Yes I'm aware of the Superman Unlimited thing, no I do not care about it, nor am I still interested in seeing where it's going at this point. I have no investment in a random person with Jon's face. In a vacuum, it's not a bad concept, but in execution and context it's kind of insulting ngl. If the vague image of Jon is enough for you, then enjoy that. But this is essentially what they did with Bart in New 52, and that was also dumb as hell, and missed the point of people who actually wanted the character back. Maybe in five or so years they'll do something worth following, but Slott's hacky dialogue and lame characterizafiom ain't doing it for me.
I'm never gonna be over Jon-El by the way. He's a kid. He ends up alone and manipulated into a cult. And then yeah he does a lot of awful things. But Clark and Lois, who have a son who is identical to him, because he is literally just another universe version of their son, leaving him to rot in a prison cell forever and never even thinking of him again is fucking ridiculous to me. Tal Rho gets redemption. Bruno Manheim gets redemption in a way. Jon-El is a KID. Hes the same age as their kids!! And I've said all of this before, but godddd. They just never think of him again. I understand that an alternate universe version of someone isnt them, but how could anyone be a parent and see an alternative version of their kid and never try to reach out to them again. Even if he WAS just evil, wouldn't it be impossible to NOT see the similarities to your kid, who you love? Wouldnt it be impossible not to think about him? Im not saying they needed to adopt the murdery version of their child right away but it makes them seem worse to never really talk about him
I know the answer is that writers had abandoned him, but... I kinda like to think that Jon-El was left to rot because he is not human. Jon-El suffers the fate of Tal, who got imprisoned and experimented on when he was a kid. And both don't speak the language of locals. But the most fun part is the fact that probably through time Jon-El becomes powerless (or significantly weaker), since this world doesn't have red sun. He becomes a regular young person with list of crimes but everyone will see only a monster in him and he won't ever see a glimpse even of a yellow sun.
He won't be experimented on because a criminal or not, turning non-humans into lab rats is a direct insult to a Superman's face and let's better avoid turning Earth's superpowerful protector into an enemy, yeah?
And there is too little years left before Jon-El legally becomes an adult. I doubt anyone would care about him after that.
Maybe his only hope is Jon who after some years will ask "btw what about my evil emo twin" and now he, a mature adult, couldn't just close his eyes on a situation after getting an update, especially since the issue hits kinda personal, on the whole "anti human" topic you know. Jon doesn't know what to do but his self of justice and urge to take actions won't let him just sit tight, he needs to do. something. Cause bad guy or not, that's whole mess is wrong.
Or maybe Jordan-El jumps into this world cause come on they are twins maybe he badly needs to figure out if he should hit his bro with fists personally after all those years, or get some kind of clarification and hug that easily guidable bastard.
Maybe have our Jon and Jordan-El team up on this and our Jordan not liking this at all, protective bro + personal grudge against Els and Jon-El in particular cause screw the end of the world, the biggest problem is that damn Jon-El tried to "kill" Jon, or take away forever and that's not smth Jordan can easily be chill with, and now damn twin of Jon-El is also here and they know nothing about him - and he wants to release his bro? Erm, no!
If both Jordans start at drama fight when meeting Jon-El - both for their own different reasons - and later a drama against each other - Jon will joke "idk If I should have brought band aids or popcorn" and Jon-El supports "Popcorn. I would always prefer to bleed out but with an actual good food in my mouth. Prison food sucks".
Jon is crazy enough to easily bond with his former killer and Jordan is very, very aware of this and in time it's obvious that Jordan has less problems with Jon-El and Jon bonding and more with Jon's tendency to be like this. Dude, have some self-respect? You gave me enough headache- blah blah blah because probably this is noooooot the first time smth like this happens. El twins get some time to actually talk eye to eye because Jordan forgot about supervision, too busy to complain and scold his unhinged twin.
(optionally El twins escape while our twins talk for the sake of stupidity and comedy)
Because holy shit, I KNEW this shit was gonna be bad. But I could have NEVER imagined just how bad
Superman Unlimited #13 Spoilers, but, honestly, don't waste your time
We start strong. With this!
(Actually we start with some Monkey shenanigans and Bibbo. Which is honestly the only good part of this story)
This is GENUINELY so bad it's almost funny
This is almost female comic character levels of "has to look pretty for the camera". Jon is legitimately not allowed to make any extreme facial expressions. Not even while "burning alive" because the only reason this exists is to showcase Cute Kid Jon Kent getting tortured. He has to look as helpless and lamb-like as possible
Btw, just for a reminder, THIS is Jon after the Eradicator "ate" both Krypto and his dad and is currently trying to kill him and his mom
And I'll be fair and say that Jon DID run and hide after he did that. Because he's a kid and that's extremely upsetting
BUT
He's ACTUALLY showing emotions
He dived right back in when shit got real and the Eradicator tried hurt his mom
And
3. (And MOST IMPORTANTLY) this happened at the start of Jon's hero run.
