Action Comics September 2017 Solicits

[Robotman]

I had pretty much lost interest in Mr. Oz's identity as it had been dragged out so long and all signs pointed to him being Ozymandias. It seems almost like DC changed their mind a few times regarding his true identity. Don't know what Johns' original plan was as his Oz spoke as if he knew Superman as a child and taught him life lessons. the obvious choice there was Jonathan Kent. But of course there had to be a catch. Then with Rebirth and the Watchmen crossover everyone started to think that he was Adrian Veidt. But if it's someone who's identity will be devastating to Superman it sounds like it's not Ozymandias. That revelation has actually reignited my interest in this storyline. Now I'm hoping its future Jon. A son can teach his father life lessons so his early dialogue could still be relevant in some way.

[stephtanner]

Holy crap! A Tim Drake mention at last. It feels like he's been rotting away in Oz's prison forever. I hope this signals Kon's return as well.

As for Oz, I suck at guessing identities so all I have to say is that the candidates mentioned in this thread so far are intriguing. It's a little amusing that 3 of them are named Jonathan.

[SanityOrMadness]

I don't think Oz will be Kal-L or even Superboy Prime, because as far as we know, Identity Crisis may never have happened or happened the same way as it did pre-Flashpoint.

We know it didn't - it was one of the flashes of 'lost history' in The Button, along with the Silver Age JLofA origin.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

I'd be curious if it was John Kent Sr, come back from the dead in a misguided attempt to help his son.

It could still be an older John Kent II but i thought a revived John Kent I would challenge clark as a father.

[DragonPiece]

If it is pa Kent, that does make sense why they would keep the parents new 52 death in continuity as well as highlight the fact that the Ulysees story is still in continuity.

[Lvenger]

If it turns out to be Pa Kent or Jonathan Lane Kent, you guys must be turning into savants.

[SanityOrMadness]

The chances of it being Jon Lane Kent are near-zero. N52-exclusive stuff is being played down, they're pretending Kon doesn't exist for the moment and it was from a period where the book was near cancellation (and then actually cancelled), so there's little to no collective memory of it.

Evil Future Jon Sam Kent is far more plausible, since that would tie into the current setup, but I still wouldn't exactly put money on it.

[Sacred Knight]

After thinking it over I like Superlad's idea, that this is Jon, but that he's doing what he's doing upon instruction and tutelage by Ozymandias himself hence the visual cues like the logo and similar name.

[Superlad93]

I just thought of something that may actually bolster the Jon is Oz theory held by some of us.

The big strike against Jon being Oz is that he says this



This leads people to think that Jon being a child while Clark is his father couldn't taught his father these inherently Superman-y things. However, I feel like people are forgetting that Oz was speaking of the New 52 Superman pre-Reborn who was in fact NOT his father in a sense.

Oz has apparently been the architect of quite a bit of the New 52 Superman's life in the sense that he's moved around events and people in order to get a very specific result/Superman. He explains as much to Mxy.



More importantly, this conversation takes place before Rebirth or the New 52 Superman's death or Reborn. So while he's talking about Superman as a whole (conceptually), the Superman in particular he has influenced was the New 52. And given what we saw of Oz's interference with Superman Blue's life after Red's death, we can only assume that he was about ready to start a similar process with Blue. However, his plans were inadvertently greatly messed with when Reborn happened due to Mxy's antics, Superman's universal importance fought back (much to Oz's admitted surprise)

Bonus: Notice that Mxy calls Oz "ghost of Christmas yet to come" as a jab at his look. But I think it goes slightly deeper than that. I think this was Dini placing in a small Easter egg (similar to the one Johns puts in my next scan). When you look back at Reborn and Rebirth as a mega arc you may see this line and smile at how clever it ended being.



Then we have this fairly blatant "your son is very important to all of this" statement he opens with here. What's even funnier is that Oz specially mentions the fact that Jon is "growing up fast." That statement sounds a little more clever when it's coming from Superman's all-grown-up future son.

