#90s superboy x reader
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I Hear Their Heartbeats
Kon-El Kent X Batsis! Reader
Warnings:suggestive content, heavy angst, injuries & explicit language
Words:1471
Arthur's notes: Kon & Conner are twins and are Lois & Clark's sons. Y/N is a clone of Batman & Wonder-woman. Third P. O. V
Y/N must go to Argo alone as her husband is no longer with her. But is he truly gone?
"how?.. How am I going to tell her M'gann? I should have.. I should have been the one.." Conner broke down in tears of complete guilt.
The funeral reception was held at Wayne Manor. Y/N stood with the Kent's by the memorial for her husband. She was torn in two. Her only love, her other half was now gone. She can't help but imagine him dying in so much pain. His brother's Jordan, Jonathan and Conner were nearby. Lois squeezed Clark's hand as she nearly shaked throughout. Many friends and family arrived paying their respects. The original team members came. Even some of the leaguers. Alfred and her parents, had been helping her through this difficult time. Bruce and Diana made themselves stand from afar so the rest of her family could do the same. Cassandra looked at her sister seeing everything she felt. She approaches with Tim, Duke and Stephanie. Cass didn't say a word but only hugged her. As they part Stephanie gave her the biggest hug she could.
"I'm so so sorry Y/N. It's OK if you want to cry" Steph said which made her cry "we're your family and we'll be here"
As they part Y/N dried her tears Duke hugs her.
"I'm sorry sis" he mumbled sincerely.
Tim then hugged her. She hugged him tight. Tim's heart broke not only did he lose his best friend, his brother. His sister lost her other half.
"he really did love you"
The Grayson's arrived. Dick held his sleeping daughter as they step to the widow. Y/N forced a kind smile. Barbara held Y/N's hands.
"there's no words I can say to take away your pain. Believe me I know exactly how it feels to lose someone whom you love" Barbara said as Y/N began to cry.
Dick hugged her as soon as Barbara parted. He kisses her forehead.
"Kon was a good man and a good husband to you. I am so sorry. He loved you so much" Dick sadly said.
Jason and Artemis had been on vacation when he got the call. He unfortunately was late. Jason was feeling terrible for not being there sooner. Jason arrived and approaches with Artemis and Tyler. She softly smiled to the Todd family. Jason smiled kindly hugging his sister.
"I am so sorry Y/N"
She nodded as she was unable to speak. Tyler hugged his aunt. She hugs him kissing his head. Tyler was in tears.
"it's OK to cry Tyler.. I've been crying all day" she told her nephew.
"I love you too" he said to which she smiled.
Damian entered with his girlfriend Rachel. He stepped to his sister. What should he say? What should he do? He imagined himself losing Rachel. That hurts too much but he realizes what Y/N would do for him. He quickly stepped to her and hugged her securely. As moments went by she felt overwhelmed, flustered. She appreciates the support but it was tearing her up inside, he wasn't here. As the funeral ended. Clark felt his eyes shaking as he touched his daughter-in-laws shoulder.
"you are welcome to stay in Argo"
Y/N began crying realizing they know. Clark hugged her along with Lois.
"you and M'gann are the daughters I never could have" she kisses her head "my heart is broken my son would have been.." Lois began to cry
"I know" Y/N said in tears
They had always been family to her throughout her life. Y/N sits in her car. Her hands began to shake as she reaches to her keys. She tried to make her hands stop shaking. She laid her head on the car wheel. She slowly began to cry as she couldn't hold it back any longer. Bruce's heart was broken to see his little girl in such heartbreak. Diana nearly cried to see her, daughter in so much pain. She held Bruce's hand
"she can't leave Bruce. We have to tell her to stay home"
"I know" Bruce agreed
Y/N sees her mom opening the car door. She turns her head to face her. Diana holds her daughters hand to guide her out of the car. She hugs her daughter as she began sobbing as her heart was torn in two. Y/N made herself calm down.
"come inside and get some rest. We can send your brothers and sisters to get your things" Bruce said
She gently shakes her head as more tears fell "I-I-I can't"
"Y/N we want you stay" Bruce pleaded rubbing her head
"no you don't understand.. I have to.. I have to go to Argo..." she began to sob "for my baby"
The family supported her as she grieved her terrible loss and helped her anyway they could. The Kent's visited her, bringing food for her. As her pregnancy progressed. Y/N soon found out she was not only pregnant with one baby but two. A baby boy and a baby girl..
"how long have you known?" Conner asked Dick forcing his emotions to go further down.
"4 weeks I know I should have told you and I know he's your brother but I wasn't sure until now. I.. I'm sorry"
"I.. I understand.. Does Y/N know?"
"she's 29 weeks and I'm afraid.. I don't know what state Kon will be in. I know added stress could put her in premature labor.. And that kind of stress"
"I also understand but.. We tell her as soon as soon as we get my brother"
Inside the Med-bay of the watchtower. Kon laid with only his pants on, with his chest bandaged from the deep wounds. He was hooked to IV fluids and his face covered with a cloth to help the burns. Leaving the phantom zone was quite painful. Conner stood close by tensely. He could hear his heart beating as it was slow. Every time he looked at Kon... It made him feel sick. Conner couldn't be more grateful that he's alive but it tore him to see him in so much pain. Conner sat in the chair focusing on his little twin brothers heartbeat... Clark entered the room with Lois. The parents saw their sons both asleep. Conner feels a soft blanket laid on him. He opens his eyes and smiles to his mother.
"go back to sleep" she softly said
Kon began to gain conscious as he then remembered...
He gasps, he heard the heartbeats "they're ok" he mumbled, opening his eyes. His wife.. And his babies are ok.
They rush to him Clark rubs his forehead "hey son, I'm so glad you're OK" Clark cried. "you feeling OK?"
"I'm fine Pa" Kon said shakily
Lois sobbed and kissed the side of his head.
"my sweet baby"
"hey Ma"
Conner placed his hand on his shoulder in tears.
"crybaby.." Kon mumbled
"shut up Kon" Conner cried.
Soon there after Jonathan and Jordan came to hug their older brother. Y/N sat on the bed with her hand on her bump flustered. Diana sat with Y/N as her daughter held her hand. She had a minor contraction so Diana insisted that she rest.
"I-I can't stay here mom" Y/N cried
"I know it's hard but be assured that he's alive Y/N"
"I know" she cried.
