How to restore Jor-El from the Circle mess?

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

The Saga of the Super-Dads! World's Farthest*!

*because both fathers and come from far away

The World's Worst Father's would work better as a tagline.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I'd prefer they take the Marvel approach of simply never mentioning it again, but I would also be happy with a single line of dialogue handwaving him away as the Jor-El of the Flashpoint continuity, which makes perfect sense.

[HsssH]

I think he may have been disappointed with the tpb sales on Rebirth, which lead to the ouster of Jurgens/Tomasi on the Superbooks.

Back then I was still following sales as much as one ould with limited data avaialble and I remember few blogs tracking TPB sales saying that:

1. Rebirth killed New 52 TPB sales because they started to look outdated and irrelevent.
2. Despite that, asides of few exceptions, Rebirth TPBs still sold less than New 52's. This was very weird since monthlies were doing fine.

Could this have been one of the major motives behind dropping Rebirth in general, not only Tomasi/Jurgens?

[dornwolf]

The World's Worst Father's would work better as a tagline.

Kind of how I viewed it. I chance to have these two rolling as villains for while. No worse than the Batman who laughed

[DABellWrites]

The storyline isn't relevant to Superman anymore and most Superman readers just want new stories. Ignore it.

[DABellWrites]

Back then I was still following sales as much as one ould with limited data avaialble and I remember few blogs tracking TPB sales saying that:

1. Rebirth killed New 52 TPB sales because they started to look outdated and irrelevent.
2. Despite that, asides of few exceptions, Rebirth TPBs still sold less than New 52's. This was very weird since monthlies were doing fine.

Could this have been one of the major motives behind dropping Rebirth in general, not only Tomasi/Jurgens?

Rebrith was more pumped up hype and double shipping. Once the hype died, Rebirth slide into mid-tier sales territories with Batman being the only monthly hitting six figures. DC dropped the Rebirth brand in 2017, I don't think so. I believe Didio genuinely thought Bendis coming over to DC was going to be a big thing for Superman. Turns out, most Superman readers were fine with Tomasi, Jurgens, and kid Jon.

[Bruce Wayne]

Yes it lines up with what we understand of his thinking that creating disruption like with 5G and New 52 will boost sales. I think he has said that he believes that DC should do creative disruption/commotion every 5 years like for example IC-New 52 was around 5 years or New 52- Rebirth. So Rebirth was probably planned to last for 5 years, which is probably how Gleason/Tomasi & King thought they could get a 100 issue run (with double shipping) with the year 5 being the transition period, but he jumped the gun and got impatient and tried to do 5G earlier because sales weren't up to expectations.

[TheKryptonMan]

Yes it lines up with what we understand of his thinking that creating disruption like with 5G and New 52 will boost sales. I think he has said that he believes that DC should do creative disruption/commotion every 5 years like for example IC-New 52 was around 5 years or New 52- Rebirth. So Rebirth was probably planned to last for 5 years, which is probably how Gleason/Tomasi & King thought they could get a 100 issue run (with double shipping) with the year 5 being the transition period, but he jumped the gun and got impatient and tried to do 5G earlier because sales weren't up to expectations.

I'm one of the very few that would have liked to see Jurgens plan for Jor-El .
Also really important is what were King's original plans for his 100-105 issue run on Batman ?
I didn't like Jon going on that trip with his grandfather and being aged up .
But now I'm used to Jon being the age he is , and looking forward to his new powers .
I've always thought that Jon shouldn't be like his father, because Jon is 50% Kryptonian and 50% human ( Earth ) . So his powers should be different.
I don't like that Jor-El turned out to be a real bad guy.
But at the same time it would be cool to have him around once in a while , much like Nathaniel Richards finds a way to show up in FF4 .

[HsssH]

To me this 5 years thing sound a bit like trying to rationalize why something failed than a real thing. It is not like New 52's sales collapsed one day for no reason, we can easily trace it down to Convergence, DCYou and many other smaller decisions. Likewise, IC/One Year Later fits Didio's timeframe now, but didn't he originally want to reboot after Final Crisis? Would he then have suggested blowing things up every 3 years?

[exile001]

I don't actually have a problem with Bendis doing the "crazy grandpa who shouldn't still be driving takes the boy on a summer road trip and they get in a car accident" story. Everybody bitches and whines about that story (mostly because it ages up Jon) but when you boil it all down, that's all it was; grandpa and boy get in a wreck. It's just Morrison's "real life cranked up to 11" approach, only with really bad execution.

I legit thought/think Bendis was riffing on the whole Rick and Morty phenomena of the time. Not sure if he planned to run a series showing the hole thing or not, but it could have been fun.

Also really important is what were King's original plans for his 100-105 issue run on Batman ?

