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michaeljoncarter · 11 months

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i always thought chris and damian's potential friendship could be a lot more interesting than jon and damian. the fact that the origin of chris did not prevent clark from considering him his son could create amusing dynamic with damian's early life views "blood matters, adoption is not" instead, we've been receiving a narrative "supersons are the only real children of superman and batman" from dc for years 😒

i've been wanting to ramble for an obnoxiously long time about about all the issues i have with jon, especially as he relates to chris, his relationship with damian & just… this whole recent shift toward focusing more and more on biological relationships for a while now, so i'm gonna take this ask as an opportunity to just get it out of my system

this is about to be an absolute BEHEMOTH of a post. like seriously, apologies in advance for how absurdly long it's about to be lol

this was/is my biggest issue with both Supersons & jon as a concept even before i really got into superman comics, and jesus christ. it is SO much worse when you go back and see everything that was scrapped to try and make way for jon, and nowhere is that more true than with chris. the absolutely insane amounts of potential just deleted for seemingly no other reason than wanting to give clark a biological son instead of an adopted one WILL make you want to strangle someone

seriously, i know most people are probably at least vaguely aware chris existed, but i don't feel like enough people know enough about him to realize just how fucking criminal him being replaced with jon really was. i certainly didn't, anyway. all i really knew was that lois & clark already had an adopted son pre-flashpoint, which was already enough to make the optics of deleting him in favor of the biokid not great, but it's sooooo much more annoying than that

not to be dramatic, but having a character of this caliber sitting right the fuck there (with a final appearance pre-flashpoint that was literally just setup to make him as easy as possible for future writers to bring back) but deciding to delete him in favor of a character as painfully generic as jon kent should count as some sort of crime against humanity

(and this is all without even getting into arguably the worst part about him being erased (and then brought back but evil & with a different name), which is that chris was co-created by richard donner & named christopher as a tribute to christopher reeve. dc what the fuck is wrong with you)

but it's ESPECIALLY frustrating since one of jon's main claims to fame is being the super to damian's bat. you could not have created a more perfect counterpart to damian wayne than christopher kent if you'd tried

this character was made for damian, and i really might mean that literally. after spiraling down this rabbit hole, i'm pretty convinced damian & chris were originally created as a set. like... did you know they were introduced at the same time? because, again, i know i certainly didn't

but we'll circle back around to that in a minute because all the weird connections & suspiciously convenient timing aside, intentional or not, they were an absolute goldmine of potential, plotwise and thematically

either dc just made characters that perfectly mirrored each other by complete accident & missed a hell of an opportunity by failing to notice it OR it was intentional and they just decided to throw it all out in favor of replacing chris with creativity void that is jon because... a biological son seemed more appealing? and/or easily marketable/adaptable? i'm honestly not sure which is worse lol

these two were perfect foils. seriously, there are so many little details about chris's character that are just damian-but-backwards. they mirror each other so closely that even their literal births reflect, with damian being a human grown in an artificial womb like a kryptonian and chris being a kryptonian born naturally like a human, and they so easily could've had such an incredibly unique & complex relationship

but, yeah, probably the most important contrast between them was the (initial) fixation on genetics & bloodlines with damian vs chris fully rejecting his biological parents & considering himself 100% a kent. this has been a problem with damian's character for a while now, but jon & Supersons really took it to the next level, and i hate it

in the interest of not letting this spiral into a 20k+ hatepost, i'm gonna try to not get too in the weeds about the specifics, here, but in this post-Supersons world we live in, i've seen quite a few people (including, most recently, tom king) talking like this shift away from focusing on adopted family in favor of blood started with damian's introduction. and... i really couldn't disagree more. if anything, damian was kind of the anti-jon kent

i famously hate a LOT about morrison's batman era, but their handling of damian's integration into the batfam is the one area where i feel like they (and the other writers of this era) absolutely stomped just about every other writer that's come after. it really seems like they were well aware of just how bad a biological kid could end up being for a story where adopted/chosen/non-traditional family is such a core component, and they were very careful about how they went about it

