jon really can't seem to conceive of the idea of somebody loving HIM. choosing HIM. not the memory of him but the boy standing right in front of them. and yet they do, they love him so much
i also like how this issue is actually dealing with the consequences of jon constantly suspecting and at times being outright told that people in his circle would prefer if he was somebody else ("i feel like you were stolen from me" "my greatest regret is the time i lost with you" "then youre not who i thought you were" etc etc literally 3 million examples of this) by giving him an absolutely golden opportunity to just silently become someone else and "fix" the mistake he is constantly told he is by other people. like, yeah, of course hes not telling people hes tomorrow man. this might be his one chance to "return" what was "stolen" to the people he loves and maybe control who he becomes next.
Warning: This is a long article with lots of pictures under the cut. I am trying to be logical and reasonable about this.
Okay, now that I’ve got your attention, I personally don’t subscribe to the theory that Jon Kent after the age-up is not the Jon that we know. The outcry is usually something along the lines of “Teen Jon is a clone of the original Jon or is Ultraman’s son,” etc. They then posit that Young Jon is still in his pre-teen form, somewhere on Earth 3.
There are inconsistencies between Teen Jon and Young Jon, to be sure. These can be mostly attributed to writer inattentiveness. For example, in the Rebirth era, Young Jon seemed quite comfortable with advanced alien technology (e.g., the Hypercube) in the Fortress of Solitude. However, in the webcomic, “This Internship is my Kryptonite,” Jon exclaims that he barely knows how to work a cell phone. Another example would be the age of Jon’s first flight. In the Rebirth era, Jon starts flying around the age of 10-11. However, Tom Taylor’s version is that he’s not even 10 for that first flight—before Jon’s powers should have manifested per Jurgens, Tomasi, and other writers.
Young Jon was basically a good kid, but with a mischievous side. He was good-natured and kind, but had no problem being snarky. Teen Jon tries to be the optimistic kid that everyone knew him as, but hides a great deal of anguish. That said, he is remarkably cogent and coherent for someone who has endured long-term imprisonment in another dimension. Furthermore, with the exception of the AI therapist in “This Internship is my Kryptonite,” there is no indication that Jon has undergone professional therapy for his trauma. There is nothing explicitly stated in the comics that he attended a facility like “The Sanctuary” for his mental health.
I will say, though, that there is an inconsistency in Jon’s story. It’s something that Bendis neglected to consider.
In 1996, there was a crossover crisis event, “The Final Night.” A Sun-Eater, a creature that devours stars, had attached itself to our sun. The creature totally obscured the sun, with no light or heat reaching the Earth. In five days, scientists expected that Earth would be a frozen ball of ice. Of course, that would be shortly before the Sun-Eater would cause the star to go nova, obliterating the now-frozen Earth.
Superman is a living solar battery. His powers don’t go away as soon as he steps into the shadows. However, in this story, we do have a defined limit for his storage capacity without any sunlight: Four days.
Prior to the sun being enveloped by the Sun-Eater, Superman and several other energy-manipulating heroes attempt to distract the creature. They pool their powers to create a smaller, artificial sun. It works—briefly.
A little more than a day after the Sun-Eater starts feeding, Superman is already starting to feel the drain. In fact, the brief encounter with the Sun-Eater probably drained a good portion of his reserves, so he’s not at 100%.
Assuming that Superman is conserving his energy, he’s still drained by every use of them. Fortunately, he has enough left in the tank to keep an eye on Batman:
(A minor digression: Teflon-coated bullets are not meant to deform, but to penetrate as they are. Hollow-point bullets are meant to deform, causing a larger area of damage. This shows that the great Vandal Savage, for all his age and experience, paid for stupidly designed ammunition.)
By the end of the third day, Superman is pretty much out of juice. He can no longer fly on his own, though he doesn’t seem too affected by the cold.
By the fourth day without sunlight, Superman’s powers are essentially gone. This is after four days of using up whatever solar reserves he has. Now, that’s four days from perhaps 50% power to none, assuming that he did try to conserve power whenever he could, and that the Sun-Eater took away half of his reserves.
“But that’s so old,” you may say. “That’s probably not even canon now!”
Fine. Let’s head to Scott Snyder’s Justice League, circa 2018. In one story, Superman is trapped in an alternate dimension specifically meant to hold him. His jailer, the World Forger disguised as an idealized, future version of himself, created this prison. There is a distant star, but it’s not enough to sustain Superman’s powers:
Of course, Superman makes one last-ditch effort with everything he has left to reach that distant star. He almost doesn’t make it.