City of Bane was going to be a little later and longer, I believe. Obviously Bruce and Selina would have actually been married. King wanted to do some aftermath.

After leaving, King mentioned that his final issues would have been a Bruce/Selina love story but I think that was just him being professional. He was previously extremely adamant that his vision was 100 issues, even stating that the Heroes in Crisis fillers Williamson did were not part of his 100 issues (so he'd have left at 105 after writing exactly 100 issues).

[DABellWrites]

To me this 5 years thing sound a bit like trying to rationalize why something failed than a real thing. It is not like New 52's sales collapsed one day for no reason, we can easily trace it down to Convergence, DCYou and many other smaller decisions. Likewise, IC/One Year Later fits Didio's timeframe now, but didn't he originally want to reboot after Final Crisis? Would he then have suggested blowing things up every 3 years?

He wanted to reboot continuity in Infinity Crisis, didn't get his way. Then in Final Crisis, didn't get his way. He tried to make Earth One into DC's Ultimate universe, didn't get his way. He got Flashpoint because he was in charge. Dan Didio strongly believes to get new fans, continuity had to go back to square one.

Yes it lines up with what we understand of his thinking that creating disruption like with 5G and New 52 will boost sales. I think he has said that he believes that DC should do creative disruption/commotion every 5 years like for example IC-New 52 was around 5 years or New 52- Rebirth. So Rebirth was probably planned to last for 5 years, which is probably how Gleason/Tomasi & King thought they could get a 100 issue run (with double shipping) with the year 5 being the transition period, but he jumped the gun and got impatient and tried to do 5G earlier because sales weren't up to expectations.

Hm, interesting. I always wondered why his comment about five years had stood out more than anything in an interview I watched. In the long run, his idea hadn't done any good since it's about disrupting continuity for a while before re-setting the status quo; there is no longer any long term value in DC Comics stories because of this. Now, to tie this into Jor-El, while I don't know the behind the scenes or what actually happened, I get the feeling, Jor-El was picked to solely because they knew it was controversial. Batman had the Thomas Wayne thing going on, so it really lines up. Now there are Superman fans who are soured on Jor because of his short-term philosophy and shock value. Comics, in my opinion, works better long-term with an illusion of progress.

[Bruce Wayne]

Hm, interesting. I always wondered why his comment about five years had stood out more than anything in an interview I watched. In the long run, his idea hadn't done any good since it's about disrupting continuity for a while before re-setting the status quo; there is no longer any long term value in DC

That's precisely how he views the DCU imo. Again he probably views comics as more of disposable product and each run or book as a new iteration of a product (like how you can have multiple Batman/Superman shows or iterations of Ben 10). I think his counterparts at Marvel had similar ideas. Again it just showcases the increased corporate controls over comics as the suits sought to profit off the IP with movies/cartoons/merchandising. Everything to them is short term. Spiking the sales with a reboot that fizzles is just one example of this type of corporate thinking. Look at how long New 52 lasted:
< 5 years before he crashed the sales and then went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and then DC claimed it was actually the old DCU.

The people that ran the previous iteration of Marvel/DC like Levitz (and all the other people under Kahn) or Shooter or Grunewald were fans who broke into the business. I think it's pretty clear due to their background, they were interested in long term fan investment in the product like how they got into comics so you had things like emphasis on continuity and long form storytelling with writers having long runs on that book and long term investment in their shared universe. That pretty much runs counter to the short term thinking that the post-2000s guys have. Even then Marvel still had more long term stability on their books than a whole lot of DC under the post-Levitz leadership. Look at how many Superman writers we had on those books since the mid-2000s.

I'm one of the very few that would have liked to see Jurgens plan for Jor-El .
Also really important is what were King's original plans for his 100-105 issue run on Batman ?

Bruce and Selina would marry in the end: no fakeout. He basically said that he divided his run into four chunks and the end of the last chunk would be where stuff starts improving for Bruce, but of course they nuked it for 5G.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ-DF-aMCJQ

[Thor-Ul]

The storyline isn't relevant to Superman anymore and most Superman readers just want new stories. Ignore it.

I'd prefer they take the Marvel approach of simply never mentioning it again, but I would also be happy with a single line of dialogue handwaving him away as the Jor-El of the Flashpoint continuity, which makes perfect sense.

Ignore the story would be the best option, I concede. Handwaved to oblivion is what it deserves, for sure. But with Jon Kent facing Ultraman, you understand than that story is going to be revisited also, because have the same time done. It is part of the package on how Jon ended in earth 3. So I suppose than in someway is going to be refered there.

[HsssH]

Taylor retconned Jon being born during convergence event so he might retcon how he got to Earth-3 as well.

[Agent Z]

I'd prefer they take the Marvel approach of simply never mentioning it again

As would I.