say what you will about morrison era batman (and believe me, i know there is plenty to say), but there was way less of this weird friction between damian's character & the chosen family aspect of the batfam

i'm not about to sit here and pretend i prefer morrison's damian as an individual character over tomasi/gleason's. damian's character arc in Batman & Robin (2011)/Robin: Son of Batman blows what little, incredibly subtle character development he had pre-flashpoint out of the water--not exactly surprising, seeing as tomasi/gleason tend to be more character-focused & morrison really just loves their huge, complex plots, with character work tending to take more of a back seat

he's a much more solid, fully formed, just overall better character now, but specifically in terms of handling him in relation to the capital-T Themes of the batfam, morrison was very focused on pushing back against the idea that being the "blood son" made him more legitimate than the other batkids, which is something that writers since have largely not really cared about and/or seemed to actively disagree with

i'm gonna come back to this weird shift toward bruce-centrism with his character in a minute, but it's just pretty wild to me that "SON OF BATMAN" has basically become the zero-negative-connotations tagline for his character & how he introduces himself 99% of the time when that was originally something that was framed like this

(Batman #657)

Supersons definitely didn't cause this issue, but it definitely didn't help

damian & jon are both characters whose concepts are pretty heavily based around the same ideas of like... bloodlines & inheritance & all that, but jon's entire character is based around just accepting the inherent value & importance of who your (specifically biological) parents are at face value with ZERO interest in taking any sort of critical look at how important genetics are to just about every aspect of him

a character like damian shouldn't even be allowed in the same zip code as a character like jon, let alone given a teamup book dedicated to making the fact that they're the blood sons of batman & superman the basis of their entire relationship, and equating damian's place in the batfam to jon's place in the "superfam" (which didn't/doesn't even really exist anymore because literally everyone else was deleted in favor of jon), and hurtling right past just failing to push back against the dicey subtext right into just kinda… endorsing it

not to be calling out this random person, but i feel like this comment under one of the issues from the Last Son arc on a website i've obviously never used kinda sums up the problem with the unintentional messaging of Supersons, and it makes me want to actually die every time i see it

there's nothing inherently wrong with stories that center around biological family, obviously, and there's nothing inherently wrong with the concept of a character popping out a kid of their own that grows up to be like them, but the problem is these stories aren't happening in a void

when you have stories that have historically been as focused on these capital-T Themes of found family & adoption as these, you need to be careful with how you handle something like the addition of a biological child. shifting more and more away from focusing on families of choice to fixate more and more on blood & biological relation ends up saying something whether you intend it to or not

the reason this drives me particularly insane specifically re: chris is that his concept could've made up for the exact thematic issues with damian that sticking him next to a character with a concept like jon's has brought to the forefront & shined a giant, uncritical spotlight on

intentional or not, chris was/is exactly the sort of counterbalance a character like damian needs because... i don't know how else to phrase it other than damian is a character that needs to be challenged. he needs someone in the story that he can thematically butt heads with so he doesn't end up just butting heads with The Theme itself

originally, tim was kinda the like... adoption advocate, for lack of a better term, put up against him, but imo this could a bit problematique. making him conflict with someone from the same family unit just kinda makes it come off as weird favoritism

like... bruce deciding damian should stay with dick after he came back from the "dead" and going to team up with tim was very thematically appropriate, so good job there, team, but the way bruce was just like "wow, thanks for raising my kid while i was gone, dick… and keep up the good work! because i'm moving to japan! bye!" and never looked back lol??

