I only read the preview so is it just me or Jon doesn't sound that different from his 10-year-old self despite aging naturally albeit in a different time warp? He's not supposed to be a 17-year-old with a 10-year-old mind, isn't he?
I only read the preview so is it just me or Jon doesn't sound that different from his 10-year-old self despite aging naturally albeit in a different time warp? He's not supposed to be a 17-year-old with a 10-year-old mind, isn't he?
^this. Look at what Tomasi’s Jon went through after accidentally killing his cat, vs Bendis’s when he went through 7 years being tortured in a volcano. Nothing about the current version comes across as believable or interesting compared to before.
I’d totally accept the change if it was done well, but it wasn’t. It was done terribly on basically every level.
Bendis seems to finally starting to get atleast 10 year-old jon's voice and personality right. Earlier, jon used to be written like clark by bendis. I don't want to jinx it. But, its still wierd for the reasons you specified. I would have kept the quirkyness, enthusiasm for pop culture/mangas and the energy.Given him an edge, when he gets serious. A grown up jon i imagined would be alot like dick grayson with a more sunnier personality than clark kent. A guy who has been around the block and knows his stuff including how to fight.
The thing is if the goal was to keep Jon relatively the same then his age-up should've never of involved the passage of several years to begin with but instead been a sudden thing brought on by a science experiment gone wrong, magic or something.
Even ignoring the Earth 3 volcano prison a child would still be a fundamentally different person after such a long passage of time.
If I had to guess why everything in that story seems to be actively working against itself its because the original plan was for Jon to come back a radically different and much darker person like the initial preview images indicated, Bendis saw all the fan backlash, panicked and started to backpeddle in hopes that it'd might remedy the situation or at least give him something to deflect critics who were insinsiting he was "ruining Jon" but kept all the same story beats leaving the whole thing a contradictory mess.
After reading a year of Bendis Young Justice and seeing him struggle to inject actual character into a cast of 8 I sincerely doubt he'll do much better with Jon and a cast of 30 but I'm sure they'll be plenty of quips so enjoy.
Now that you mention that, the solicitation cover showing angry Jon fits someone who's been tortured better, he may even start blaming his father for not finding him, not unlike Arkham Knight Jason Todd.
You may not have been on the forums when the interview happened, but one of the points Bendis was saying about Jon's age up when it initially occured was the fact that Jon is still normal despite having to endure all he went throguh in space shows how great clark and lois were at raising him up to that point. It would be very out of character for Jon to suddenly start resenting his father unless a evil character got into his head or something.
As for everyone in this thread thinking the worst about Bendis because of his past work and his writing style, think about this. He's been handling Jon for 2 years now and the most that has happened is the age up and joining the legion. And as for the legion, Jon can still come back to the present at any time, as seen with him being at his grandfather's funeral. If Bendis really wanted to ruin the chacter, he would have had plenty of time by now be the evil person you all think of him as.
To be fair, Clark and Lois were hesistant and did consider options before it happened. And it wasn't for no reason, they wanted Jon to grow and learn about the world. No parent in the world is perfect, they all just try do what they feel is best to their knowledge. And the point Bendis made in the interview is shown in the writing, I only brought up the quote from the interview because that person I responded to was assuming things based off a cover(which I assume is old anyways) and people on this forum tend to just run with taking wild theories and trashing Bendis for it, so i figured I'd nip it in the bud now before another train of bendis hate starts.
Your last sentence is worded a bit funny, are you saying we think Jon is now evil or that we think Bendis is evil? Because if it's the later your being a bit overdramtic don't you think?
No ones actually attacking Bendis as a person were just discussing what we think of his work.
But no having broken it down myself I can safely say his handling of Jon's story has been objectively quite flawed from a basic narrative perspective and have actually offered ways in which it could've been improved.
Last edited by walk; 01-14-2020 at 06:08 PM.
Heck I'll even take a stab at cleaning up the entire Jon age-up plot.
Firstly instead Jon going with Jor El for seemingly no reason and Lois and Clark inexplicitly agreeing to it create a more plausible scenario.
Jon powers have suddenly gone amok, he's having mini-Solar Flares at random times causing massive destruction and Clark is stomped on how to fix him. Jor El arrives and offers to take Jon off world where they'll have the advantage of being able to put him into the vaccum of space quickly should he have an attack while using his more vast knowledge of Kryptonian biology to come up with a cure.
