i've talked about it before, but i really do think jon was doomed from the start. and not by any fault of his own.
but because superman is a very popular character who a lot of different people have very different ideas of what they want from him and his stories, including his family and (especially) a biological son.
there have been a lot of interpretations of superman's son over the years. some more antagonist like the new52's jon lane. some have been literal a clark kent jr. like the silver age super sons. a lot of ideas seem to fall into that last category of "a traditional nuclear family where mommy and daddy raise their son to take up his father's mantle with no complicated bits in the middle". it's a miracle jon got anything as semi-interesting as what happened with ultraman and everything after, because he was primed to continue that trend. which is probably why bendis bothered so many people because he ultimately broke that expectation of what they felt clark was "deserved" in raising jon. jon's trauma is never about jon so much as it's about the people he "belongs to" (his parents, damian, etc.).
yet, it doesn't matter what happened in jon's canon because he isn't his own character. he's a blank slate that people can project their opinions of superman's son onto.
this applies to fanon, too, maybe even more so than actual dc writers. because as much as certain people say they want kid jon back, they still ignore and sand away all the complicated bits that kid jon had, like his fear that something is wrong inside him or growing up under clark's fear of who jon could turn into. again, it's not actually about jon the character. it's about their ideas of what superman's son should be like.
jon the character will always being fighting against the idea of superman's son.
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