Theory: Oz is literally Jon Sam Kent from the future. Due to his "Fortress" being located outside of time, space, and even the multiverse (given that he was able to capture the multiversal foe Prophecy during the Superman arc Multiplicity). Oz aka older Jon is able to stand removed of all of the time shenanigans of the DCU. So it would be safe to assume that he'd be able to pop in and affect New 52 Superman aka Superman Red before the fusion takes place in Reborn (an event he didn't foresee obviously).

Why does he have the name Oz? My theory is as Sacred Knight describes, at some point Jon "studies" under Ozy. Maybe this is all just a misguided son trying to save or prepare his dad for what's to come aka Manhattan. Maybe Ozymandias has sown some unfortunate seeds in this powerful young man's mind (foreshadowed by the current Black Dawn arc)? Maybe Jon is unknowingly Ozy's pawn in a giant chess match with Manhattan? Or maybe Ozy has actually created an obsessive and desperate monster that he can no longer control in the form of older Jon aka Oz?

It's also worth noting that, as Clem points out, Oz being future Jon would play very well into the perpetuated idea that Jon is supposed to be wildly more powerful than his dad. Jon growing up to have the power to imprison and scare Mxy himself would fit the whole "more powerful than the father" idea. Jon also did already unwittingly build a multiversal jumping device when he was only 10.

There's also the fact that Manchester Black has been shown to be able to jump between universe somehow. Chester keep talking about the fact that something is coming, and Clark isn't the Superman who will be able to get the job done ultimately, and he wants to keep Jon safe and grow his power, so he can be that Superman. I think Tomasi and Gleason will give a bit of a misdirect at the end of Black Dawn, and we'll be lead to believe that Chester is talking about something else. But, I think Chester is in fact talking about Manhattan. If Chester has maultiversal travel capabilities, then I imagine he knows about Manhattan in some form similar to to Reverse Flash.

And my final bit of "evidence" is the fact that Krypto has been referenced 3 times in relation to Jon and greater mysteries that are seemingly not linked.

1.) When Jon build his science project, he says that it came to him in a dream, and that Krypto was there in that dream. We never get a follow up.

2.) Mxy, as Clark, wispers something to Krypto during Reborn, and we never get any sort of confirmation on it.

3.) Cobb says something every ominous about pets, and then bewitches Krypto as Chester looks on.

Krypto is the key, and it seems to transcend Black Dawn and Chester because Mxy's interactions with him. These all leads me to think that Oz is in fact a future Jon, and there's going to be a big inciting incident with Krypto to get us to the cross roads of Jon's life.

At this point, I think if it's anyone else, it won't have the required foreshadowing or plausibility. It being Jon allows for the sufficient "gut punch" for Clark, and the tie-in to Rebirth's legacy angle, because these would be sort of like a personal doomsday situation for Clark like "what if Superman failed as a parent." Part of the idea of beating Manhattan would be to save his son's soul from this life of obsession and torment. This would actually Mirror Thomas Wayne's words to Bruce during The Button. All these stories are interlinked, no?

Bonus: for those really interested/worried, it would cement Clark as the ultimate Superman of multiversal import who does what the full formed Jon can't by somehow "beating" Manhattan.

[Superlad93]

Also if it is Jon, then I'd love to see a "good future" version of him with the same outside-of-time-and-space Fortress. That's a really good look for a Superman. Even the crescent moon staff would be pretty fascinating to keep, but maybe turn it into a sun staff to signify this being the "good future."

Making "good future" Jon the sort of multiversal guardian of the post-Rebirth DC era would be a fitting end to it all. It would also set the concept of legacies and Jon Kent: Son of Superman on the biggest stage DC comics has had since Flashpoint. It would be an affirmation of quite a lot of what DC has been interested in Post-New 52, and an affirmation of what's worked for them during this time. It would be this triumphant "the kids are all right" sort of moment.

Plus, it would finally get us a definitive Superman Secondus.