She couldn't risk leaving Argo as the twins were continually trying to kick and Kon couldn't risk leaving with his injuries too severe. Y/N panicked as her phone rung as it plopped back and forth in her hands. Diana propped pillows behind her so her back was supported. Y/N held it tightly seeing that it was Kon calling her. Diana kisses her head and leaves to give her privacy. She began to stutter and answers. Kon takes a deep breath as his family left to give him privacy.
"hey honey" he said.
"hi" her lips tremble
It was really him. She broke into joyous tears. Kon's heart wrenched craving her touch and to be able to hold her.
"I've really missed you so much.. Dammit Kon I thought.. I thought I was going to loss my mind.. I can't believe I'm talking to you" she sobbed "I-I-I can't believe you are alive"
Kon allowed his tears to fall rather than dry them away "I'm so so sorry.. I can't imagine how hard.. How-- I can't apologize enough for leaving you"
"don't.. Don't apologize.. I'm not mad at you. I could never be mad at you. I love you"
"I love you too. I could hear them before I--" Kon stuttered remembering that moment "and I hear you and our babies now. I missed that. I miss you so much babe, it's torture"
"it'll be over soon and then you can come back home to me, to our babies"
Requested taglist @too-strong-to-lose @asrainterstellar
#Conner Kent#Kon-El Kent#Conner Kent X M'gann#90s superboy x reader#Kon-El#Pregnant! Reader#Jaytemis#dickbabs#wonderbat#Clone reader#Pregnant#Conner(Young Justice)#Kon-El(90s Superboy)#temporary character death#Whump
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Have you considered writing one where Batboys or Superboy(Kon-el) meets an Anodite if you've already written one where Damian meets a reader who owns an Omnitrix
I haven't thought it this but that would be interesting.
he'd probably be freaked out about the form of it but then chill about it
he thinks that the abilities and powers of your form are cool and wants to know about the planet that it comes from
how did you inherit the powers? Are you from Anodyne?
He probably asks something stupid like if you're naked in full Anodite form and makes jokes about it
"BABE PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!" *bursts into a fit go giggles*
he likes that you'd be free spirited and kind of live to the beat of your won drum since he's like that
It is important that you have some moral compass but he just respects that you're not bound by the confines of society
it's comforting that you'd live long since he will too and he doesn't want to lose you any time soon
He'd be up for going on so many adventures all over the universe or even just going to like six flags
definitely loves the independent nature of the Anodites and relates to it personally
since it also takes time to fully master your powers, he understands that sometimes you'd be frustrated and need space since you'd feel like you aren't getting anywhere with it
It can take a really long time to master your abilities and sometimes that's discouraging but he reminds you that he's there for a really long time
#dc x reader#dc comics#dc characters#kon kent imagine#kon kent x reader#kon kent#kon kent x you#conner kent x you#conner kent x y/n#conner kent imagine#conner kent x reader#conner kent#90's superboy#superboy x you#superboy x reader
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Superboy # 1 Review
*Spoilers!*
I know I primarily post about Academy X here…but I have layers people and truthfully….X-Men kind of sucks right now…
So I am reviewing instead MY FAVORITE CLONE of the DC verse- Conner Kent AKA SUPERBOY!!
The issue starts with Conner being super villain cockblocked…
Conner is feeling “replaced” and “inadequate” at Metropolis by all the Superkids around…which is kind of dumb considering no one in the DC verse is frankly as effortlessly cool as Conner…(I mean look how many times Diana has tried and failed to rock a leather jacket…)
Conner then flies somberly back to Smallville, to bring back coffee to Ma and Pa Kent…who suggest Conner is wasting his coolness on Metropolis… (I heard Metropolis is super gentrified now anyway Conner!)
Conner decides to go intergalactic and with an unstable teleportation device- teleports to a planet that’s being decimated by meta human clones based off of Earths superheroes and Cadmus cloning! (Well that’s super convenient!)
Conner battles the clones and let’s the
Main villain- the Dominator (sounds like a BDSM Marston villain…but okay…) scenery chew for several minutes while the aliens of the planet evacuate, before really cutting it loose with his TK.
Just as Conner looks like he has won and confirms to the Dominator that he’s alone; the big bad releases ship upon ship of clones.
As Conner is regretting his choice to go at this alone- the Cosmoteers show up to kill all the clones and plan to kill Superboy!
Review:
Truthfully I am disappointed. Conner feels pretty “blah” here.
Sure, we got some of the old Superboy ego and bullheadedness with Conner borrowing shady technology and totally not bothering to do any homework on the planet or the current conflict…But I felt like this book had pretty limited humor and snarkiness that readers more or less expect with characters like Conner.
It would be like if Hellion lost his “mean girl” edge to suddenly be written more or less like Sam Guthrie…
Reading this- I felt like it was often copying Kirkman’s “Invincible” (the meta humans even LOOK like Kirkman/Walker characters!) than really being a “Superboy” comic…
The problem with Conner, much like the problem with Laura, is Geoff John’s pretty much tanked his prior personality years ago…
Where Bendis totally killed Laura’s introversion to make her a generic “Logan”- John’s stopped having Conner be a total shit. 😕
It’s weird comparing it to the 90’s solo series- I know people complain about Conner being sexualized/“jailbait” in it now and his relationship with Tana being problematic…but the series was at least a fun commentary on current pop-culture of the time. Conner kind of IS the perfect character to talk about Social Media/shameless self promotion/influencer culture…Yet this book has none of that.
Conner should frankly HAVE an edge and yet he feels pretty dang generic in this book.
Much like Deadpool and Plastic Man- I think writers really struggle with writing these kinds of characters anymore.
You need someone who can write comedy and is willing to take risks instead of playing it safe…you need someone who has an eye for social criticism…you need someone who can break the fourth wall effectively without it becoming generic or annoying…and you need someone who can be pretty creative…and I just don’t think DC and Marvel HAVE these kinds of writers staffed there anymore.
Even Gail Simone, whose Deadpool run I LOVE!…her “Plastic Man” mini several years ago was pretty disappointing and played it pretty safe, in my opinion.
Part of the problem is- a lot of these characters feel sanitized to fit into the “superhero mold” they were originally created to criticize. Where they were originally SUPPOSED to be more or less outsiders of the world they inhabited…now they’re focal characters of the universe.