there needs to be something there to balance him out & serve as a sort of counterargument to the whole "blood son = real son" idea, but imo it'd work a lot better if it were someone outside the batfam so we wouldn't have to sacrifice the relationships there & make the dynamics all weird in service of Theme

chris could've done all that and then some because it's not just that he considers his adoptive parents his real parents. it's also that the biological parents he rejected were both villains

chris had nothing but "bad" blood. his mother and father were both genocidal maniacs whose goal in life was to enslave and/or wipe out the human race, and he was born & raised in a kryptonian superprison like some sort of alien bane

by all accounts, he probably should've turned out to be an absolute terror, but he DIDN'T because the idea that people don't have to be defined by their genes or the circumstances of their birth is like... the entire point (of post-crisis superman comics, especially. which is one of the biggest reasons why jon is so goddamn annoying, but that's its own 50k+ word post)

and this is the other big thing i find so annoying about the change in narrative around damian's character post-flashpoint. his decision to leave his old life behind & become a hero tends to be framed more like… choosing one biological parent over the other. like everything about him was just as genetically pre-determined as everyone else in this universe, but lucky for him, not all of his genes were evil, so he had a fighting chance!

and this is true not just of him but like... 99% of other "good" characters who have villain bioparents. they almost always have one bioparent who's a villain and the other is good or at least more neutral--damian, kon, (preboot) joey, rose, lian, spoiler, obsidian, jade, jackson hyde, emiko queen, etc, etc, etc

don't get me wrong, i'm not saying i dislike the whole one "good" parent, one "evil" parent trope as a concept. i'm a huge sucker for it when it's done right. that's basically just a list of my faves, and with most of them, this is a nonissue. i'm just saying there are almost no good characters who come from purely "bad" blood

we're getting more and more characters whose entire personality is based around & whose goodness is attributed almost entirely to who their biological parents are, but there's a serious lack of anyone the complete opposite side of the spectrum. we need more characters who reject their families altogether and exist completely in spite of where they came from & who they were born to sort of balance the thematic scales

there might be others that're just slipping my mind, but in current comics, cassandra cain is the only prominent character i can think of who is a "good" person despite coming from from nothing but "bad" blood

(i mean, i guess you could argue all the brainiac descendants still technically exist in current continuity, but like... do they? do they, really?) (EDIT: no, they do not! not in a way that makes them applicable here, anyway. i forgot vril dox ii was brought back in rebirth & retconned to be exactly like his father (thank you, anon who pointed this out). so this is actually just another example of the next point....... l o l)

instead of more characters like this, we've been getting the opposite. kids of villains who were fundamentally good and pointedly nothing like their parents have been rewritten to just be exactly like their shitty parents, actually, because evil is just as genetic as heroism, i guess

this is something that's been annoying me for a while, but i just kinda assumed my super cynical takeaway was just my own personal biases making me read way more into it than was actually there. i'm sure that's definitely a big contributing factor, and this wasn't even something i was really gonna get into, but in the time it took my slow ass to actually get around to answering this, i'll be damned if if tom king didn't go and announce his new, Supersons-inspired character, and just flat out say that the exact same, fucked up message i've felt like i was getting from dc for a while now is exactly what her character is meant to be about

now, i can't judge a character that hasn't even been introduced too much, and to be honest, a character like this seems like much less of an issue (in this respect, anyway) in wonder woman comics, which have tended to have more of a focus more on biological family (with diana and hippolyta and even kinda some versions of donna (and also… y'know... lyta)) than batman & superman comics

this wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue if it were just happening on its own, but it's that this is yet ANOTHER character on the way whose concept begins and ends at "biological child of hero," where it's just kinda meant to be understood that means they'll be a hero, too. just like the shift in how damian's framed, it just seems reflective of this larger trend where the the underlying theme of dc as a whole is increasingly starting to feel like "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

(eta from the future to account for king's bullshit ww run: somehow, it's even worse than we could've imagined lmfao. but regardless, my point here was more about this tk quote & how it perfectly encapsulates this whole issue, less about the actual character herself, so i feel like it still stands. she's still annoying as all hell, but just for different (and arguably worse?) reasons than we were originally led to believe... lol)

and again, there's nothing inherently wrong with a character popping out a kid that takes after them. the issue with it as an overarching Theme is that while it makes for a cute little story about makin' ma an' pa proud in some places, it makes for some real bleak, depressing shit in others, and unfortunately, chris is a perfect example of that

when he was "brought back" in rebirth, intentional or not, he was changed to better fit the new theme of post-jon superman comics and turned into just... a mirror version of jon, basically. instead of being a character who pointedly was not defined by his shitty parents & horrible upbringing, he is now, of course, COMPLETELY defined by who his biological parents are. he's just lor-zod, son of general zod & commander ursa, who was just kinda doomed from the start