[W8IN4KAL-EL]

Has to be Superman's dad Jonathan it cant be his son or else the '..Clark..You always get up when you get knocked down. ..I taught you that..' would make absolutely no sense.Which brings out the obvious question of how how got so much power?

[Superlad93]

Has to be Superman's dad Jonathan it cant be his son or else the '..Clark..You always get up when you get knocked down. ..I taught you that..' would make absolutely no sense.

But it does make sense if he's talking about the New 52 Superman (which he was) who was a fairly new creation (in the cosmic sense).

As I posted above, Oz was likely talking about the fact that he, being on plan outside of known creation, was setting events in motion to shape both Supermen at different times. In that sense he did teach Clark about getting up when he's knocked down by virtue of setting up the events for him to get knocked down. Him being outside of time and space is key. That would mean it would be very, very easy for it to be Jon Sam Kent of the future.

It would also make far more sense how he got so powerful, because Jon's great potential (directly stated to even overshadow his dad's power on his best day) has be foreshadowed as a pretty major plot point.

Super powered Pa Kent doesn't make much sense to me at this juncture.

[FishyZombie]

Superlad's theory above does kinda explain why Oz might be keeping Tim Drake and why he might have split Superman in half. maybe Oz is from a future where Manhattan defeats the Justice league. The reason Oz thinks the heroes lost was because they was too busy protecting their families. So he takes the likes of Tim Drake, Kon-El and Bart Allen off the board. Superman being the greatest and most powerful, Oz focuses his attention on manipulating Superman's life. Perhaps he actually is Jon from the future, and Superman failed to stop Manhattan because he was too busy protecting his son. So Oz splits Superman and Lois in half. He needs the Blue side to become his parents and raise him, because Oz still needs to maintain his own existence. He manipulates blue into thinking he's from a dead timeline, so he'll lay low and stay out of Red's way. Oz/Jon focuses attention on N52 Superman aka Red Superman. He makes it so this Superman is younger, lost his parents at a younger age and gets friendzoned by Lois. So he has no vulnerablities and nothing to distract him when he must face Manhattan. When Red dies, Oz has a contingency where the energy ends up with Lana Lang. His scheme falls apart completely with reborn and he's furious that his younger self merged the two halves of his parents, fixing the timeline.

[Superlad93]

I'm still not 100% sure if it was Oz or Manhattan that split Superman and Lois. It might've been that Oz was simply taking the opportunity of a half Superman to craft his own Superman? Then when Blue came along he assumed that he could do the same, but he didn't account for Mxy's antics or Superman's "final say" in the cosmic goings on of the DCU.

What's interesting to note is that Jon is an inevitability regardless of what Superman there is. We saw that Superman and Lois red would've made a Jon (in the form of an alternate one), and we obviously see that the blue couple make one.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Jurgens came to DC with the idea for a son for Superman, and DC said "sure, but we want you to call him Jon Kent. We'll explain why later." This makes me think that it was always gonna be Jon. Had they not gone the premade family way, we likely would've simply seen a New 52 Lois and Clark have their marriage restored along with the Jon Kent Jurgens had in mind. But it ultimately ended up the Blue family because that allowed for the clear reinstating of Pre-New 52 Superman.

I'm really starting to see more Jon connections as a dive deeper into this thing.

[DragonPiece]

I like the theory you explained Superlad. I mean, it would definitely be interesting if it turned out to be Jon, but I'm still about skeptical of that. For one, it would be a retcon because there is no way geoff johns knew about Jon back when he was writing his New 52 Superman run, regardless if Jurgens made a pitch for the character around that time. What we do know for facts is that's johns had a big appreciation for Luther around that time still riding around the hype for forever evil. So my suspicion is that again, Oz relates to Luther somehow. I do agree with whoever said that whoever Oz is will probably just be a student under the actual Ozymandias though, so DC can have their cake and eat it with both a shocker out of nowhere plus the obvious guess.