I am glad however that the writer went back to Conner having TK instead of generic “Superman” abilities- I HATED John’s for removing it.
Overall I thought the art was pretty “meh”. Not terrible but not memorable either.
Con’s telekinesis looks more stylized off of QQ and other telepathy/telekinesis- which is a bit disappointing.
I was confused if the Domineer is supposed to be Citadelian? I am always surprised more isn’t done with them, since they were always pretty frightening… (and I just want Tamaraneans to pop up!)
Overall- I would have rather had Conner do something in Hawaii again or Young Justice stuff or in a Mongul “War World” type of situation or pretty much anything else than where this story is gonna go (him befriending Cosmoeers and realizing he doesn’t “have to do things alone”….
Predictions:
Obviously “befriending Cosmoeers/realizing he doesn’t have to go at it alone” story…
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Rules/Characters I Write For
1. I will not be writing any smut, so don't ask for it....spice on the other hand (totally allowed :)
2. All imagines will be directed towards the reader who is a female or gender neutral. This means I AM NOT inserting names or personalized characters that you, the reader comes up with.
Example: Y/N can be the sibling of (insert character), but she/they will not have a name that you request
Bad Example: Lyssa is the sister of (insert character), and here's her entire backstory...etc.
3. Please be respectful and don't steal from me. It takes me time to come up with these ideas.
4. I have the right to reject any requests/imagines/preferences that I feel uncomfortable writing about.
5.. Your request may require me to get more information from you about the idea you have or the character you want said reader to end up with.
6. Occasionally I do talk about mature subjects such as depression, self-harm, eating disorders, bullying, etc. I will have trigger warnings posted at the beginning of each chapter.
7. I am in college and this takes me a long time to write out sometimes. Please be patient and understanding.
Characters I Write For:
MCU: (Note that I will do familial/platonic female characters x reader)
Example: (Can I get a Natasha Romanoff x daughter reader?)
-Tony Stark
-Steve Rogers
-Peter Parker
-Thor
-Loki
-Bucky Barnes
-Scott Lang
-T'Challa
-Moon Knight
(Note that I will do Agents of Shield Team imagines, that means it's not relationships, but the entire team)
Example: (Can I get a AOS team x anxious reader?)
(Also accepting requests for Alex Summers/Havok)
BATFAMILY: (Note that I will do familial/platonic female characters x reader) (These will include Kate Kane, Barbara Gordon, Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, and Selina Kyle)
-Bruce Wayne (Gotham and other versions)
-Dick Grayson
-Jason Todd
-Tim Drake
-Damian Wayne
YOUNG JUSTICE/Live Action Titans/Teen Titans
-Dick Grayson
-Wally West
-Conner Kent
-Roy Harper
-Tim Drake
-Bart Allen
-Team Imagines (As a group, usually platonic)
-Female YJ Characters in familial or platonic ways
-Robin (Teen Titans Version)
-Nightwing (Titans)
-Jason Todd (Titans)
-Garfield Logan (Titans)
-Superboy (Titans)
NARNIA: (NOTE THAT I WILL DO PLATONIC/FAMILIAL FEMALE IMAGINES/X READERS)
-Peter Pevensie
-Edmund Pevensie
-Caspian
-The Pevensie Siblings (platonically or familial)
PERCY JACKSON: (NOTE THAT I WILL DO PLATONIC/FAMILIAL FEMALE IMAGINES/X READERS)
-Percy Jackson
-Luke Castellan
-Jason Grace
-Leo Valdez
-Frank Zhang
-The 7
-Any other characters will have to be specifically requested and I reserve the right to reject the request
HARRY POTTER: NOTE THAT I WILL DO PLATONIC/FAMILIAL FEMALE IMAGINES/X READERS)
-Harry Potter
-Fred Weasley
-George Weasley
-Draco Malfoy
-Golden Trio Era (Group/platonic)
-Newt Scamander
-Theseus Scamander
-Scamander Era (Group/Platonic)
-James Potter
-Sirius Black
-Remus Lupin
-Regulus Black
-Marauders Era (Group/Platonic)
STAR WARS: NOTE THAT I WILL DO PLATONIC/FAMILIAL FEMALE IMAGINES/X READERS, INCLUDES: LEIA, PADME, AHSOKA, REY, HERA, SABINE, AND OTHERS IF SPECIFIED)
-Obi-Wan Kenobi
-Anakin Skywalker
-Kanan Jarrus/Caleb Dume
-Ezra Bridger
-Luke Skywalker
-Han Solo
-Finn
-Poe Dameron
-Kylo Ren
-Prequels Trio (Platonically): Obi-Wan, Anakin, Padme
-Original Trio (Platonically): Leia, Luke, and Han
-Sequels Trio (Platonically: Rey, Finn, and Poe
STRANGER THINGS: (NOTE THAT I WILL DO PLATONIC/FAMILIAL FEMALE IMAGINES/X READERS)
Note that 90% of these will be friendship x readers
-Steve Harrington
-Eddie Munson
-The kids (Dustin, Mike, Lucas, Will, El, Max, and Erica) (WILL BE PLATONIC/SIBLING/FRIENDSHIP)
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Art museums
Y/N: Someone take me to art museums and make out with me.
Cassie: But they said not to touch the masterpieces.
Y/N: Well somebody's got to pin the artwork to the wall.
Kon, on a walkie talkie: This is Superboy, those idiots are fucking around in the East wing again.
#cassie sandsmark#wonder girl#kon el#superboy#gender neutral!reader#superhero!reader#cassie sandsmark x reader#young justice#90s young justice#incorrect quotes dc#90s young justice incorrect quotes#young justice incorrect quotes#incorrect quotes reader#source: incorrect quotes generator
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can you do some headcanons for 90s conner kent where his s/o has the personality of buttercup from powerpuff girls and is kinda just a grumpy person but cares for their loved ones (aka conner;)
Conner Kent Headcanons ft. A Buttercup-esque SO
pairing: conner kent x reader
warning: none
a/n: i can't express how much i love this idea and how much i stanned buttercup as a child, what an asbolute icon
When I think of 90′s Superboy, I also end up thinking of Reign of the Supermen Conner from the animated movie, so we’re gonna mix them together just a little since it’s funnier that way lol
You see him at one of his fan meet-and-greets, and you only even go up to him because your friend freaked out and absolutely had to get an autograph from him. You stick out like a sore-thumb amidst the crowd of screaming girls (and boys) because you literally could not care less about being there
And he notices, because as soon as he asks if you want his autograph in his classic Conner-way, you straight up say “no thanks”
And that’s already enough to make him think he hadn’t heard you right or something, so he amps it up and shoots you a delightfully crooked grin
“Oh, I get it, you want my number instead. All you need to do is ask, babe.” And to the horror of both himself and his fans:
“Hard pass. Can we leave now?”