(Action Comics #997)

(booster being complicit in this arc is one of the worst things that's ever happened to me btw. somebody please revoke jurgens's custody i can't do this anymore)

(and i seriously doubt anyone cares enough to bring this up, but just for posterity, i feel the need to acknowledge that, yes, i'm aware this was an alt future version, but he showed up later in other comics acting pretty much exactly the same as a kid, so... lol)

anyway. i'm not trying to accuse any dc writers of being weird, cartoonesque supervillains sitting around twirling their evil mustaches and like... deliberately including themes of biological determinism or whatever the fuck. i'm sure it's all unintentional, but like i said, when you have a story that's based around one message and you rewrite it in a way that conveys essentially the opposite message, it ends up saying something regardless of intent

this thing where we take characters whose concepts are all about them being fundamentally, pointedly good despite where & who they came from and turn them into supervillains just as bad (or worse) than their shitty parents has always been a problem--the last couple decades of constant character assassination for joey wilson is probably the most obvious example--but it's gotten noticeably worse over the past few years

all this to say i think not just damian but dc as a whole would've really benefited from a character like chris. in superman comics specifically, ignoring everything that's happened post-reboot, he would've been/was a great way to offset some of the issues caused by tt03's lex clone retcon making kon biologically related to clark & turning him into yet another "only half evil" character. execution notwithstanding, i definitely think the new version of kon's origin is more interesting than the original, but it would've been nice if we'd gotten a character to fill the niche westfield clone kon left empty

chris was so fundamentally incompatible with the whole "apple doesn't fall far from the tree" idea, he wouldn't even have really had to do anything. he would've been doing some pretty heavy lifting, thematically speaking, just by existing. fixating on blood & genes to the extent that they have probably would've been a bit more difficult with a character like him standing in the same panel

obviously, just swapping out one character for the other wouldn't fix everything. the issues with jon & all this other mess are just symptomatic of the much larger issues at dc, but it's kinda hard not to wonder when things so easily could've been so different, which is how i'm gonna segue into the WAY less serious part of this post because i'm really not convinced chris being such a perfect fit & counterbalance was just an accident

this is fully some tinfoil hat level nonsense. take everything i'm about to say with a grain of salt, and just know i'm fully aware of how pepe silvia-esque i'm about to sound

so... if we're going by cover dates, Last Son (the arc that introduced chris) started in december 2006, the same month that Batman & Son (the arc that introduced damian) wrapped up. that they were introduced consecutively would already be kinda weird, but the thing that makes it really weird is just how similar the two storylines are

to massively oversimplify, both arcs were about the secret biological son of one of clark/bruce's most dangerous/obsessive villains (and i'm not a fan of morrison's talia, but that is how she was being portrayed at the time) that no one knew existed until one day they were suddenly dropped in clark/bruce's lap as a part of some sort of world domination plot by their villain parent(s), and both end with damian/chris disappearing with said villain parent while trying to help stop their evil plan

and this was right at the beginning of the era of the batman & superman titles running pretty closely parallel. not too long after Last Son ended, the whole World Without/Against Superman during New Krypton also kicked off the same month as Battle for the Cowl

right alongside dick's batman era, superman comics had mon-el (who i always feel obligated to note is nothing like the cw version. please god) serving as replacement superman after clark was forced to leave the planet to deal with the new krypton thing & struggling to adjust and uphold the symbol for clark

there was no real interaction between them or acknowledgement of the similarities there, either, but later on, there was a little crossover comic about the similar states of the batfam & superfam in this era

(World's Finest (2009))

all this to say seemingly intentionally parallel storylines in the batman & superman titles that went largely unacknowledged weren't at all unheard of around the time chris & damian were introduced. it really doesn't feel like too much of a stretch to me to think that damian & chris could've been part of that trend

