#and in the latest installment of 'unnecessarily wordy posts about things no one but me cares about' !!

[michaeljoncarter]

Not to be mean, but to be mean, Jon was an annoying kid and Chris is so much better. Chris' whole character arc is so good and Clark and Lois adopting a child was such a good concept. Clark doing for a kid what his Ma and Pa did to him will never not be better. Also, what is your opinion of the twins Lois and Clark adopted recently? And how do you fill about Kon (kinda) stealing Mon's place as an adoptive brother of Clark? I just don't get why Clark can't have two brothers instead of one.

the twins are… fine? i've honestly never had less of an opinion on something. they're there. i don't hate them. that's about it. honestly, i feel like the fact that i've gotten approximately 900 asks talking about all the various superkids over the past couple days and not a single person thought to mention the twins says more about their impact that i could lol

and oh boy. ok. i have MANY thoughts about the mess that is the current version of mon-el and about mon & kon in general. this is about to be stupidly long and borderline incomprehensible

the crimes committed against mon-el in rebirth have nothing to do with kon. this is yet another thing that's been done solely to prop up jon

i'm clinging to every scrap of self restraint i have to not fly off into a whole spiel about the specifics of it because like. jesus christ. it is zero exaggeration probably the worst comic i've ever read. but in short, bendis essentially turned the entire legion into a jon kent fanclub in his cursed losh reboot, and mon was just one of many casualties

he was turned into this weird oc whose only character traits are being jealous of jon, throwing temper tantrums, and saying shit with weirdly racist undertones. and also he's kryptonian now for some reason. and a biological member of the el family. and jon is his grandfather. i guess. hell is real

and just because i know most people only know mon from the cursed hexed evil cw supergirl version, which really isn't that different from bendis's version (i doubt that's a coincidence tbh), i gotta stress how completely opposite that character is to how he's been characterized in the comics

again, not gonna get into specifics in the interest of not having this turn into a novella, but here's a quick comparison just to give you a sense of how bad it really is. (i'm sure there are better examples in older comics, but i read bendis's losh at the same time i was reading the New Krypton saga, and this one in particular caused me physical pain)

(Adventure Comics (2009) #11)

(Legion of Super-Heroes (2021) #9)

(Adventure Comics (2009) #11)

(Legion of Super-Heroes (2021) #9)

i'm focusing on mon here, but again, the ENTIRE legion was just as horribly character assassinated for jon's benefit. mon's was one of the worst imo, but it wasn't the worst. spare a thought for the brainiac 5 girlies, who had to see their boy drained of literally all recognizable traits & turned into to jon's Quirky, airheaded sidekick

here's another New Krypton comparison just because

(Last Stand of New Krypton #3)

(Superman (2018) #15)

none of this was done for kon. again, it's another case of everything about a character being completely rewritten to make jon the main character of their story instead

before all this, mon & kon existed at the same time with zero problems for years. they were both allowed be in clark's life. one of my favorite storylines is actually mon's stint as superman stand-in during New Krypton, which does a lot of really good developing/exploring of their relationship. again, gonna hold back from getting into the specifics of it, but it essentially turns them into foils, and it's.... so good. they were so cute

(Superman #694)

even before this, they had a fairly lengthy history together. they haven't directly interacted that much compared to other characters, but still, i'd say erasing mon from superman comics arguably takes more away from kon than it does clark?

legion timelines are too convoluted to get into, but the 1990 shenanigans deleted clark from mon's origin, and in 1994, it was remixed so the role he played was given to kon instead

(Superboy (1994) #19)

it wasn't until infinite crisis in 2006 that the original version came back. since rebirth superman is post-crisis superman and flashpoint hit in 2011, if you wanna be pedantic about it, the rebirth version of clark only really knew mon for ~5 years, but (apart from a ~3 year blip post-infinite crisis) he & kon have had a relationship since 1994

they met for the first time less than 2 years after kon was first introduced, and his relationship with mon was what got kon involved with the legion for the first time... which has all now been completely erased because now jon and only jon is the main character of legion comics

(and it's not just kon this happened to. kara & clark have also had their histories with the legion and everyone in it completely wiped (along with just... the history of the legion as a whole) to give jon center stage)

honestly, i wish it'd been done in an attempt to give kon a more significant role in clark's life. that would be way less frustrating, way easier to fix than the mess we have now, and would also mean there was finally someone at dc who gave a shit about someone other than jon