How would you fix Jon's timeline?

[Dataweaver]

DC already tried getting rid of the marriage; that was a key element of the New 52 version of Superman.

[CaptainUniverse]

DC already tried getting rid of the marriage; that was a key element of the New 52 version of Superman.

I mean...yeah, but I knew that unlike at Marvel that particular status quo wasn't going to stick around for long. It was just a matter of time before it came back and it did with a kid no less!

[Dataweaver]

It wasn't a forgone conclusion. The disappearance of the marriage was supposed to be the new status quo going forward. The difference was that Quesada was able to stick to his guns with the removal of Spider-Man's marriage, whereas Didio wasn't able to hold the line. The return of Lois and Clark in 2016 was more akin to Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows; it still wasn't the mainstream Earth's Superman and Lois; and he didn't become the mainstream Earth's Superman again until a year later when Didio briefly lost control and Johns implemented Rebirth.

[bat39]

Being born after the wedding puts his birth-year as somewhere in the late 90's, which puts the YJ generation squarely in their mid-20's (and getting DC to admit that Tim is no longer a teenager makes pulling teeth look breezy).

I think the simple solution is to just retcon the when he was born. If Jon is three years younger than Damian, then that would mean he was born sometime around the original crisis, which would at least fix the age-related issues that Jon causes for the rest of the DCU.

Sidenote, but I have absolutely no idea what Johns was smoking with that "thirteen years ago" malarkey. You would think that with all the headache everyone went through with Flashpoint that we could all agree that compressed timelines don't work. Guess not?

While I personally prefer a 20-year timeline, I've recently started to, uh, 'creatively interpret' Johns' timeline from JSA # 1. My theory now is that the '13 years ago' wasn't at the start of Batman's career, despite Johns' using a panel from Year One (which, let's face it...was basically just Selina wearing her original Catwoman suit and jumping out a window)...it was more like Year Four. Batman actually stared out 16 years ago and is currently 41 (having been orphaned at age 10, 31 years ago).

Superman might have started out 16 years ago too, or maybe a bit earlier. Let's go with 16 for now.

Now under this timeline, things kinda work. Jon is born about 11 years ago i.e. 5 years into Superman's career - a reasonable enough amount of time. Of course, it would mean that the Death of Superman happened 12 years ago under very different circumstances from what was published. The way I see it, Dick would have still been Robin in his mid-teens, along with the other original Teen Titans, and it'd basically have been sometime in the Silver Age/Bronze Age for the wider DCU. Which I guess is...okay (IIRC, the League and the wider DCU didn't play the biggest role in the Death of Superman event). It creates problems for two characters I guess - Hal Jordan (since the Cyborg-Superman destroyed Coast City, causing him to become Parallax) and Kon (who's now closer to Dick's age than to Tim's). But these are not totally insurmountable - maybe Cyborg-Superman was around for a while and destroyed Coast City a few years later, and Kon, being a clone, aged slower and mentally matured slower as well and still looked and acted like he was in his early teens during the early YJ days.

[Dataweaver]

Again, why the insistence of having Jon born after Doomsday? The Death of Superman story still works with him being married to Lois and them having a young son; in many ways, that particular retcon would make his death more impactful.

If we go with a 16-year timeline, and the idea that Jon was nine when grampa took him on a road-trip, that still works with the marriage being Year Six and Jon's birth being Year Seven.

And there's nothing saying Superman's debut in Metropolis couldn't have been a few years before Batman's debut in Gotham.

[Dagothoth]

It wasn't a forgone conclusion. The disappearance of the marriage was supposed to be the new status quo going forward. The difference was that Quesada was able to stick to his guns with the removal of Spider-Man's marriage, whereas Didio wasn't able to hold the line. The return of Lois and Clark in 2016 was more akin to Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows; it still wasn't the mainstream Earth's Superman and Lois; and he didn't become the mainstream Earth's Superman again until a year later when Didio briefly lost control and Johns implemented Rebirth.

The difference isn’t because of quesada

It was because Spider-Man comics have never suffered a horrifiying decline in sales due to the erasure of the marriage

Whereas Superman’s sales became even lower than it was before the reboot

Made all the more apparent when Bendis’s attempt to distance clark from lois ended up destroying basically all of the good will of rebirth, hence why basically everything Bendis has done with this franchise is being flushed down the toilet

DC learned a harsh but true lesson


The marriage is the beginning and the end for this franchise in a way that MJ and Peter are not

quesada would have been fired if Spider-Man sales had declined as badly as Superman had

Mayday Parker would be in the main continuity by now

[Dataweaver]

Made all the more apparent when Bendis’s attempt to distance clark from lois ended up destroying basically all of the good will of rebirth, hence why basically everything Bendis has done with this franchise is being flushed down the toilet

I'll believe that when Jon reverts to being a nine year old boy. Like it or not, “Superman, Son of Kal-El” is a Bendis legacy that's likely to stick around.

quesada would have been fired if Spider-Man sales had declined as badly as Superman had

Mayday Parker would be in the main continuity by now

Trying to picture how that would have worked…

[bat39]

Again, why the insistence of having Jon born after Doomsday? The Death of Superman story still works with him being married to Lois and them having a young son; in many ways, that particular retcon would make his death more impactful.

If we go with a 16-year timeline, and the idea that Jon was nine when grampa took him on a road-trip, that still works with the marriage being Year Six and Jon's birth being Year Seven.