Will he ever fully recover from that event? Probably not. But will it make him want to go after you to find out how on Earth he messed up so bad? Absolutely.
He’s never met a girl who was as disinterested in him as you are at first, and despite the initial horror he’d feel because of it, he’d end up finding it to be a whole lot more intriguing and will actually be invested in figuring you out
Your relationship would be surprising to Young Justice and to all of your friends, but you’d actually balance each other out great
Conner’s just naturally loud and proud, he likes having all eyes on him and being the center of attention (most of the time)
You’re way more reserved and despite your stony, seemingly cold attitude, he’ll discover that you’re actually very sweet in your own way
Your sarcasm, deadpan-humor, and seemingly grumpy attitude all help to keep his ego a little less overinflated, and just generally keeps him way more grounded
He loves trying to annoy you and dropping snarky quips here and there just to get you to laugh and relax around him
Would possibly be the type to throw around horrifically cheesy pick-up lines that you either wouldn’t understand or would understand but act like you don’t
“Are we in Paris right now? Because I think Eiffel for you.”
“No, Conner, we’re at your grandparents’ farm in the middle of Kansas-”
Alternatively:
“Are you from Tennessee? ‘cus you’re the only ten I see.”
“Again, we’re literally in Kansas, who taught you geography-”
He knows they’re trash, but you’ll be laughing by the end of his ridiculous attempts, and that’s exactly what he wants
He’d also love showing off, whether that’s by using his exorbitant allowance from Lex to buy you equally exorbitant clothes, jewelery, etc. (all of which you’d immediately try to insist that you don’t need, only for him to ignore it because now you have complimentary couples outfits), or just using his strength to pick you up when you least expect it, spinning you around and even flying with you
And unless you really hated it, he’d probably ignore your protesting and be his cheeky-self until you finally relent and let him have his moment with you
If you’re a superhero working with him in Young Justice, the team would probably tease you for you vehemently refusing to acknowledge how much you actually like him
But he knows you love him when you’re wrecking your opponents on the field and always having his back, always making sure that he’s safe even though he doesn’t always need protection
He also appreciates and knows that you're a total badass who could possibly whip his ass after seeing you on the field, but that’s another matter
Having struggled with both his fathers being unable to support him emotionally for a long time, being unable to love and accept himself for a long time, and having to slowly come to the understanding that love can come from unexpected places is what makes him like you so much
Being with you makes him grounded, but it also makes him realize that you love him for so much more than his quote “totally sexy looks and charming personality” - you see him for who he is and love him all the same
Even though you’re bad at expressing that, your actions and the little moments you have express that sentiment just fine
And that’s what makes him adore you as much as he does
___________________________________________________________
DC Tag List: @cipheress-to-k-pop
#I could literally write an entire series on this relationship dynamic#I'm actually in love with this idea LMAOOO#so thank you for this#pandemonium scrawl#conner kent#superboy#90s superboy#conner kent x reader#superboy x reader#dc headcanons#superboy headcanons#conner kent x you#fluff#request finished
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Beautiful -KK
Summary: You find out you’re pregnant with Kon’s child.
Pairing: Kon Kent x Reader
Word Count: 3496
Warnings: Language, FLUFF, birth, pregnancy related things, light-ish hints of the smut
Tag List: @kishony-the-geek @idkmanicantenglish @catxsnow
A/N: So this was a total bribe for Sara to do her work, and I did not expect it to get this long. I hope you all like it!
You stared at the tests that were laid out in front of you, all three of them had the same results. Positive. Pinching the bridge of your nose, you closed your eyes and took a deep breath. You and Kon had always been safe when it came to sex, it was something the two of you had talked about months ago. You racked your brain, trying to think up a way that it was possible when it struck you. You and Kon were safe, except…
That day replayed in your mind in slow motion, it was just a normal day for the two of you. Both of you were home for the day, you didn’t have work and there was no crisis going on that needed his attention so you spent it together doing whatever you wanted.
Kon had woken up early and made breakfast, even going as far as bringing it to you in bed as he bent to wake you with sweet, soft kisses as you held in your giggles. Sitting up in the bed, you rubbed the sleep out of your eyes.
He stood there with a tray in his hands and the goofiest smile on his face, “Morning Sunshine.”
You leaned up and pressed your lips to his once more, cupping his jaw with your hand while running your thumb over his skin. “Good morning handsome.” You replied, slowly pulling away from the kiss and glancing at the food in his hands.
“What’s all this for?” you asked, crossing your legs and looking up at him.
“It’s for the most beautiful person in the world.”
“If that’s for you, then why did you bring it here?” you grinned.
It was as if Kon mentally exploded at your words, his jaw dropped slightly and grinned as he set it aside. “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” he asked, leaning over you as he took your chin and made you look up at him.
“As a matter of fact, I think I’m hilarious.”
Kon took your waist and pulled you closer towards him so your legs hung off the edge of the bed. “Why don’t I remind you how beautiful you are.” He grinned leaning down to capture your lips in a chaste kiss that left you wanting for more.
His hands gripped your bare thighs as his lips left yours way too quick for your liking and placed soft kisses down your jaw and throat, making you whimper under his touch. Your hand went to his hair, gripping it tightly between your fingers as you felt his hands move higher up your legs, bunching up the large shirt you wore in the process.
He could hear your heartbeat seeding up as his hands went higher up and it made him grin, knowing that he had that effect of you. You tightened the grip on his hair when you felt him drag his teeth against the skin on your neck, letting out a needy moan.
“Kon... fuck.” You muttered, leaning into him more wanting to feel him against you.
You felt him chuckle against the skin of your neck. “Don’t worry Sunshine, we will.”
