Action Comics#1030 Discussion and Spoilers

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I enjoyed this issue more than any of the previous ones so far. Hopefully, they'll keep up this level of quality.

[lotchj]

Their depowering Clark again!! Just so his son can take his place as superman BOO!!! I'll make it a point to drop all of superman comics. Their is only one Superman Clark Kent, with all of his powers!! These are dark days, destroying superman.

[Kuwagaton]

The art is really nice, I can see them keeping Sampere as long as he's willing. Unfortunately I think that this is the most apathetic I have been in regards to Clark's character since New Krypton. Even though I didn't like some of the takes during Truth or through the 52 Superman volume in general, I appreciate the character being written as to lead the story. Versus Jon's dad who says "language" as a shorthand for being antiquated.

The current status quo is a little weird but I missed the last 7 months or so of Bendis so I guess that's on me. Maybe there was something that might make Warworld more compelling than another Superman-slave uprising, but I guess I'll have to keep reading to see it.

[Superlad93]

Best (written and drawn) single issue of mainstream Superman comics in a long while. No apologies or retractions.

PKJ is a master at worldbuilding to the point where something about how this was written just made the whole Superman world feel a bit more "lived in" than it normally does. His exposition of anything never insults your intelligence because he treats it like the unwritten backstory of a novel rather than the back issues you just haven't read.

But maybe even better than that is his allocation of page time. These are better described as well placed vignettes with their own rising and falling action. And shockingly enough each section both does great character work AND set up (for things in this issue and beyond). It's broken down by Warworld, Clark's power crisis, Jon and Damian, Lois in Kandor, and escaped Warworld ship that is also a converging of ALL those threads! LITERALLY ALL THOSE THREADS in what you'd imagine should just be an battle with ships. I sat there slack jawed as I realized it all.

I'm so impressed by this book that I'm not even going to bring up how I was totally right about the escaped likely-half-Kryptonians/Kryptonian-off-shoots. I don't even want to bring up the potential character stuff that seems to be foreshadowed with Jon being most worried about the story of how Clark dies and is taken away by Kryptonians...and now two apparent Kryptonians show up. Is he just spending the whole next issues going "nonononononononono!!!!"?

I'm just so damn pleased with this book and the potential of this era of books.

[raidensix]

Jon being potentially more powerful than Clark never makes sense to me. He's a kryptonian-human hybrid.

[Sacred Knight]

I've felt from the beginning its mostly taking from Dragon Ball lore. Back in the day before the movement to put Goku and Vegeta well back in the center of things, they had it canon that Saiyan/human hybrids actually had the potential to be more powerful for whatever reason, because they had been spending the bulk of Z building up Gohan to be the most powerful.

Although I do remember being linked quite some time ago to some actual scientific study in regards to hybrids in regards to being "better" so to speak than the purebred. But that was quite some time ago and I can't remember the details of the study at all.

[Superlad93]

You might be thinking of a study on hybrid vigor?

That all said, there's a tweet where PKJ is directly asked about why Jon is so powerful compared to his father and Kara, and if it's because he's a hybrid. PKJ said that "seems" to be the reason why, but they don't know for sure yet. The implication being that there's an reason outside of his hybrid nature.

Clearly there's something because House of El shows us Superman's other son, The Red King, who was told by his mother that he'd be more powerful than Clark when he came back, but Clark pretty quickly hands him his ass and tells him that she was wrong. Chances are she was in the market to make another Jon Kent, but simply being a hybrid doesn't seem to equal that X factor that makes Jon stronger than Clark or Kara on their best days.

[Sacred Knight]

That might of been it, yeah, but this was at least a few years ago so its hard to remember much anything else.

But I'm with you that if there's a reason outside hybrid nature, then they're probably going to play with the idea that he's "unnatural". They could go about that any number of ways, from retconning in some new twist to his conception, or even to forgo Superman Reborn and reinstate his original origin on Telos.

[Superlad93]

PKJ has also teased that in issues 31 and 32 Jon's going to do something pretty ridiculous in terms of powers, so we may get some sort of clue to the nature then.

Jon's powers may be cosmic in nature? I've said it before, but it's worth saying again, it's so fascinating to be full on hitting the Wally West button with the Superman IP. It's especially interesting in the era of the most powerful versions of some of Marvel's characters. Thor is king, has the Thor Force, is the son of the Phoenix, and has the power cosmic. Hulk is functionally immortal and linked to the embodiment of death. The X-Men are functionally immortal and the new top of the food chain on Earth.

[kalai]

I've felt from the beginning its mostly taking from Dragon Ball lore. Back in the day before the movement to put Goku and Vegeta well back in the center of things, they had it canon that Saiyan/human hybrids actually had the potential to be more powerful for whatever reason, because they had been spending the bulk of Z building up Gohan to be the most powerful.

Although I do remember being linked quite some time ago to some actual scientific study in regards to hybrids in regards to being "better" so to speak than the purebred. But that was quite some time ago and I can't remember the details of the study at all.

I guess it comes down to how rare hybrids are,
Kryptonians are different from Virtrumites in that it's harder to reproduce I think.
So a hybrid might be really powerful, so that they can survive.
Gohan's potential power was always huge during DragonBall, maybe he just didn't work hard enough,
since he doesn't really train that much and want to be normal person.

[Vordan]

It’s just part of the Humans Are Special trope where anything mixed with a human is typically MORE powerful somehow.

[kalai]

It’s just part of the Humans Are Special trope where anything mixed with a human is typically MORE powerful somehow.

DC humans are special though, Morrison basically said humans would be the new gods of Fifth World, and they would have Superman like power as shown in JLA.
Scott Snyder said humans are some kind of ancient gods when they were merged with martians, the giants on the source wall were basically them.
So maybe it makes sense in a way, lol.

[HsssH]

Scott Snyder said humans are some kind of ancient gods when they were merged with martians, the giants on the source wall were basically them.

What the ****?

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I assume the idea with Jon being more powerful is that he would have the advantages of both species, but without the weaknesses. In other words, Jon could theoretically be able to stay powered up under a red sun or be more resistant to Kryptonite.

[rpmaluki]

I assume the idea with Jon being more powerful is that he would have the advantages of both species, but without the weaknesses. In other words, Jon could theoretically be able to stay powered up under a red sun or be more resistant to Kryptonite.

I would expect that to be the case but I think we've already seen him under these effects before Bendis in Tomasi's Super Sons.