What was the point of this? Well, it’s another example of how, without sunlight, Superman’s powers drain relative to the amount of exertion. And since this was a last-ditch, all-or-nothing effort, his reserves were pretty much shot—until Bruce lined things up for him.
“So, what does this have to do with Jon Kent,” you may be asking yourself. “Why is this important?”
Well, in Superman: Son of Kal-El # 9, Jon states that he spent 5 years in a volcano. We even get a little visual of the flashback:
This is highly unlikely if we apply logic. When Jon arrived on Earth 3, he didn’t have enough power to fly out of the volcano. Directed flight was one of the last powers that he developed, though he could float briefly at the age of 10—with concentration. Invulnerability, however, was one of the first abilities to manifest (Superman: Lois and Clark # 6) and is often the last to go as the power reserves are depleted.
Now, the big question is: If Jon is in a volcano with no sunlight, how could he last five years?
Answer: He can’t. A volcano is full of heat and poisonous gases. That would be an ever-present drain on Jon’s power reserves. And given that Jon was perhaps at 30-40% capacity when he arrived, his invulnerability would not have protected him for a week, maybe two at the outset. This kept him from getting poisoned by the fumes and burned by the lava.
“But Kryptonians are naturally tougher than humans! He’d be okay even without sunlight!”
No. Under a red sun or without any yellow solar energy, a Kryptonian is no tougher or stronger than a human.
“Well…Ultraman was keeping him fed! Couldn’t that be a factor?”
No. This is not the “Superman vs. Meshi” manga where Superman lets out blasts of heat vision if he’s had too much sugar. In the mainline universe, his powers come from solar energy, not caloric intake.
“Well…aren’t you taking this too seriously? I’m sure that the writers will figure something out.”
Bendis dug Jon into this hole in 2019. Nobody’s trying to dig him out. I’m just pointing out the plot hole. I'm a writer. That's what I do. And I wish that someone should have pointed out the big flaw to Bendis when he plotted this whole thing.
First things first, genuinely really impressive stuff. I always think it's so cool when people can pull together evidence from a bunch of comics across a lot of years.
My thought is that, based on Jon saying this in Superman (2018) issue #9, at least in Bendis' mind, Jon did manage to conserve enough power over that time to survive.
Maybe it's a product of his special Superboy biology? He gets his lightning powers pretty soon after this, so it's possible that that's a manifestation of the same powerset, allowing him to store up and release slowly or all at once. He can do the supernova thing in Super Sons too so maybe it comes from that.
Of course, this is all me as a fan patching holes with things that, while plausible, were not stated in the comic. You're probably right that Bendis just didn't have a specific explanation in mind and didn't think it was particularly important. They give supers new powers all the time after all! Totally reasonable to point it out though.
Jon Kent is just.... such a good character post age up. His themes are remarkably consistent across authors (even with the ones i... do not care for) about how the specific legacy hes burdened with interferes with his ability to heal from His Specific Trauma. The need to be the perfect Superman vs. the fact that everyone evil and good alike has a different idea of what that is, that they then try and force him into. Then all the people in his life who allow him to escape from that or encourage him to be his own person are explicitly, canonically queer. He's a mess at all times, and its in those moments where he allows himself to accept community over duty that we see who he really is- a compassionate young man with his mothers eyes and sense of justice. But when he doesn't, when he puts duty first, its equally thrilling and heartbreaking to watch him lose everything. What happens when you're born into a role that keeps you from people like you? Would you kill yourself to become what you were destined to be?
never believe anything dcblr tells you about characters because the way people talk about jay nakamura you'd be forgiven for thinking hes some boring & mean generic gay love interest with nothing going on based off how ppl discuss him. but then you open any of his books and its like "yeah so the cycle of violence is a wheel deliberately turned by powerful colonizers against the colonized and no matter how palatable jay makes himself it won't save him from the fact his friends are all incentivized by the fact they're white americans to subject him to genocide, so the only option hes left with is likely extreme violence, by no fault of his own and in direct defiance to the liberal optimism superman has come to represent. also, this guy is probably super transgender."
Jon not having a civilian life is not a bug, it's a feature. It's like, intentional that his entire identity is focused on being Superman because he's paranoid about being a tool for evil or just straight-up losing control and causing devastation. To counter it, he tries to be the most perfect representation of goodness, hope, everything safe and wonderful.
The opposite extreme of out of control weapon of destruction is fully in-control symbol of hope. Aka Superman.
