#give me kon el

[jazz020]

People being annoyed that they gave Jon Kon’s 90s undercut: 😠

Me sitting here with a headcannon that Jon sometime tries to look like Kon cause he was the first Superboy and is kinda really cool and he’s also Jon’s kind of older brother that he looks up to a lot: 🧍‍♀️

[cosmicpoutine]

i just miss him a lil bit

[vinelark]

i do relish digging into the angst of the various murder attempts between jason and tim, but i also enjoy the hilarity of them both being so completely over the emotional baggage of it to the point of using it in their brotherly spats. jason comes to ask tim a favor and tim's like "wow lots of audacity asking a favor from the guy you tried to MURDER" and jason says "I will finish the job right now don't fucking test me" and tim says "i wish you would then i wouldnt have to listen to your overblown dramatic monologues ever again" and jason immediately gets him into a headlock and tim starts shrieking and wailing that jason's trying to kill him again and jason's struggling to get a hand over his mouth becuz if he goes on too long kon will show up from wherever he is and jason will have to go on the run for a couple months. and everyone else just has to live with this

yeah once they’re out of Active Murder Zone tim has the upper hand every time because he’s got the kon trump card. even if jason has bizarro on speed dial it’s not the same because bizarro has no beef with tim and meanwhile kon is at all times one wrong look away from dropping jason into an active volcano

[plutonicbees]

young just us: the game 👾

based off of the scott pilgrim video game, i wanted to play around with the idea of what the yj98 team would look like in the same style.. mostly i just wanted to draw everybody as silly little pixel sprites

(character sprite pngs + mount justice landscape under cut)

[abacistat]

hi tumblr did you know that um hi tumblr

[takethelx3]

when ur platonic bro is just helping u stretch while u platonically yap about ur MAGNUM DO-- detective skills.

[pup-pee]

they makeme ill

another kiss on the cheek drawing as a treat 4 me

[were-wolverine]

thinking about. how both tim and dick lost their best friends. ones they never thought they would have to lose because of their powers. ones they never thought they’d outlive. ones they got back.

(this is about donna & wally/kon & bart)

[who-always-pays-their-taxes]

[hyperblue]

kon: so. i was thinking

tim: uh-huh

kon: that i may be you know. into dudes? like. just a little b-

tim, straddling his lap immediately: wanna find out for sure

kon: wait what-

tim: don't you dare to take that back, i was waiting years for this

[demonic0angel]

Sketches for DP x DC ideas that I have (click for clarity)

1) Duke’s been seeing Danny around Gotham for a little while, and he’s always thought that he looked like a miniature star. For the first time, he meets Danny in person and is surprised to see just how cute he is up close.

2) Jason introduces his girlfriend to the family and now they’re trying to figure out why she’s so adaptable and seemingly used to their craziness. In reality, she has a bunch of crazy siblings too….

3) Danny is a creature of the pit. The moment Damian tamed him within the League of Assassins, Danny had stuck to his side and protected him. Unfortunately, none of the Batfamily know about his existence…

4) Jazz saves an injured bird and it’s been with her for quite some time. She’s very fond of it. Now if only Jason could somehow turn back into a human and come back to Gotham to see his dad and maybe ask Jazz Fenton on a date.

5) Danny, weakened and shrunk, tags along with Batman in order to save his strength, knowing that just his presence would be protection. Batman is oblivious to his little passenger. Everyone else is wondering if they’re imagining the Tinker Bell wannabe on his head.

6) Batman expects Danny to fight a Poison Ivy-esque villain, but instead, Danny and his hacker friend seem to be encouraging her??

7) Conner falls in love with an affectionate half-ghost who has more in common with him than he thinks.

8) Stephanie meets a cute boy as her civilian self. Score! Now if only she could figure out why he kind of has a lot of similarities to a certain vigilante she knows…

[faceless-ghostt]

well... welcome back to Meme redraw hell ig. Pt 5

will these ever end? idk, probably ┐⁠(⁠´⁠ー⁠｀⁠)⁠┌

(references and rambles under the cut)

I'm still not completely happy with how I draw Thad but I'm getting there slowly, incredibly slowly. Same with Kon, he's not there yet but he's much closer. and I swear that isn't the usual outfit I draw him in, I swear I can do better ToT

Mindless rambles about my struggles with designs aside I've been trying to post more, mainly to get me back in the habit of drawing, but I am working on a larger, not large, but larger project that may or may not have to do with a Young Justice 98 and FNAF mash up and one of the characters is absolutely fucking me over. So I'm just doing easy drawings until my brain agrees with my arms enough to actually draw what I want to draw. I don't think these drawings are things I'll put on the Internet because they are just random drawings, but I'll probably share them to the YJ98 discord server. but I personally think this is a fun AU I am currently making and it will be forced on the world soon, kicking and screaming.

idk why I'm even rambling, probably because it's 2:30 in the morning and my brain is melting from multiple weeks of shitty sleep but ajdgakudgshsixhsv

uh, shameless plug moment, Join the YJ98 discord server that is pinned on my profile, it's fun and great and I want to yap with more YJ fans!

