Superman: son of Kal-El

[Superlad93]

I don't know if I like this idea very much Jon and jackson but it's a much better option than Jay .. but I love the fact that Jay can be a antiheroi, I've said many times Jay is a so uninteresting character that if he goes to anti hero I honestly he will have my attention but if not, so then i have no interest in him

I don't really have much of an opinion on Jon and Jackson as a couple either, but it would end up being more of a net positive for a number of reason. For one, Superman dating Aquaman is just a much better headline than "Superman dates...this guy over here...who is also a reporter...yay". This would be yet another big boost in sales for Jon (and Jackson, honestly). Also potentially better art.

But the best part would be getting Brandon Thomas writing a Jon and Jackson book. THAT would be worth it. I don't know if you've read Thomas' work at DC, but he's written some of the most consistently good to great work at DC today. His Aquaman stuff is, well, getting me to pick up an Aquaman book...which I'd never do otherwise. He also wrote an absolutely fantastic President Superman story.

If we could get him writing Jon consistently and really adding to his voice and story I'd be over the moon.

[Superlad93]

So basically, any appearance of Jon is going to be a yaoi comic?

What? No. What does that even mean?

Are you also implying that Jon and Damian's book, Superman/Robin one-shot, will be yaoi?

Jackson is gay and Jon is bi, and they are holding the titles of big IPs. Wondering if they can date and possibly have a book together doesn't equal "so basically, any appearance of Jon is going to be a yaoi comic"

[Vordan]

Glad someone at DC agrees with me that Jon and Jackson should date

Will be fun to see the two interact, this is exactly what I was hoping for, keep setting up other potential LIs for Jon.

[Journey]

Jon & Jackson would break headlines & honestly be so superior then him & Jay I'm sorry the only problem is they would be so iconic people would get attached & they could become a forever pairing.

[Thor-Ul]

What? No. What does that even mean?

Are you also implying that Jon and Damian's book, Superman/Robin one-shot, will be yaoi?

Jackson is gay and Jon is bi, and they are holding the titles of big IPs. Wondering if they can date and possibly have a book together doesn't equal "so basically, any appearance of Jon is going to be a yaoi comic"

The way you explain it is like any appearance of Jon with any other male lead inevitable implies a gay romance. Yaoi.

[Superlad93]

The way you explain it is like any appearance of Jon with any other male lead inevitable implies a gay romance. Yaoi.

No. You're generalizing. My reasoning and the two particular queer characters I'm speaking about are very specific, so you saying "any appearance of Jon with any other male lead" doesn't make sense. I was very clear.

[Vordan]

So is Bendix going to be Jon’s villain for a while? Kind of thought he’d be a red herring for Jay but it feels like we’re not anywhere near the end of the “Jon vs. Bendix” arc.

[Superlad93]

So is Bendix going to be Jon’s villain for a while? Kind of thought he’d be a red herring for Jay but it feels like we’re not anywhere near the end of the “Jon vs. Bendix” arc.

I'm not ruling out Jay eventually going "bad", but yeah it does seem like Taylor did the ONE thing I thought he wouldn't do because it would just look to dumb by giving Jon his own smart bald guy to fight.

It's nice that he's switching it up some by making it so Jon is battling against a whole nation that very important people have a vested interest in, but still.

I'm still hoping that he's just drawing this out to build Jon and Jay up more, so that when Jay turns and assumes control of Bendix's nation it'll have some weight behind it. The 5G plans still likely matter on some level and Jay seems to take the place of Damian, and Gamorra seems to take the place of the Leviathan nation that Damian would've taken over from Mark Shaw.

[Vordan]

I'm not ruling out Jay eventually going "bad", but yeah it does seem like Taylor did the ONE thing I thought he wouldn't do because it would just look to dumb by giving Jon his own smart bald guy to fight.

It's nice that he's switching it up some by making it so Jon is battling against a whole nation that very important people have a vested interest in, but still.

I'm still hoping that he's just drawing this out to build Jon and Jay up more, so that when Jay turns and assumes control of Bendix's nation it'll have some weight behind it. The 5G plans still likely matter on some level and Jay seems to take the place of Damian, and Gamorra seems to take the place of the Leviathan nation that Damian would've taken over from Mark Shaw.