This is Jon after he was stranded in Apokolips separated from his parents, towards the end of the run (less than a year btw)
Just to freshen up people's memories a bit
Moving on
There's an alternate version of both your dad and your aunt running around. We're barely into this comic, please don't piss me off
I think writing and drawing Lois Lane like this should be a felony actually
(This is me being bitchy more than actual criticism, cause, yeah, you should absolutely be making sure kids are as safe as can be. But "Stay behind me and let me go in first?". Tf are you gonna do? It's been 8 years and almost all of your appearances consist of you needing your teammate to take care of the problem for you, which in this case is the 10yo with you. I mean, I guess they're writing this version of Kid!Jon so incompetent even you could do better, but still)
oh no🥺
Little Jon is violent because of his t-t-trauma from Ultraman 🥺
Isn't that Awful and Bad🥺
(This is so bad! He didn't even get this kind of trauma when Manchester Black took over his body, pushed his powers to the point they might kill him and uses it to commit atro- Oh! This - the writer doesn't remember that? Oh, he doesn't know it happened! Oops- WELL, MOVING ON-)
He's so unstable guys it's so dangerous 🥺
This is the worst thing to happen ever 🥺
Will our Good Moral Hero Tomorrow Man be able to save the status quo this poor, hurt, defenceless misguided little kid🥺
Oh, brother, this is Monkey's Paw shit, isn't it
This is made specifically for punishing me, for daring to say that, given his character, Jon should be angrier
"This Jon Kent is far more broken than I ever was" that's because you never were like the real Jon Kent, dipshit . And neither is this kid Jon-shaped prop
Firstly, because I cannot trust anyone here, no, Jon being violent and angry isn't new. He has always been like this. Trying to spin this as a great personality change due to trauma is straight up hot steaming bullshit
Let's do a little Jon Kent 101 lesson here.
One of Jon's traits is that he's violent and aggressive. HOWEVER, he's not unreasonable or out of control. It has never stopped him from being compassionate and kind. It's just how he is.
This is significant because it showcases his and Clark's ideological rift, the point of which is that neither of them are wrong. They're just different and that's ok and Clark has to learn to live with it. It opens the way for challenging the Status Quo in other areas, like how they interact with their Kryptonian heritage and how Clois are raising Jon in general
This is usually demonstrated by Jon's more violent tendencies being justified or even rewarded by the narrative, like the image of him burning the monster above, where the people praise his effort and snap at Clark
Another moment is the mentioned previously Eradicator Event. I won't bother you with the details. But, story goes, they go to the fortress to run tests on Jon, while in issue #1 Jon had killed a kitten named Goldie. They meet the Eradicator there and he fucks shit up
There's this Lois and Jon interaction
Jon doesn't take it to heart that much honestly, as we've already discussed
But the lesson comes, right? Like, it's actually shown why he's wrong to want to kill him
Nope!
This storyline ends with killing the Eradicator (well, he comes back later, but, at this point, he is killed and that's undeniably framed as a good thing)
It's also worth mentioning that the incident where Jon killed Goldie was because she was being carried off by a Hawk and Jon tried to kill it with his heat vision but missed.
It wasn't an accident as in "he killed without meaning to". It was an accident as "he meant to kill the other one". He didn't lose control, he missed.
And he missed because Clark had never trained him to use his heat vision
And we know that because Clark takes him training right after and Jon picks it up almost instantly
This panel set also shows what I mentioned before. Things end the best when Clark works WITH how his son is instead of trying to force his way into him
This is a frankly deranged way to teach your son how to use his heat vision, but Clark knows it's what Jon will respond best to and does it anyway. So everything ends well
A sweet and nice message right?
Well, too bad! Now Jon's anger is Bad and Dangerous and needs to be Dealt With. And the rest of his character traits are gone too. Can't have him challenging the status quo
This has been something that's been in my mind a lot since this run started too. It's honestly does make kid!Jon seem more like an abused animal that doesn't know any better than usual.
And while I understand it's been set up by the narrative for him to mirror Beppo through shared trauma, it ignores a lot of Jon's characteristic of being a more level headed character than what is shown here.
Me and my friend discussed this a bit too, of how they wished Jon would be more... perceptive of Tomorrow man.
It's quite a shame but I feel like DC has forgotten how to write superboy!jon for a long time now, as much as I do also enjoy the current run.
Buttt, I also think we're going off of assumptions here.
If, this characterization of superboy!Jon is infact intentional, then it leads me to believe that he's most likely from another timeline all together. And I do hope it would be explained if that's the case.
(going from the fact that it seems this Jon isn't affected at all by kryptonite, although I won't put much theorizing under this repost bc I think other people have done a better job than me at compiling stuff tgt lol)
After the new issue, I think i ended up with more questions than answers tbh 💭
Also about tm!Jon saying the timeline only have room for one jon kent, it made me sad at first but in retrospect it is pretty funny like wdym bro?? 😭😭
Also about tm!Jon saying the timeline only have room for one jon kent, it made me sad at first but in retrospect it is pretty funny like wdym bro?? 😭😭
Wait for them to find out that both tm!Jon and rebirth!Jon are babies of another world and current universe has its own Jon Kent. In fact it had two Jon Lane Kents, and we were never shown if they died or not, if they announced dead or not, so it's very possible that right now somewhere in this world two original Jon Kents are playing monopolia while tm!Jon has this self-destructive nonsense. Like dude don't say that otherwise it means both you and your kid version will have to go in vain.
"only have one room for one jon kent" my ass there are 4 of you and there is enough place for 10 more who cares.
Hi, do you think you could draw the superfam kids together? (Laney, Conner, Mia, Chris, and Jon)
well. anon. ive tried drawing all of them a bunch since u sent this but its just Not working out OTL pls take this laney and mia scribble as consolation