[yj-98]

six versions of kon! <3 and some conner kents, template from @/oliveroctavius! used this as an excuse for a style study :]

[jesncin]

Okay, I'll bite, what are your feelings on the trans conner pitch?

Oh boy! Thank you for tossing me this bone because I have a lot of mixed feelings!

I notice that people online are very hot and cold about the Trans Superboy Pitch, they either love it or hate it and that doesn't leave a lot of room for nuance + discussion. So to be respectful to a fellow trans peer in the industry, I want to do a fair review/analysis of Skyrocket: the trans Conner Kent pitch by Magdalene Visaggio.

My general takeaway from the pitch is that I like the premise, but the details fumble the execution for me. I can really feel from reading the pitch that Visaggio cares about Superboy. She understands that he's a very weird legacy character who has struggled to find proper footing in the DC Universe after all these years. An effective legacy character is one who is able to spin off and expand upon the themes of the character whose mantle they carry. But the cheesy whatever-goes 90's-ness of Superboy's original run didn't give future writers a lot to work with in terms of a Superman Legacy Character.

It's why I genuinely believe the later retcon reveal that -part of Conner's DNA is from Lex Luthor- is a fantastic addition to his character. It takes a character who was just kind of screwing off to gentrify Hawaii back into the center of Superman's good vs evil conflict. But now Conner's problem is that his story is too tied to his origin and Superman's shadow. Placing Conner with the Kents in Smallville afterwards made him narratively redundant. What's next for him?

So let's dig into the pitch!

I like what's at the heart of this pitch. It's a very season-3-ATLA-Zuko "honor wasn't all it's cracked up to be" arc and I think that suits Conner's character really well! It's the details I have gripes with:

"Conner has been largely relegated to the Jason Todd of the Superfamily" oof, haha that's not a particularly fair characterization.

The constant comparing of Superman to Christian imagery. He's described as basically "Jesus goddamn Christ" in the pitch. The Tyrannical Kryptonians are named Saint, Shepherd and Savior. No surprise I don't like seeing a character who allegorically represented Jewish immigrants to be constantly compared to Christian imagery and deified.

It's inevitable with pitching to the company, but the pitch is bogged down by a lot of convoluted plot points. I get that it's necessary to pitch event tie-ins and universe hopping shenanigans, but it's a lot.

Leland feels like a plot device in this. I'm sure there were plans to flesh out the brotherly clone relationship between him and Conner so that he can feel like his own character, but from the summary he just kind of revolves around Conner the way the pitch describes Conner revolving around Superman. Oops!

Conner's relation to Luthor and Superman works as a story about legacy, bloodlines and the things parents pass down to their kids. It's best when handled thematically and not literally because it's easy to get into essentialist "good genes" vs "evil genes" near-eugenics talking points. Unfortunately this pitch has a lot of that vibe. Leland has more Lex genes so he's super smart. Conner and Leland are able to start a schism in the Future Tyrannical Kryptonian House by "proving their truer genetic link to the original Superman, unsullied by thousands of years of tinkering" thereby gaining allies. Not great!

The part where Conner wants to find "his own Metropolis" by moving to Dripping Springs, Texas. That's Jinny Hex's field of operations, so is it really his own space? I would've just given Conner a new town so he can better stand on his own and build out a unique cast system.

Okay let's talk about the trans stuff!

I get that it makes for an Iconic Visual Superhero Moment, but I really don't like the part where Conner steps through a magical crystal and pops out the other side as a trans woman. It robs her of having that discovery on her own. The pitch says "I believe that this is as natural a move as Iceman's coming out". And just?? Man, remember when Jean Grey read Iceman Bobby Drake's mind and robbed him of his agency by outing him through that invasion of privacy? For a pitch all about Conner's journey of defining herself, it weirdly robbed her of that moment.

The pitch does such a good job talking about how Conner feels like her whole life revolves around Superman and how pointless wanting to be Superman feels now that Jon Kent has taken the mantle. She has Clark's genes, goes to Clark's hometown school, is raised by Clark's parents and all that. So then why is she eventually named after the women in Clark's life? Constance "Connie" Lara Kent. Clark's Kryptonian mom and human grandma? Was the world so small that she could not name herself after anyone else or come up with a new name? Connie doesn't even get to name herself, her new name is one Martha Kent bestows her with. It's hypocritical, and doesn't have the same impact that Superman giving Superboy a Kryptonian name does.