I don’t mind using Wildstorm concepts for Jon, if anything I like it because it offers a whole universe to mine for villains and characters that can be given to Jon, but so far Bendix hasn’t felt like a serious threat. Jon’s kind of just dicking around, there hasn’t been an actual proper supervillain fight for him yet. Taylor’s rather weak when it comes to villains, he can’t write Lex well at all and his OC over in Nightwing is unimpressive, but now that he’s established Jon being bi I gotta ask how long the current story can run. If Bendix had killed the Kents like I wanted it would at least have added some huge tension and drama to the coming clash, but as it is now it just feels kind of flat? What I’m saying is I want some supervillain fights please

[Menacer]

I don’t mind using Wildstorm concepts for Jon, if anything I like it because it offers a whole universe to mine for villains and characters that can be given to Jon, but so far Bendix hasn’t felt like a serious threat. Jon’s kind of just dicking around, there hasn’t been an actual proper supervillain fight for him yet. Taylor’s rather weak when it comes to villains, he can’t write Lex well at all and his OC over in Nightwing is unimpressive, but now that he’s established Jon being bi I gotta ask how long the current story can run. If Bendix had killed the Kents like I wanted it would at least have added some huge tension and drama to the coming clash, but as it is now it just feels kind of flat? What I’m saying is I want some supervillain fights please

Personally a feel villans of the week or issues that have to have a fight arent as good as a few issues of character arc and a build up to a fight.

I really gotta sit down and reread the first 4 issues but it feels very much like a slow burn and I also felt the first few issues lacked directions...

But in trade form a slow build up with a payoff works well.

While reading it monthly means your waiting 6 months for that payoff... in trade you could easily read those same 6 issues in an evening...

At this point im hoping its well plotted with a slow build up rather then maybe just aimlessness...

So I share your concern but hope for a format that builds a lot of story in his normal life and isnt just focused on issue to issue battles.

If that makes sense

[oneveryfineday]

Also this seems to be the second cover Jon has had with Jackson.

And given the fact that DC seems to be nearly just as serious about pushing Jackson for Aquaman as they are Jon for Superman, I have to wonder if they're keeping the idea of a legit romance between the two in their back pocket?

Basically it would be similar to the New 52 Superman/Wonder Woman romance. I could honestly see Jay eventually going bad/becoming an anti-hero even more now. This would also be Taylor setting up the Jon/Jackson attraction in advance by having Jackson show up more than once. So it allows you to have Superman's ex as his foe yet not immediately bouncing back into a straight relationship. Plus brownie points for it being another person of color. And on top of that "SUPERMAN AND AQUAMAN ARE DATING" makes for quite the headline.

PLUS this would explain where Jon's ongoing team up book is. Since Waid is doing classic Batman/Superman, and Superman/Robin is just an issue, and Jon and Yara's book will likely never come at this rate (and in order to not invite the romantic assumptions), a Superman/Aquaman team up/couple book would make the most sense at this rate.

The best part would be Brandon Thomas writing the book and Jon.

__________

Damn, you know what? Maybe THAT'S where they stuck Sempere? He was the artist for Thomas's future state Aquaman book. And if you look back at the Superman/Wonder Woman book you'll notice that the sort of art in it was very high profile and detailed to really push the book, and also sell the sex appeal of the two leads while feeling like a wide screen block buster. Sempere would totally be that for Jon and Jackson if my guess is right.

Yes, let’s keep the trend going for pairing up Jon with people whose names start with the letter J. It can be the equivalent of Clark dating people with the initials LL.

I really dig the idea of Jon and Jackson together, even as friends. If Jay really is going to go dark side (and he’s been giving off shady vibes since day 1), the challenge for this kind of story will be expanding views on queerness without falling into the queerness=villainy trap. I firmly believe that queer characters should exist all along the morality spectrum. The important things is that Jay cannot be the only thing that informs Jon’s queerness, and DC needs to consistently portray Jon’s other queer friendships and relationships to the point where queerness is merely a mundane aspect of a character. I think DC has Jon at a good point right now though. We have our queer hero in Jon, and if we look at his social group there’s the Legion as open-minded/queer young-adults, half the members of the Future State Justice League team were already queer even before Jon came out, and all the known members of The Truth are queer. The next SoKE arc is doing well by establishing a friendship between Jon and Jackson. Dunno what it is about 2021 but Jon’s community of peers suddenly became very, very queer.

I think it would be fun if Jon and Yara were to date at some point, or have Jon get caught in a love triangle between Yara and Jackson for that bisexual drama It would be unique to see the portrayal of a man and a woman be attracted to the same person with no fuss about genders.

Super stoked that Jon is finally getting to crossover with a lot of heroes beginning of 2022. Looking forward to all of Jon’s interactions between Jackson, Damian, and Dick!