It had been just a month and a half since that day and you were feeling weird for only the last week or so. You thought that you were sick at first but then you started to notice other things and took it upon yourself to grab tests and figure this out. Kon was currently out on a mission and wasn’t supposed to be back until the end of the week, and that gave you plenty of time to figure out how to tell him. Picking up the tests, you threw them into the trash and washed your hands.
The first thing you needed to do was make sure that you were actually pregnant and weren’t getting false positives, it happened way too often and you wanted to be sure of it.
By the end of the next day, you had your results and you were for sure pregnant with Kon’s child and it was nearly impossible to hide your excitement. The first thing you did was go to a store and buy various items and a gift bag. Kon was supposed to be back the next night and you were going to have it all planned out, down to the tee.
The gift bag rested on the table with curled ribbon tied onto it, while you sat there waiting for Kon to walk in the door. It was needless to say that you were nervous, the topic of kids had come up and you both wanted one but in the future. Seemed like life had other plans for you.
Hearing the doorknob turn, your head shot up and you rose to your feet as you fixed the bright blue dress you wore unable to keep the wide smile off your face. The door opened and in he walked, the look on his face was exhausted but quickly brightened up at the sight of you with dinner on the table and a gift bag set in the middle.
Dropping his back, he ran over and picked you up in his arms and swung you around making you squeal in delight. The second he set you down, his lips met yours in a passionate kiss. A week and a half away from you was way too long for him, Kon hated being away from you. You were his literal ray of sunshine that never ceased to brighten his day.
Your hands gripped the edges of his leather jacket, pulling him closer to you as you smiled against his lips. “I missed you.” You mumbled.
“I can tell Sunshine, but not as much as I missed you.” He grinned, and kept you close to him. “Dinner smells great. But what’s with the bag?”
You pulled out of his hold and held it out to him, “It’s a surprise. You can open it now or later whichever you want.”
Kon gave you a side glance as he took the bag and pulled the ribbon and tissue paper out of the bag, dropping it to the floor. Reaching in, he pulled out a small piece of cloth. It was blue, the same shade as your dress and his suit. Unfolding it, he saw that it was a onesie with the iconic ‘s’ on the front. He peeked over at you with a confused look on his face.
“Uh, Sunshine this looks to be a little too small for me.” He said.
“Conner Kent, just look at the rest of the stuff.” You scolded with a smile; you would have thought he picked up on it immediately but apparently not.
Setting the onesie aside, he pulled out an envelope that had his name on it. Setting the bag down, he opened the envelope and pulled out the card inside it. The front had the word ‘Surprise!’ on it, and when he opened it and saw what was inside his heart nearly stopped.
There, taped under your beautiful handwriting was a sonogram with a circle around what was going to be your future child.
You watched as Kon froze in his spot, looking at the onesie then back to the picture over and over as his brain tried to process it. “You’re pregnant?” he asked, looking at you finally.
Giving him a nod, the biggest smile grew on his face as he pulled you into a tight hug as he laughed. “I’m going to be a dad!” he cried and swung you around again before quickly putting you down.
“Shit, I didn’t hurt him doing that right?” he asked looking down at your still flat stomach then your eyes.
You giggled. “No, and how do you know it’s a him?”
“I just know, I have that sense.” He grinned and kissed you once more.
A couple weeks passed and you were starting to show, and it was getting hard to hide the fact that you were pregnant. You were almost into your second trimester and that was the time you and Kon had decided to tell his family along with yours and your friends.
The great thing about Kon’s family is that Clark, Lois and the others all accepted you with open arms the second they met you and were more than ecstatic to hear the news that you were expecting. Your parents however, they were not Kon’s biggest fans. It was the leather jacket and the haircut; they were worried that he would hurt you somewhere down the line.
You were their little girl, of course it was hard for them to swallow the fact that you were pregnant but they were happy none the less and even offered to help you with anything you might need financial wise.
Telling your friends was an adventure in itself, because Kon was part of the Titans you were friends with a lot of the members. When you told them, Cassie screamed in delight and ran over to hug you making the others laugh. Bart and Tim smiled and gave you both their congratulations, patting Kon on the back with a laugh.
But not everything went to plan, half way through your second trimester you were put on bed rest. Growing a super baby inside you was taking its toll on your body so you needed all the rest you could get. Of course, Kon never left your side doing anything you needed in a heartbeat. Even if it was to get up and go pee for the eighth time that night, he was up and carrying you there and back to make sure you were under the least amount of stress.
Rolling onto your side, you felt him wrap his arms around you and rested them on your now visible bump. He rubbed it softly with his thumb, as it lulled you to sleep. Peeking over Kon saw that you were out cold and smile.
He then leaned over and pressed a kiss to your bump. “I can’t wait to meet you Conner Junior, just know that mommy and daddy love you very much.” He smiled and held you close to him once more as fell asleep holding his world in his arms.
You were sitting on the couch, watching TV and eating a bowl of your favorite ice cream covered in hot sauce, tapping softly on your stomach one day when you felt it. You thought you were crazy, but you looked down and there it was. What seemed to be a little foot was pressing against your swollen belly and almost slid the bowl off of you.
“Kon! Quick get in here!” you called.
At the speed of light, he was at your side with a worried look on his face. “What is it Sunshine? Are you hurt?” he asked quickly as he knelt next to you.
You shook your head, instead you pointed down to your stomach. “Watch.” You grinned.
Kon sat there and watched as you started to tap the spot again softly, when he too saw it. The same little foot pressed against your belly and he grinned widely. “That’s so cool, but creepy as fuck.” He chuckled.
“Language Conner Kent, he can hear you.” You scolded.
“I know, I can kind of hear him too.” He smiled, placing a hand on your stomach and feeling the foot under his large hand. “I’ve been able to hear his heartbeat the whole time, it’s the coolest thing ever.” He explained.
You jolted forward as you felt a hard kick to your stomach with a laugh. “I think he likes the sound of your voice.” You smiled. Kon lit up and kissed your belly, resting his head on it carefully as he listened to the heartbeat of your unborn child.
“He’s going to be so spoiled.”
“We haven’t even picked out names.” You commented.
“I was thinking we could name him CJ, Connor Junior.” He grinned.
You rolled your eyes. “We are not naming our baby Connor Junior.” You laughed, running your fingers through his hair. Oddly enough though, the name had stuck and you both were calling your baby CJ even though you never found out the gender. Your baby had a habit of hiding themselves from the ultrasound so you could never get a clear picture to know for sure so you and Kon decided that you would just wait until the baby was born.