Speaking of which, this right here is my biggest gripe. It's not in the pitch itself but?? Wait- why go on about how Conner deserves a name that's not given to her and then turn around and make Martha name her? Sure, Connie comes up with the superhero name "Skyrocket" herself but surely she also deserves to name herself considering the thesis the pitch built up about self discovery and agency right?

Also with all due respect, this is the whitest queer take on Conner's identity. I wish white trans people could understand that you can have multiple true names that reflect different parts of you.

When Clark gives Superboy the name "Kon-El" it matters that it's given. It ties so well to the idea of familial acceptance into a nearly-extinct culture. You wouldn't know how to reclaim that part of your identity when that culture's been wiped out, so of course it's an honor to be trusted with a name that preserves Krypton's culture. This is a common practice with diaspora reclaiming cultural names from closed cultures, they are gifted their names by someone more culturally connected. I think the pitch having Martha name Connie is trying to echo this, but it doesn't hit the same without that cultural context. It also undercuts the genuine joy Conner felt from finally having a name he truly identifies with. Conner was only ever referred to as Superboy before then. When Clark gives him the name Kon El, Conner cries out that Kon El is his "real name". It's one of his defining moments, and to have that be diminished by saying "It's still a name someone else gave him" is so disappointing.

Then there's the design.

This is gonna lean more into preference, but I'm not the biggest fan of this design! I get what it's going for but it has too much going on everywhere. It also doesn't have that proto-punk look original Conner had, so it ends up not feeling like him. It's too superhero, and not enough casual-wear-on-a-supersuit that Conner sports really well. I see how it fits in with the everyone-in-Superfam-is-wearing-jackets-era, but I also think those new designs don't look good either. Especially Supergirl's. I feel like Conner should be more punk post transition. No respectability beam for her!

Also the name Skyrocket? It's giving knock off-brand toy vibes to me I'm sorry D: People on twidder suggested Supernova and that sounds way better! Even Visaggio stated she prefers that name so you can't be mad at me for this.

Overall big conclusion feelings!

I've been following Visaggio's work for a while because it's awesome seeing trans people getting picked up in comics. While there are some things about her writing I like, for the most part I've felt like her work isn't my cup of tea. I tried reading up a bunch of interviews she's in to try to understand why her writing wasn't clicking with me, and what I discovered is that we have fundamentally different approaches to queer storytelling.

From Paste Magazine. I get where she's coming from, trans characters deserve to have multi-faceted narratives that don't overly center how they're othered at the expense of further characterization. But also? I just actually find the interior lives of queer people and identity interesting. I like writing the kind of escapism and joy that's informed by surviving and inheriting hardships rather than erasing those things or skipping past it. I think this is why Connie is robbed of her trans discovery in the pitch. Why we don't get to watch her grapple with gender identity in a political way. Queer stories about queer struggles are considered archaic and unnecessary nowadays. It's part of the escapism Visaggio values in her work; to give a place of respite for trans readers from the cruelty they experience in reality, but I don't connect to stories like that personally. Whenever I try to share queer Indonesian art and writing with my peers, I'm often told it's too painful to look at. That our pain doesn't fit the modern expectation for happy, empowering queer stories. "trans people get enough hardships in real life, they don't need that in their fiction" Visaggio still talks about her newest projects like this btw.

I'd love to see a take on Conner that more holistically continues the political immigrant themes of Superman. The white parts of fandom love interpreting Conner's identity crisis as primarily a queer struggle, but it's also one of a person grappling with his mixed heritage. He's a diaspora kid separated by a generation away from Krypton. He has yet to make peace with the Luthor side of his identity, one borne of generational trauma and resentment for one's roots. Instead of a take where his queerness separates him from the pressures of legacy, I want to see a Conner take that has themes that are intersectional about his mixed diaspora and queer identity. I want his superficial punk aesthetic to graduate into actual punk ideals. The anti-establishment and radical love philosophies of punk culture would make such a cool extension of Superman themes and it would make so much sense that someone facing so many intersections of marginalization would be radicalized from their experience. I want a queer Conner who isn't just empowering and idealistic, I want one that also gives space for queer readers to feel like their pain is seen too. Conner isn't "Truth, Justice and the American Way" he's famously "Truth, Justice, My Way".

There's a tendency in media criticism to treat marginalized talent as infallible, and I don't think that fair to creatives like Visaggio. Being able to look at their ideas with nuance instead of essentializing it as being Good or Trash is the best way to respect diverse creativity. And my nuanced feelings are that a white queer person who looks at Conner's story and just sees the queer part and dismisses the diaspora mixed heritage side of him,,, is not going to give me the Conner story I want to see.

[magicalcreeks]

If I don’t see Kon and Lois teaming up to stress the fuck outta Clark in MAWS then I don’t want it

[takethelx3]

WIP I'm not going to find time to finish bc busy. Sad.