I don’t mind using Wildstorm concepts for Jon, if anything I like it because it offers a whole universe to mine for villains and characters that can be given to Jon, but so far Bendix hasn’t felt like a serious threat. Jon’s kind of just dicking around, there hasn’t been an actual proper supervillain fight for him yet. Taylor’s rather weak when it comes to villains, he can’t write Lex well at all and his OC over in Nightwing is unimpressive, but now that he’s established Jon being bi I gotta ask how long the current story can run. If Bendix had killed the Kents like I wanted it would at least have added some huge tension and drama to the coming clash, but as it is now it just feels kind of flat? What I’m saying is I want some supervillain fights please

Nah, a big fight scene won’t fix Taylor’s problem with writing villains. I think the real issues are easily correctable once you recognize them though. Just a few problems with Bendix specifically:

- Setting = characterization. Every one of Bendix’s appearances took place in the same dark room. Where’s the character that Taylor is trying to criticize, the brutal tyrant who has more concern for power and national prestige than for human life? Kaizen had his decadent palace, his armies, his giant mission control room in his early appearances (and think about what you visualize when you think about Lex Luthor, Mxy, Livewire, etc). Bendix feels boring and featureless because his setting is boring and featureless.

- Villain’s motivation isn’t articulated well. What exactly did Jon take away from Bendix that caused Bendix to retaliate in return? Was it loss of international reputation? Wealth? Security? How do you show that on panel?

- Taylor wrote a great farmhouse raid scene in Injustice, so it’s no surprise he used it again in SoKE…except this time around Taylor made the very strange decision to remove the emotional consequences from it. The farmhouse blows up, and instead of Ma and Pa Kent reacting in terror because of their near-death experience, they brush it off quickly with a smile. Mountain turned into a molehill. It diffuses Bendix as a threat, and it’s weak fuel for Jon’s righteous anger when he finally confronts Bendix for (not) hurting his family.

- [As an aside, Bendix doesn’t necessarily need to kill the Kents to make him feel threatening, but an experimental subject or a refugee who died trying to escape would be just as effective and more thematically relevant. Similarly, I think the farmhouse attack scene is too far removed from the plot, and instead I’d replace with a scene where Jon and Jay organize a refugee donation drive in Metropolis (with Ma Kent, Pa Kent, and Lois involved as volunteers) that gets attacked instead. A few plot beats could do with that kind of refocusing.]

- Taylor undermines Bendix’s other big attack on Jon too. Bendix overcharging Jon’s powers to the point where his heroism becomes dangerous is a pretty great idea since it calls back to the recurring theme of weaponizing people against their will: Fire Guy set a forest ablaze, Faultline toppled a residential building. Now Superman’s the one out of control (I like that things happen in threes), what will happen now? Jon…only breaks one guy’s arm. And it never gets any worse than that. Taylor drops the stakes instead of logically escalating here. Too much time is spent on the comfort hero moments and not on showing exactly why messing with Bendix has serious consequences.

- Basically just pick any episode of BTAS or STAS and see how they get these elements right (characterization, motivation, threat, escalation) for their villains even with a simplistic plot.

Those are my observations anyway, feel free to critique! People want a different artist on the book, I think it needs a different editor to properly help organize and hone Taylor's ideas. I want a great rogues gallery for Jon but I don’t think Taylor is going to be the writer that builds that lol

[oneveryfineday]

Variant cover for issue #6



I have to say that Lee InHyuk's covers have been consistently awesome.

[Vordan]

Yes, let’s keep the trend going for pairing up Jon with people whose names start with the letter J. It can be the equivalent of Clark dating people with the initials LL.

I really dig the idea of Jon and Jackson together, even as friends. If Jay really is going to go dark side (and he’s been giving off shady vibes since day 1), the challenge for this kind of story will be expanding views on queerness without falling into the queerness=villainy trap. I firmly believe that queer characters should exist all along the morality spectrum. The important things is that Jay cannot be the only thing that informs Jon’s queerness, and DC needs to consistently portray Jon’s other queer friendships and relationships to the point where queerness is merely a mundane aspect of a character. I think DC has Jon at a good point right now though. We have our queer hero in Jon, and if we look at his social group there’s the Legion as open-minded/queer young-adults, half the members of the Future State Justice League team were already queer even before Jon came out, and all the known members of The Truth are queer. The next SoKE arc is doing well by establishing a friendship between Jon and Jackson. Dunno what it is about 2021 but Jon’s community of peers suddenly became very, very queer.

I think it would be fun if Jon and Yara were to date at some point, or have Jon get caught in a love triangle between Yara and Jackson for that bisexual drama It would be unique to see the portrayal of a man and a woman be attracted to the same person with no fuss about genders.

Super stoked that Jon is finally getting to crossover with a lot of heroes beginning of 2022. Looking forward to all of Jon’s interactions between Jackson, Damian, and Dick!



Nah, a big fight scene won’t fix Taylor’s problem with writing villains. I think the real issues are easily correctable once you recognize them though. Just a few problems with Bendix specifically:

- Setting = characterization. Every one of Bendix’s appearances took place in the same dark room. Where’s the character that Taylor is trying to criticize, the brutal tyrant who has more concern for power and national prestige than for human life? Kaizen had his decadent palace, his armies, his giant mission control room in his early appearances (and think about what you visualize when you think about Lex Luthor, Mxy, Livewire, etc). Bendix feels boring and featureless because his setting is boring and featureless.

