so they no longer resemble who they are at their core.

I honestly don't see Jon's aging up reversed even after Bendis leaves the books at the end of his run. I think ultimately, DC/WB will make room for both young and old Jon to exist, albeit not in the same continuity.

I don't have that same faith. I see no reason to believe the Riddley Pearson Zoom line series will be continued once his announced trilogy is over or that they would replace it with another Super Sons series. I can easily see the younger Jon being phased out entirely. And there's the good possibility the older Jon is on his way to being written out of the present entirely and sent off to the future with the legion.

I wouldn't be opposed to them coexisting within the same continuity with the older Jon surviving after the younger one is saved from his fate as a temporal anomaly(and probably sent of to the future with the legion). But unless Jon gets deaged I don't see myself coming back.

[Konja7]

I'm sorry to say that boycott is very strong, at least for me. Jon getting deaged is a non-negotiable condition for me to return to the Superman books. I don't want another universe wide reboot that would result in Jon Kent being erased from existence along with the marriage and who knows what else would be lost either. I can say I probably wouldn't be very well disposed to such a thing and would still be wanting a post-mortem fix like the Titans convergence special where Roy Harper got Lian back. But at that same time I'm not willing to compromise and support this status quo because of the argument that the alternative may be worse. I and that argument defeatist and supporting something I don't/can't enjoy to be waste of time and money.

I didn't say you should support something you don't enjoy.

I will support this, because Jon still has the personality I like in the character. I don't like much how Bendis handle the story, but I still like Jon as a character in this.

So, I hope the boycot fails, because I don't want the risk of Jon in the limbo. However, if you don't like the story or the current character, you shouldn't support this.

[rpmaluki]

ADVENTURES OF THE SUPER SONS #12
written by PETER J. TOMASI
art by CARLO BARBERI
cover by DAN MORA
It’s been a long road, but Superboy and Robin have finally made their way back home! Unfortunately, an armada of about a gazillion juvenile super-delinquents is back too, and these pint-sized hell-raisers are out to conquer Earth! It’s the final battle between the son of Batman, the son of Superman, a big fan of Lex Luthor and whatever a “Doomsdame” is in this epic finale to the Super Sons saga!
ON SALE 07.03.19
$3.99 US | 12 of 12 | 32 PAGES
FC | RATED T

[MeGrimlock420]

Stumbled across this. It's more art for the upcoming issue Justice League #24. It looks like a flashback of Jon and Clark.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Ssnyder18...221248/photo/1

[Miles To Go]

Stumbled across this. It's more art for the upcoming issue Justice League #24. It looks like a flashback of Jon and Clark.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Ssnyder18...221248/photo/1

This is likely the backstory for the version of Lois that is imprisoning the villains on Apokolips

[MeGrimlock420]

This is likely the backstory for the version of Lois that is imprisoning the villains on Apokolips

I think so too.

[Sam]

I wonder if Scott Snyder would ever write Super Sons. He’s got kids about the right age.

[Konja7]

I wonder if Scott Snyder would ever write Super Sons. He’s got kids about the right age.

Scott Snyder has mentioned he has problems writing Damian, because Damian is the age of his son. So, he has problems writing about Damian being hurt (which will happen in a Super Sons comic).

I read many writers have problems writing about kid characters, although I don't know if this is true.

[dietrich]

I wonder if Scott Snyder would ever write Super Sons. He’s got kids about the right age.

Like @Konja said he has problems using young kids in dangerous situations which is why he didn't use 10 year old Damian in his Batman run however he did use 13 Damian in Metal and Duke the new sidekick he created is aged about 15.
And the Supersons Band which he added to canon is based on his kids who play in a garage rock band. The only problem is that I doubt that Synder is interested in writing those kinds of stories. That's just not his bag. Dustin Nguyen would be my pick for a Supersons title or Gleason.

They've had success with similar works. Lil' Gotham and Robin Son of Batman.

[Sam]

Like @Konja said he has problems using young kids in dangerous situations which is why he didn't use 10 year old Damian in his Batman run however he did use 13 Damian in Metal and Duke the new sidekick he created is aged about 15.
And the Supersons Band which he added to canon is based on his kids who play in a garage rock band. The only problem is that I doubt that Synder is interested in writing those kinds of stories. That's just not his bag. Dustin Nguyen would be my pick for a Supersons title or Gleason.

They've had success with similar works. Lil' Gotham and Robin Son of Batman.

Scott Snyder has mentioned he has problems writing Damian, because Damian is the age of his son. So, he has problems writing about Damian being hurt (which will happen in Super Sons a comic).

I read many writers have problems writing about kid characters, although I don't know if this is true.

Too bad, but understandable. I still thing he'd bring an awesome mix of craziness and childlike wonder to the title, but I totally understand those reservations.

[Shockingjustice]

https://mobile.twitter.com/langbulia...65102829752320D3ncsyGUUAAIYDc.jpg