When your baby shower rolled around, Kon was kicked out of the house by Lois, your mother and even Cassie and Steph. All four of them promised to take care of you and told him to go out and have fun with Bart and Tim before the baby came. The party had gone off without a hitch, everything went smoothly and you sat down the entire time so you wouldn’t strain yourself or the baby.
The entire time, everyone was dying to try and feel your stomach to see if they could feel him move but it seemed that the only person little CJ moved for was Kon, and no one else.
You were now in your third trimester and you could not be more miserable. You were fat, bloated and had to pee every ten minutes. Deep down, you knew that Kon was probably as irritated as you were but he never showed it.
Truth be told, you both were scared to be parents. It was only weeks away by this point and the reality that you were going to have a baby was hitting you hard. Nothing was going to be the same after you gave birth, but you were still excited. But no one was more excited than Kon.
Every ten minutes, he asked you if you felt like the baby was coming. You knew this was how he was handling his nerves, but it was still kind of cute. He had been so supportive of you, making sure you stayed relaxed as he rubbed your shoulders, your back and even bathed with you just so you would relax with him. Seeing you so big and carrying his child no less, it was the coolest thing in the world to him. Whenever he talked to Tim, all he mentioned was you and the baby. You never would have thought that your boyfriend would get baby fever like this, but it was adorable.
When the day came, you were not ready. At all.
You had just gotten comfortable on the bed finally when you felt a little odd. You didn’t have to pee, yet you felt like you had just gone in your pants. Slowly you sat up and saw that you were sat in a puddle of fluid, and you went into shock.
The one day Kon went to the store, to find you those chili covered mango pops, was when your water broke. You took a deep breath and grabbed your phone dialing the first number on your list.
“Hey Sunshine, I just found those mango pops of yours. Is everything okay?”
“Uh, Kon I think my water just broke.” You muttered.
There was silence on the other end, it seemed that Kon was in shock but you had no idea. “Kon? Conner?” you asked.
There was a scuffle before you heard him speak again. “I am on my way, don’t move. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
You nodded and winced as you felt the first contraction, it hurt but there was nothing you could do about it. Sitting on the bed, you tried to reach for your shoes but they were just out of your reach. With a huff, you carefully slid down to the ground and grabbed them before pulling them onto your feet.
Kon ran in to see you struggling to get your shoes on, and ran over to help you. He picked you up with ease and carried you out to the car where the overnight bag was already waiting for you and he sped to the hospital.
You gripped his hand tightly as he drove, the contractions getting more and more painful. The good news was that you didn’t live far from the hospital, and was there in no time. Once he parked, Kon picked you up and carried you in.
The doctors saw you coming and had a chair ready to take you back to prep you for labor, and Kon never left your side and never let go of your hand. You were lying in the bed, holding his hand tightly, as another contraction passed. It was a good thing he was indestructible, or you would have broken his hand by this point.
When it came time to push, Kon held you in his arms muttering how good you were doing.
“Why don’t you push a mini you out of your fucking uterus as I sit there and tell you that you’re doing a good job.” You snapped, making him chuckle.
“You can get me back for this later, just keep pushing.”
“I’ll push you out a window Conner Kent!” you screamed, “I am never having sex with you again!”
He rolled his eyes, pressing a kiss to your temple as you gave one final push and heard the small cries of your baby fill the room after 9 hours of labor.
Exhausted and covered in sweat, you leaned back against the bed as Kon pressed a kiss to your lips. “You did so good Sunshine, you did it.” He said softly, cupping your cheek.
You raised your hand and flipped him off with a grin. “Fuck you Kent.” You chuckled as the both of you looked to see a nurse stand and hand you your baby.
“Congrats, it’s a girl.” The nurse smiled as you took your child in your arms.
She had the slightest tufts of black hair, that stuck off the top of her head as she curled into your embrace. It was then the tears left your eyes as you held your baby girl for the first time. Gently, you ran a thumb over her cheek and kissed the top of her tiny head before you looked at Kon.
“She’s beautiful.”
“Well, she is half you.” He smiled, looking down at the little baby.
“She is half you as well Kon, don’t forget.” You smiled.
“We still need a name for her, Connor Junior won’t exactly work.” He chuckled, running his fingers over the black hairs on the top of her head.
“What about Ella?” you asked.
Kon smiled and watched as your little girl cried softly. He took her from your arms and held her close to his chest, the baby quieting down as she heard his voice speak softly to her. “What do you think sweetheart, do you like Ella too?” he asked, bouncing her softly.
The baby let out small coos, as if she was agreeing with him. You could see from that moment, Kon would be wrapped around her tiny little finger ready to do anything for her. You watched as the nurse took little Ella and cleaned her up before placing a pink bow on her head and wrapping her tightly in a blanket.
You had gotten cleaned up as well and was watching Kon as he walked around holding your little girl tightly in his arms, to keep her safe from the world around you. He bounced her softly, as he talked to her muttering under his breath things that you didn’t hear.
A few days later, you and Kon were able to take your little girl home and it turned out she had the biggest blue eyes to match his. Kon just about melted when he saw them for the first time, gazing up at him with curiosity.
You had made dinner that night and went to go tell Kon that it was ready when you found him asleep on the couch with Ella on his chest out cold. Your heart melted at the sight, and took a picture before sending it to Clark and Lois.
Carefully, you walked over and kissed his cheek waking him from his slumber. He looked around and smiled as he saw your face looking down at him. “Well if it isn’t the light of my life.” He grinned.
You rolled your eyes and carefully picked up the little baby and set her in the travel crib. “Food is done, come eat.” You smiled, helping him off the couch. Once he was on his feet, Kon pulled you towards him and kissed you deeply.
“I love you (Y/N),” he smiled softly, looking down at you with the same eyes your daughter had.
You smiled back and leaned into him. “I love you too Connor.”
“Did you mean what you said when you told me you’re never sleeping with me again?” he asked, only to get punched in the arm.
“Keep it up and I will.” You grinned.