- Villain’s motivation isn’t articulated well. What exactly did Jon take away from Bendix that caused Bendix to retaliate in return? Was it loss of international reputation? Wealth? Security? How do you show that on panel?

- Taylor wrote a great farmhouse raid scene in Injustice, so it’s no surprise he used it again in SoKE…except this time around Taylor made the very strange decision to remove the emotional consequences from it. The farmhouse blows up, and instead of Ma and Pa Kent reacting in terror because of their near-death experience, they brush it off quickly with a smile. Mountain turned into a molehill. It diffuses Bendix as a threat, and it’s weak fuel for Jon’s righteous anger when he finally confronts Bendix for (not) hurting his family.

- [As an aside, Bendix doesn’t necessarily need to kill the Kents to make him feel threatening, but an experimental subject or a refugee who died trying to escape would be just as effective and more thematically relevant. Similarly, I think the farmhouse attack scene is too far removed from the plot, and instead I’d replace with a scene where Jon and Jay organize a refugee donation drive in Metropolis (with Ma Kent, Pa Kent, and Lois involved as volunteers) that gets attacked instead. A few plot beats could do with that kind of refocusing.]

- Taylor undermines Bendix’s other big attack on Jon too. Bendix overcharging Jon’s powers to the point where his heroism becomes dangerous is a pretty great idea since it calls back to the recurring theme of weaponizing people against their will: Fire Guy set a forest ablaze, Faultline toppled a residential building. Now Superman’s the one out of control (I like that things happen in threes), what will happen now? Jon…only breaks one guy’s arm. And it never gets any worse than that. Taylor drops the stakes instead of logically escalating here. Too much time is spent on the comfort hero moments and not on showing exactly why messing with Bendix has serious consequences.

- Basically just pick any episode of BTAS or STAS and see how they get these elements right (characterization, motivation, threat, escalation) for their villains even with a simplistic plot.

Those are my observations anyway, feel free to critique! People want a different artist on the book, I think it needs a different editor to properly help organize and hone Taylor's ideas. I want a great rogues gallery for Jon but I don’t think Taylor is going to be the writer that builds that lol

Great analysis! Yeah Bendix is being undercut as a villain at every turn by how Taylor is handling this. Other than vague “Bendix is very bad and mean to refugees” there’s no real context for why we should hate him, nor has he really managed to strike a blow at Jon in any way. If this is truly all just build up to Jay breaking bad than maybe that will be better handled, but there need to be more done to establish what is at stake here. I don’t expect Taylor to manage to build up a Rogues Gallery either, he’s a weak writer for villains and especially for Superman Rogues.

[Superboy-Prime]

Variant cover for issue #6



I have to say that Lee InHyuk's covers have been consistently awesome.

Wow, is that Jon with the Venom Symbiote? First Wildstorm, now Marvel. Tom Taylor is really the king of crossovers!

[Superlad93]

I think it would be fun if Jon and Yara were to date at some point, or have Jon get caught in a love triangle between Yara and Jackson for that bisexual drama It would be unique to see the portrayal of a man and a woman be attracted to the same person with no fuss about genders.

Something like this is what I'm hoping DC has the balls to put out. Making his attraction to both men and women common place and not a big deal.

Likely not with Yara given the fact that they seem to want to not recreate the New 52 Superman/Wonder Woman idea with Jon and Yara. And that's likely why Yara is in her mid 20s and already in a relationship with some dude. I'm thinking Jackson may end up being Jon's "New 52 Wonder Woman".

However, if they do pair Jon up with another woman in the near future or have her act as the Veronica to Jackson's Betty and Jon's Archie then I'd REALLY like for her to be a body type you couldn't really romantically link with Clark.

In particular I'm thinking like a Big Barda 7 foot type of woman with the build of Abby from Last of Us Part II. It's not really something most writers or editors want to see from Clark because they really like him being physically imposing, but right of the bat Jon's much more slim and shorter than Clark. That's actually something that makes Jon being the most powerful member of the family all the more striking. He's the least imposing (even Kara is drawn to be physically imposing for the average woman) and most laid back. So setting up one of his love interests as a more conventionally physically imposing woman would be a nice visual and fun contrast in dynamic.

Like if there were a love triangle Jackson would be the sweet awkward one while this hypothetical 7 foot girl would be the sporty extravert.

Hey, maybe even make her a Phaelosian? Maybe Thao-La's friend? Then you also get to play more with the sibling thing between Jon and Thao since.