He has never had a normal civilian life. Literally, all of his civilian life is lies.
jon: my boyfriend wants to overthrow the us government bc they ethnically cleansed his country, my best friend who has a crush on me wants to kill (another) person, there’s some random chick who keeps causing drama for funsies i guess, i’m stuck with a guy in a cat costume in his so-called catmobile who’s mad at his cheating ex boyfriend who was never his boyfriend and didn’t technically cheat, my best friend the random chick the cat guy’s not-ex-boyfriend and MY boyfriend were all kidnapped by the government, and to top it all off i don’t even know if i’m really a good person so please dad do NOT ask me how i’m doing the answer is BAD
I dont think ive ever seen a character who would deal with a cursed amulet worse than Jon Kent. Like his ass is susceptible to the whims of ancient witches. jewelry that is also his friend? sign him up!
This one's gonna be pretty personal, but bear with me. I want to talk about what Jon's current arc means to me.
Last year I was asked to write a non-fiction piece for a creative writing class. The first lines of that piece are: "The summer that I started volunteering at the St. Irenaeus food pantry was the same summer that I started reading Superman comics. I'd be lying if I said those two things weren't related."
The piece was about a lot of things--anxiety, Catholic guilt--but more than anything, it was about a time where I let the rules stop me from helping someone who really needed it because I was scared. Reading through it now, a lot of the lines feel like they could've come straight out of my first Jon fic. Some of them feel like they could've come out of a piece I'd write about him now.
The summer I was talking about up there was the summer where I first started reading Jon's books. I've mentioned it before, but I started with supersons, wanted more of this little guy and heard that superman 2016 and 2018 were the next big stops, and then headed on to SOKE. And SOKE was special because, throughout all these books, I had found myself identifying with this guy. I honestly can't say what it was. It might have been the air of this whole thing I'm talking about, Jon's theming has been pretty consistent, after all, but I digress. SOKE was special because it showed me a character who I identified with seeking out ways to make the world a better place, finding his cause, and then following through despite having to break some rules to do it. It was inspiring to me. Jon and Jay became sort of role models. They showed me the importance of real courage, they helped me understand the bravery of real life activists and start paying real attention. Jon made me want to do better.
And isn't that what good fiction does? Sure, not all stories need to cause tumultuous introspection that spurs you into action, but they should help you see yourself and the world in a different way. That's what I think Nicole Maines is doing so excellently right now, she's making these characters flawed in ways that both make sense for their characters and are relatable and real, especially in the moment we're in now.
Jon's arc now is about his fear of doing that. It's about his fear that if he breaks the rules he might end up doing more harm than good. In fact, it's about his misplaced certainty that he will do harm, no matter what, if he breaks the rules, either the written ones or the ones he believes exist for Superman. Jon has been a follower since SOKE, something that's commented on in the most recent Secret Six issue, but now he's doubling down on it, and it's hurting his ability to do real good. SOKE Jon hit because he was aspirational in a very personal way, but he was also comfortable. I could see myself in him and he was doing good, so I'll get there someday. S6 Jon hits because he's real. I've been him. Sometimes I still am. Seeing him from the outside like this--able to see the harm he causes and recognize why it's harmful--forces me to reflect on myself, on the ways that I am like him and on the ways that I'm not. It makes me want to take some action because I can see how much it sucks not to.
Anyway, here's to hoping that Jon gets it together. Maybe we'll be able to give each other some tips.
THE SON OF KAL-EL AND LOIS LANE FACES HIS GREATEST CHALLENGE YET—A DAILY PLANET INTERNSHIP!
By writer Sam Camp (Little Hollow Café) and artists Daimon Hampton and Seraji, Jon Kent is a super-powered hero in his own right, but how do those powers help him move beyond the mundane coffee orders, endless research, and “educational experience” the Daily Planetreporting staff deems necessary for those essential college credits? Especially when your mom is the editor-in-chief—hello, nepotism concerns! What’s more, his best friend thinks the internship is a waste of his time and talents, his boyfriend tries to be supportive but is wary of Jon’s new boss’s Superman obsession, and naturally his parents think this is a great opportunity, but life as a superhero daylighting as a reporter is a little different today than it was back then…
I need to post about this because otherwise I think I might explode. I don't know how many of you Jon fans have read the Dark Crisis World Without a Justice League Superman story, but it's only one issue and I recommend it if you want to feel some kinda way (mostly bad, heartbroken) about Clark and Jon's relationship post age up. What you need to know is that it's written by Tom King, who, based on some interviews, doesn't seem to realize that he's written a psychological horror story. But what I really need to share is an excerpt from this interview where he says this:
Hey-hey Tom? What do you MEAN that in order to be loved you have to suffer??? Wild thing to say in general, even wilder thing to say about a character with themes about if love is conditional. Even WILDER thing to say with the ending of this issue in mind. Can't stand that man.
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