#Costly Affairs#DC comics#kon el#Kon kent#kon kent x reader#Kon kent fanfiction#kon kent reader insert#superboy#90s superboy#pregnancy#baby#kon kent fic#kon kent fanfic#kon kent x reader insert#kon kent x y/n#kon kent x you#superboy x reader#superboy fanfiction#superboy fanfic
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#batfam social media au#batman#dc social media au#dc x reader#fake posts social media edits#social media au#batfam#young justice imagine#young justice#timothy drake#tim drake#kon el#conner kent#bart allen#cassie sandsmark#jaime reyes#blue beetle#90s superboy#superboy#wonder girl#impulse#red robin
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4-10
The worst new direction for DD comics is whatever the fuck Chip Zdarsky is doing right now. I could write an essay on why Elektra should not be Daredevil and why he doesn't work as a legacy character the way Spider-Man or Ms. Marvel do. But the short version is that Elektra is his foil and making her into a hero defeats the purpose of her character + the Daredevil name is so specific to Matt's childhood (his dad, being bullied) that it feels weird giving it someone else.
Chip Zdarsky's characterization of Matt is the Worst. It reads like shitty MCU fanfiction. Chip is waaaay too heavy on the Catholicism but there are a lot of smaller things that bother me too.
Worst coloring error I've ever seen is probably in the 90s Superboy comics whenever Tanya looks green instead of brown
Brandy from Ann Nocenti's DD run or Cain (i think thats his name). Brandy was there for a few issues but she died and no one ever brought her up again? It's like Marvel forget she existed. Cain was only in one issue but he was supposed to have a father-son relationship with Matt and it would've been neat to see that actually developed.
Don't get me wrong, I like Kyle Rayner but I don't get people who act like he's the best GL. Like yeah ok he brought in new readers and revived it but as a character, he's kind of a typical everyman? he's just not that special to me.
Worst plotline I've ever read would probably be whatever the fuck Chip is doing or the first two TPBs of Ultimate X-Men those sucked so fucking bad. Logan sleeping with 19-year-old Jean was The Worst.
I've seen so many cursed panels but the Worst of the Worst are from Ant on @bad-comic-art
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So... Morrison’s 10 part interview on All-Star Superman, along with all other older Newsarama articles, just seem to have ceased to exist. One does not simply live without having those interviews available to reread... Can I find them anywhere else?
Rejoice! I finally borrowed a computer I could put my flash drive into, and emailed myself my copy of the Morrison interview. Here it is below the cut, copied and pasted direct from the source way back when, available again at last:
Three years, 12 issues, Eisners and countless accolades later, All Star Superman is finally finished. The out-of-continuity look at Superman’s struggle with his inevitable death was widely embraced by fans and pros as one of the best stories to feature the Man of Steel, and was a showcase for the talents of the creative team of Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant.
Now, Newsarama is proud to present an exclusive look back with Morrison at the series that took Superman to, pun intended, new heights. We had a lot of questions about the series...and Morrison delivered with an in-depth look into the themes, characters and ideas throughout the 12 issues. In fact, there was so much that we’re running this as an unprecedented 10-part series over the next two weeks – sort of an unofficial All Star Superman companion. It’s everything about All Star Superman you ever wanted to know, but were afraid to ask.
And of course there’s plenty of SPOILERS, so back away if you haven’t read the entire series.
Newsarama: Grant, tell us a little about the origin of the project.
Grant Morrison: Some of it has its roots in the DC One Million project from 1999. So much so, that some readers have come to consider this a prequel to DC One Million, which is fine if it shifts a few more copies! I’ve tried to give my own DC books an overarching continuity intended to make them all read as a more coherent body of work when I’m done.
Luthor’s “enlightenment” – when he peaks on super–senses and sees the world as it appears through Superman’s eyes – was an element I’d included in the Superman Now pitch I prepared along with Mark Millar, Tom Peyer and Mark Waid back in 1999. There were one or two of ideas of mine that I wanted to preserve from Superman Now and Luthor’s heart–stopping moment of understanding was a favorite part of the original ending for that story, so I decided to use it again here.
My specific take on Superman’s physicality was inspired by the “shamanic” meeting my JLA editor Dan Raspler and I had in the wee hours of the morning outside the San Diego comic book convention in whenever it was, ‘98 or ‘99.
I’ve told this story in more detail elsewhere but basically, we were trying to figure out how to “reboot” Superman without splitting up his marriage to Lois, which seemed like a cop–out. It was the beginning of the conversations which ultimately led to Superman Now, with Dan and I restlessly pacing around trying to figure out a new way into the character of Superman and coming up short...
Until we looked up to see a guy dressed as Superman crossing the train tracks. Not just any skinny convention guy in an ill–fitting suit, this guy actually looked like Superman. It was too good a moment to let pass, so I ran over to him, told him what we’d been trying to do and asked if he wouldn’t mind indulging us by answering some questions about Superman, which he did...in the persona and voice of Superman!
We talked for an hour and a half and he walked off into the night with his friend (no, it wasn’t Jimmy Olsen, sadly). I sat up the rest of the night, scribbling page after page of Superman notes as the sun came up over the naval yards.
My entire approach to Superman had come from the way that guy had been sitting; so easy, so confident, as if, invulnerable to all physical harm, he could relax completely and be spontaneous and warm. That pose, sitting hunched on the bollard, with one knee up, the cape just hanging there, talking to us seemed to me to be the opposite of the clenched, muscle-bound look the character sometimes sports and that was the key to Superman for me.
I met the same Superman a couple of times afterwards but he wasn’t Superman, just a nice guy dressed as Superman, whose name I didn’t save but who has entered into my own personal mythology (a picture has from that time has survived showing me and Mark Waid posing alongside this guy and a couple of young readers dressed as Superboy and Supergirl – it’s in the “Gallery” section at my website for anybody who can be bothered looking. This is the guy who lit the fuse that led to All Star Superman).
After the 1999 pitch was rejected, I didn’t expect to be doing any further work on Superman but sometime in 2002, while I was going into my last year on New X–Men, Dan DiDio called and asked if I wanted to come back to DC to work on a Superman book with Jim Lee.
Jim was flexing his artistic muscles again to great effect, and he wanted to do 12 issues on Superman to complement the work he was doing with Jeph Loeb on “Batman: Hush.” At the time, I wasn’t able to make my own commitments dovetail with Jim’s availability, but by then I’d become obsessed with the idea of doing a big Superman story and I’d already started working out the details.
