How would you fix Jon's timeline?

[Sacred Knight]

Outside of erasing him as is and then redoing the whole thing as an actual baby born in the present day, there is no fix. Any method of retconning his existence into the past of the general post-Crisis continuity where he never existed will never be clean. So either of the OP's options have the same amount of effect, which is essentially none at all. Those would produce the same amount of lack of sense as the current status quo does.

[bat39]

Outside of erasing him as is and then redoing the whole thing as an actual baby born in the present day, there is no fix. Any method of retconning his existence into the past of the general post-Crisis continuity where he never existed will never be clean. So either of the OP's options have the same amount of effect, which is essentially none at all. Those would produce the same amount of lack of sense as the current status quo does.

The one solution that can work is making it a 20 year timeline (which I assumed it was before this JSA # 1 preview)

If the early Post-COIE era happened over 10 years ago, and Jon was born during that time, then everything more or less works. Of course, that means that Tim's generation is in their early 20's, Dick's generation is in their early 30's and Bruce's generation is in their early-to-mid 40's.

A 13 year timeline makes things almost completely unworkable, because it would mean squeezing Clark's entire pre-marriage life into a span of 2 years at most, and when it comes to the larger DCU that means the entirety of the Silver Age, Bronze Age, and early Modern Age. For Superman, maybe that's not such a big deal, but for Batman that means everything from his debut up till Tim becomes Robin!

[manwhohaseverything]

Have him meet superboy prime and make them best friends..Or better yet make them a couple and have them punch all the superfakes with reality warping punches

[Jackalope89]

Have him meet superboy prime and make them best friends..Or better yet make them a couple and have them punch all the superfakes with reality warping punches

So, they would reality punch each other out of existence? Fine by me. Then realJon comes back! Everyone wins!

[manwhohaseverything]

So, they would reality punch each other out of existence? Fine by me. Then realJon comes back! Everyone wins!

Yes!!Everyone lives happily everafter!!.the end...Story closed..Time to find something else to read.As The valiant clark kent of the real world(prime) decides to hit the books to learn and later on earn a living instead of wasting time.

[CaptainUniverse]

Yes!!Everyone lives happily everafter!!.the end...Story closed..Time to find something else to read.As The valiant clark kent of the real world(prime) decides to hit the books to learn and later on earn a living instead of wasting time.

Isn't that what he (Prime) essentially chose at the end of Secret Origin after seeing that vision of him and Laurie as parents?

[SuperX]

Except for that last part. Because it doesn't. Been enough crossovers to show that.
The rest though? Yes.

Which last part? He could easily be somewhere where he ages rapidly,we have seen plenty of Sci fi thst shows thst.

I think everything makes.sense easily,IF you decide to make it make sense to you imo

[Jackalope89]

Which last part? He could easily be somewhere where he ages rapidly,we have seen plenty of Sci fi thst shows thst.

I think everything makes.sense easily,IF you decide to make it make sense to you imo

The "Earth 3 operates at a different time then the main earth" thing.

[Factor]

The Earth-3 thing should be forgotten. How can someone be tortured on a volcano for 5 years by the evil version of their father and barely show any psychological effects? Plus it makes the world’s greatest hero an incompetent if he let something like that happen to his own son.
Whatever DC writers do next with Jon, that’s the one thing they should absolutely fix.

[SuperX]

The Earth-3 thing should be forgotten. How can someone be tortured on a volcano for 5 years by the evil version of their father and barely show any psychological effects? Plus it makes the world’s greatest hero an incompetent if he let something like that happen to his own son.
Whatever DC writers do next with Jon, that’s the one thing they should absolutely fix.

I agree with this 100% this should be top priority if they want to fix that problem

[magha_regulus]

I don't think anyone will like this option but it's the one I like best and think makes the most sense. Simply acknowledge everything that actually happened. Jon is indeed an anomaly and exists entirely because of an anomaly as his origins are in the convergence event. Acknowledging his anomalous nature makes him unique and wouldn't throw anything away.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I say stick to what happened in the comics as much as possible and squint at the details a bit. Shortly after Jon's birth, there was an attack on time that messed with everyone's history, Lois & Clark were thrown back in time a decade or so. They didn't want to further mess with history, so they moved to Hamilton and layed low while raising little Jon in obscurity. Lois continued writing but as the mysterious Author X and Clark worked the farm (and secretly helping out as beared, black suited Superman).

Given how crazy the lives of the Daily Planet's star reporters generally are, I can't imagine them being thrown back in time would arouse any suspicions. I mean, that's tame compared to the crazy shenanigans that Jimmy gets involved with on a daily basis.

[Jon Clark]

Take a little from Bored's idea and a little from magha_regulus' idea and a little rewrite of the pre-Flashpoint/New 52 era.

We know Infinite Crisis happened in some manner. So what if Clark never regained his powers at the end of One Year Later. Instead the New 52 Superman somehow crossed into Prime Earth's history at that point. Just fudge a few details so there is only one Lois and have the main timeline Clark fill the Jonathan Carroll role (though the New 52 guy actually uses that name). Maybe tie in the Red/Blue stuff so that 52 is simply the same Clark and both co-existed allowing 20 years of stories to happen split between one Superman in a single decade.

[Hoodj]

Id rather just delete Jon out of existence all together, g
he adds nothing to the Superman or DC comics in general, those that want him to be a young kid again are ignorantly admitting that the Superman books need to rip off Batman(and Robin by nature) and the young hero becoming the mentor style to become relevant since Batman is by concept a better constructed world and hero story than Supermans.

[Dataweaver]

I say stick to what happened in the comics as much as possible and squint at the details a bit. Shortly after Jon's birth, there was an attack on time that messed with everyone's history, Lois & Clark were thrown back in time a decade or so. They didn't want to further mess with history, so they moved to Hamilton and layed low while raising little Jon in obscurity. Lois continued writing but as the mysterious Author X and Clark worked the farm (and secretly helping out as beared, black suited Superman).

Given how crazy the lives of the Daily Planet's star reporters generally are, I can't imagine them being thrown back in time would arouse any suspicions. I mean, that's tame compared to the crazy shenanigans that Jimmy gets involved with on a daily basis.

This is essentially the first option I presented: except that I'd keep Convergence as the “attack on time” that threw Lois & Clark back in time; and the only squinting that needs to be done is to say that they landed on Earth-52 rather than Earth-0, and returned to Earth-0 at the end of Superman Reborn.

Frankly, the only thing it doesn't address is what happened on Earth 0 while they were away. That's a surprisingly difficult matter to address, by the way: for instance, Tim Drake went into that gap as the 19-going-on-20 solo hero Red Robin, who was gaining growing acceptance in the superhero community in his own right due to having been instrumental in Bruce Wayne's return; and after the gap, he was sixteen or seventeen, and the second-in-command of the Gotham Knights (or had been, until he was presumed dead).

Just to pick one example of apparently impossible changes that took place over the, what, one or two years that passed?

But that's a whole separate can of worms.

As for Jon's later history: would there be a problem with saying that, instead of being trapped on Earth 3 for five years or so, he simply spent an additional five years in the 31st century, growing up with Bendis' Legion? (Though I suspect that Johns might do something like saying that Bendis' Legion is actually the Legion of Earth 3…)