…

and also the artist for Last Son, who designed chris, and the artist for Batman & Son, who designed damian, are brothers. i KNOW that doesn't automatically make everything they do connected!! but you can't just find out something like this while digging for connections for your conspiracy theory post and then NOT mention it. this is the kinda shit red string & pushpin people dream about at night

anyway.

just to be clear, i'm not saying think chris was created specifically for a future teamup with damian. he was pretty clearly meant to be his own, standalone character, but it just kinda seems to me like they were conceptualized with each other in mind

but conspiracy theorizing aside, intentional or not, there was a truly maddening amount of potential here

their basic character concepts were so similar. again, to massively over simplify, they were both the sons of villains raised in secret in some sort of Evil Organization, damian with the league & chris with zod's loyalists, both the son or "heir" of the leader of said organization, and both ended up rejecting the way they were raised in favor of joining their respective heroic fathers instead

characterization-wise, though, they were exact opposites. their overall circumstances were similar on the surface, but their actual experiences could not have been less alike. neither childhood was ideal, obviously, and growing up in the league definitely had its downsides, but overall, damian was treated like a prince & kinda spoiled rotten, where chris was treated like dirt & horrifically neglected/abused, and they came out of their respective origins with personalities & outlooks that were just as opposite

i could ramble on about every single little contrasting detail in their characters for days, but jesus christ look at how ridiculously long this post is already

there's just so much that could've been with them!! so many things about their respective characters that could've played off of each other in such interesting ways. you already had a ton to work with just in chris's concept on its own, but combined with some of his later arcs?? the whole nightwing thing could've so easily been reworked into something amazing

chris was so unique and well thought out, he would've been an absolutely perfect fit & done a lot for damian and superman comics and just dc as a whole. he had more than enough staying power, and everything about his erasure is so frustrating. if you haven't read much/any preboot superman, i really can't stress enough just how easy it would've been for them to bring him back. i'm not exaggerating when i say his very last appearance from right before flashpoint hit was literally just setup to make him as easy as possible to bring back after the reboot

(Superman: War of the Supermen #4)

he was re-babified and ready to go. the less savory aspects of his later storyline were already being kinda soft retconned away via phantom zone memory weirdness, so they wouldn't have even had to address that--not that that would've been a valid excuse for not using him, anyway, seeing as nobody's actually given a shit about continuity in years, especially where superman comics are concerned

it's just so disappointing that a character as stacked with potential as chris has been essentially erased in the main universe and relegated to extremely occasional elseworlds appearances in favor of jon, whose incredibly generic, one-note concept really would've been a much better fit for a cute but depthless one-off character from a random alternate universe

he was cute enough as a kid, sure, but he was always much more of an accessory to the other characters around him than a unique, standalone character himself. the past few years have just been book after book after book of writers trying and failing to mine a shred of potential from his shallow concept and find a way to make him individual or unique or necessary in any way (and stomping all over the stories he's meant to be adding to in the process), which is annoying enough on its own, but that it really seems to have happened for no other reason than dc preferring the idea of biological kids makes it so much worse

it sucks, man, but... well, i guess at the very least, we'll always have Multiversity: The Just with its weird, spoiled brat au of damian & chris's supersons on earth-nepotism to give us a taste of what could've been 💔

#ask #anonymous #damian wayne #chris kent #dc critical #and for blacklists:#anti jon kent #LONG POST #god this is ridiculously long lmao #ths is like 6 different half-written posts all stitched into one so. forgive the mess #(eta way later bcs i reskimmed this months after the fact and it's bothering me:#i did a lot of (unintentional but still) conflating of adoption & 'chosen family'#bc i was talking about the batfam ((mostly) adopted family) and preboot superfam ((mostly) chosen family) at the same time/interchangeably #but those aren't the same thing #actually there's a lot in here that i don't like the wording of/don't think i explained very well in retrospect #but given that i was mostly yelling about the de-legitimizing of adopted kids #the fact that i kinda accidentally did the same thing by misnomer-ing especially sticks out & felt like it needed to be addressed lol)

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