And there's nothing saying Superman's debut in Metropolis couldn't have been a few years before Batman's debut in Gotham.

I dunno...it feels that that's the natural order of things as far as the Superman timeline is concerned.

Superman dying and returning felt like, in many ways, the first big earth-shattering event in his life. Prior to that, his history was pretty much just some variation of the classic status quo. But the death and return felt like big things can change in the status quo of this character, and the marriage followed soon after and changed things forever.

Also, the marriage and Jon being born happening after Doomsday feels more natural from the point of view of the Superman timeline than those things happening before...if we prioritize Superman's history. The problem is more with the rest of the DCU - Cyborg-Superman's impact on Hal Jordan's story, for instance, or Kon's age relative to the YJ generation. And I feel its easier to tweak the timeline to deal with those (Cyborg-Superman was around a few years and then destroyed Coast City, Kon aged slower and lay low a few years or maybe was in status) than to overhaul a fairly well-established chain of events for the Superman timeline.

If we are going to compress timelines and change some details, I'd rather we change small details than big ones. Take Damian for instance. Okay, Bruce met Talia and conceived Damian in Year Two or Three instead of Year Seven or Eight is a much smaller change than something like Bruce meeting Talia before he became Batman. Likewise, Doomsday happening while Dick was still Robin is a smaller change than Superman being married and having a kid when he died.

[magha_regulus]

Its just really unfortunate that we didn't get to see Jon come into existence naturally and develop as a character over time. It would've been so much better if we could've seen the stories of Lois being pregnant, his birth, etc. in real-time instead of having him be shoehorned into everything. They skipped years of stories. I really don't think there's a way to fix the timeline of a character like that without completely retconning the whole universe. That's part of why I think Jon being an anomaly and acknowledging that his timeline is a disaster due to cosmic forces beyond his control is the best route. Speaking of anomalous Jon Kents; I'd love to see the New 52 Jon Kent become a hypertime enemy of his (the one the New 52 Superboy was a clone of.

I do think that they'll eventually try to clean up the timeline but I think it'll make things way messier. I can definitely see some of these scenarios coming to pass in the future.

[SuperX]

Just ignore the separate halves of Superman,ignore the merging.
One superman always
Died
Camelback and married lois
Had Jon
Went off with grandpa
Got pulled into a black hole
Tortured by ultraman
1 or both of those things warped time,and had him live it all,just like it was shown on the page
Came back a few weeks later DCU time,and older.

Thst is to damn simple,why it's hard for ppl to grasp blows my mind,and should tell you why those same ppl shouldn't be running DC

[Dagothoth]

I'll believe that when Jon reverts to being a nine year old boy. Like it or not, “Superman, Son of Kal-El” is a Bendis legacy that's likely to stick around.


Trying to picture how that would have worked…

Secret wars was the best time to do it

Basically mayday Parker and her parents are welded into the universe of 616…with the backstory being that after the clone saga MJ and Peter got split into two different people

One version remained married and raised mayday after the events of the clone saga

While the other version is the one that we saw throughout the 2000s

The other versions are given the boot while mayday and her parents essentially take over from the 2000s MJ and Peter

Mayday is the young sister figure to miles who is also welded into 616

[DABellWrites]

24 year sliding time scale seems like the best solution for DC

It means that dick Grayson is 32/36 years old as he debuted as Robin either as an 8 year old or a 12 year old

It's not. It's the worst solution, look at Marvel.

[Factor]

It's not. It's the worst solution, look at Marvel.

What do you mean? Marvel’s continuity is in a MUCH better place than DC’s because they never had universe-wide reboots. Sure, there are things like Hickman’s Secret Wars, but it didn’t fundamentally change anything.

[Adekis]

I have a few ideas for Jon. One is to make it so that he's totally immune to timeline revisions. He will always remember his life exactly as it was originally published. He will remember Hamilton County no matter how much his parents remember him growing up in Metropolis, he will remember seeing this other Superman, who was not his father, on television, no matter how long there has been no evidence for such a thing, because it was retconned. Jon Samuel Kent is the real version of that bizarre Mandela Effect conspiracy theory about timelines shifting around people.

Is it better? Maybe not. It's certainly not simpler than any other explanation. But I like how comic-booky it is.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I have a few ideas for Jon. One is to make it so that he's totally immune to timeline revisions. He will always remember his life exactly as it was originally published. He will remember Hamilton County no matter how much his parents remember him growing up in Metropolis, he will remember seeing this other Superman, who was not his father, on television, no matter how long there has been no evidence for such a thing, because it was retconned. Jon Samuel Kent is the real version of that bizarre Mandela Effect conspiracy theory about timelines shifting around people.

Is it better? Maybe not. It's certainly not simpler than any other explanation. But I like how comic-booky it is.

I'd go even further and have Lois & Clark be aware of all the time shenanigans their lives have gone through now. After decades of having their histories revised, erased, being split in two, lost in time, and everything else, they've settled into the fact that their lives are insane and just go with it.

Clark knows his parents have been dead, and they've been alive, and, for the moment, he's just happy to enjoy the time he's got with them now that the ever-shifting sands of his twisty-turny personal hourglass have brought them back to life again.

Likewise, Lois is well-aware that she's been around, in some form or another, since 1938 and that her marriage to Clark has been erased multiple times. She takes nothing for granted because she knows it can all be taken away again with the arrival of each new cosmic nutjob who wants to press the temporal reset button.