Clark is of course reluctant and wishes to go but a current crisis and his responsibilities as Superman and to the League prevent him and creates nice bit of personal drama where Clark is being forced to choose between his role as a hero and that of a father. Lois again agrees to go so at least one of them will be with Jon.
Lois doesn't suddenly bow-out after a weekend but instead Jon has a particularly strong attack one day damaging the ship and its communication systems making it inhospitable to the human Lois forcing Jor El to teleport her back home. Why she doesn't immediately contact Clark once back on Earth but instead actively starts hiding from her husband? I don't know, that was a choice.
Eventually during their space travels Jor El realises that artificially aging Jon may be the solution to curing him, after a long discussion weighing the pros and cons Jon agrees and they go through with the procedure, soon after Rogol and Zod attack and Jor El teleports Jon back home to save him while he holds them off.
Once back Jon reunites with parents, explains everything and it's now its a save Jor El mission (none of that cringy "Grandpa crazy" noise) and everything more or less plays out the same from there.
There Lois and Clark actually remain believable good parents, you have your 17 year old Jon with the same personality and in my scenario Jon and Lois actually bonded and grew close with Jor El during their travels so there more of sense of loss when he dies in the end.
Last edited by walk; 01-14-2020 at 06:54 PM.
While I wouldn't be overly thrilled, it works far better as a narrative and the characters far less OOC (though it still leaves the question of Jor-El in the first place, and Lois still looks like the cheating wife/bad mother for not telling Clark). And Jon would be a kid stuck in a teens body, leaving room to undo the age-up without much issue (found a way to stop the flares, making him no longer in danger of blowing up).
There was nothing, literally nothing, Jon could have or did learn from Jor-El that he wasn't already in the process of learning from Clark (who's already taken the boy out on trips into space). Given everything they knew about Jor-El prior to this (which was next to nothing, aside from his stint as Mr. Oz) there should have been no hesitation at all. It should have been a flat out "No. Get out of my house". If Jon wants to spend the summer having adventures in space, it should have been with people that his parents know and trust. Like any of the five or six Green Lanterns that serve on the League.
Jor-El may have been Clark's father but at that point, he was nothing but a dangerous stranger to them and yet they still trusted him with their child. And low behold, several terrible things ended up happening to said child as a result.
There's not enough "growth" in the world that justifies letting your ten year old go into space with a man who's been unstable since the day you met him. Not even in the case of superhero parents. He was a ten year old boy who's only been a hero for about a year. The hell did he need to go on a trip to find himself for? Because the Titans rejected him (for reasons they explained were not his fault)? Because he had some deep seeded fear of not living up to his Dad's legacy? Oh fucking well. Neither of those are good enough reasons them to do what they did to him. This was not one of those "tough decisions every parent has to make". It goes beyond them not being perfect parents. This was just reckless endangerment for no reason. Even more so than letting him be a hero in the first place. At least with that, he usually always had his Dad with him.
The "growth" bullshit was just a weak excuse Bendis gave because he, for some reason, couldn't think of any other way for Jon to be put in that situation. Even though there are a million other scenarios that wouldn't make Lois and Clark look even more neglectful and uncaring than Bruce Wayne. At the end of the day, this will always feel like Bendis just wanted to have his cake and eat it too by both keeping Jon around as the poster boy for his new project, while taking the burden of parenthood off of Lois and Clark. This wasn't done with care or respect for any of these characters.
It's just like how he handled Civil War II and Iceman's coming out. For some reason, he can't do things unless they involve all parties acting in the absolute dumbest and out of character ways possible.
Last edited by Blue22; 01-14-2020 at 07:18 PM.
Actually, i had complained then about the lack of repercussions. I wanted jon to atleast leave his parents because of ptsd. Ultraman and ultrawoman looks like his parents. Not to mention that, the parents were irresponsible and lead to jon's suffering. I saw comicstorian channel summing it up as lois being nothing but a story hungry reporter who would risk both her husband and child. If that's the general perception of the characters then, no bendis hasn't portrayed them as great parents. It's the zack snyder conundrum.
That could have been interesting,and actually I forgot Lois was initially with Jon when he was with Jor-El. Didn't she see he was handling things and better suited for space travel without her, because she would have been a hinderance? And obviously, she thought Jor El was trust worthy enough at that point or she wouldn't have done it.
But I digress, this is just how I am taking the story and taking what Bendis is saying. If others choose to just stay annoyed and just keep wishing for kid Jon to come back, more power to you!