Jim, of course, went on to do his 12 Superman issues as “For Tomorrow” with Brian Azzarello, so I found myself looking for an artist for what was rapidly turning into my own Man of Steel magnum opus, and I already knew the book had to be drawn by my friend and collaborator, Frank Quitely.
We were already talking about We3 and Superman seemed like a good meaty project to get our teeth into when that was done. I completely scaled up my expectations of what might be possible once Frank was on board and decided to make this thing as ambitious as possible.
Usually, I prefer to write poppy, throwaway “live performance” type superhero books, but this time, I felt compelled to make something for the ages – a big definitive statement about superheroes and life and all that, not only drawn by my favorite artist but starring the first and greatest superhero of them all.
The fact that it could be a non–continuity recreation made the idea even more attractive and more achievable. I also felt ready for it, in a way I don’t think I would have been in 1999; I finally felt “grown–up” enough to do Superman justice.
I plotted the whole story in 2002 and drew tiny colored sketches for all 12 covers. The entire book was very tightly constructed before we started – except that I’d left the ending open for the inevitable better and more focused ideas I knew would arise as the project grew into its own shape...and I left an empty space for issue 10. That one was intended from the start to be the single issue of the 12–issue run that would condense and amplify the themes of all the others. #10 was set aside to be the one–off story that would sum up anything anyone needed to know about Superman in 22 pages.
Not quite as concise an origin as Superman’s, but that’s how we got started.
NRAMA: When you were devising the series, what challenges did you have in building up this version of the Superman universe?
GM: I couldn’t say there were any particular challenges. It was fun. Nobody was telling me what I could or couldn’t do with the characters. I didn’t have to worry about upsetting continuity or annoying people who care about stuff like that.
I don’t have a lot of old comics, so my knowledge of Superman was based on memory, some tattered “70s books from the remains of my teenage collection, a bunch of DC “Best Of...” reprint editions and two brilliant little handbooks – “Superman in Action Comics” Volumes 1 and 2 – which reprint every single Action Comics cover from 1938 to 1988.
I read various accounts of Superman’s creation and development as a brand. I read every Superman story and watched every Superman movie I could lay my hands on, from the Golden Age to the present day. From the Socialist scrapper Superman of the Depression years, through the Super–Cop of the 40s, the mythic Hyper–Dad of the 50s and 60s, the questioning, liberal Superman of the early 70s, the bland “superhero” of the late 70s, the confident yuppie of the 80s, the over–compensating Chippendale Superman of the 90s etc. I read takes on Superman by Mark Waid, Mark Millar, Geoff Johns, Denny O’Neil, Jeph Loeb, Alan Moore, Paul Dini and Alex Ross, Joe Casey, Steve Seagle, Garth Ennis, Jim Steranko and many others.
I looked at the Fleischer cartoons, the Chris Reeve movies and the animated series, and read Alvin Schwartz’s (he wrote the first ever Bizarro story among many others) fascinating book – “An Unlikely Prophet” – where he talks about his notion of Superman as a tulpa, (a Tibetan word for a living thought form which has an independent existence beyond its creator) and claims he actually met the Man of Steel in the back of a taxi.
I immersed myself in Superman and I tried to find in all of these very diverse approaches the essential “Superman–ness” that powered the engine. I then extracted, purified and refined that essence and drained it into All Star’s tank, recreating characters as my own dream versions, without the baggage of strict continuity.
In the end, I saw Superman not as a superhero or even a science fiction character, but as a story of Everyman. We’re all Superman in our own adventures. We have our own Fortresses of Solitude we retreat to, with our own special collections of valued stuff, our own super–pets, our own “Bottle Cities” that we feel guilty for neglecting. We have our own peers and rivals and bizarre emotional or moral tangles to deal with.
I felt I’d really grasped the concept when I saw him as Everyman, or rather as the dreamself of Everyman. That “S” is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are.
Batman is obviously much cooler, but that’s because he’s a very energetic and adolescent fantasy character: a handsome billionaire playboy in black leather with a butler at this beck and call, better cars and gadgetry than James Bond, a horde of fetish femme fatales baying around his heels and no boss. That guy’s Superman day and night.
Superman grew up baling hay on a farm. He goes to work, for a boss, in an office. He pines after a hard–working gal. Only when he tears off his shirt does that heroic, ideal inner self come to life. That’s actually a much more adult fantasy than the one Batman’s peddling but it also makes Superman a little harder to sell. He’s much more of a working class superhero, which is why we ended the whole book with the image of a laboring Superman.
He’s Everyman operating on a sci–fi Paul Bunyan scale. His worries and emotional problems are the same as ours... except that when he falls out with his girlfriend, the world trembles.
Newsarama: Grant, what are some of your favorite moments from the 12 issues?
Grant Morrison: The first shot of Superman flying over the sun. The Cosmic Anvil. Samson and Atlas. The kiss on the moon. The first three pages of the Olsen story which, I think, add up to the best character intro I’ve ever written.
Everything Lex Luthor says in issue #5. Everything Clark does. The whole says/does Luthor/Superman dynamic as played out through Frank Quitely’s absolute mastery and understanding of how space, movement and expression combine to tell a story.
Superboy and his dog on the moon – that perfect teenage moment of infinite possibility, introspection and hope for the future. He’s every young man on the verge of adulthood, Krypto is every dog with his boy (it seemed a shame to us that Krypto’s most memorable moment prior to this was his death scene in “Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow.” Quitely’s scampering, leaping, eager and alive little creature is how I’d prefer to imagine Krypto the Superdog and conjures finer and more subtle emotions).
Bizarro–Home, with all of Earth’s continental and ocean shapes but reversed. The page with the first appearance of Zibarro that Frank has designed so the eye is pulled down in a swirling motion into the drain at the heart of the image, to make us feel that we’re being flushed in a cloacal spiral down into a nihilistic, existential sink. Frank gave me that page as a gift, and it became weirdly emblematic of a strange, dark time in both our lives.
The story with Bar–El and Lilo has a genuine chill off ammonia and antiseptic off it, which makes it my least favorite issue of the series, although I know a lot of people who love it. It’s about dying relatives, obligations, the overlit overheated corridors between terminal wards, the thin metallic odors of chemicals, bad food and fear. Preparation for the Phantom Zone.
Superman hugging the poor, hopeless girl on the roof and telling us all we’re stronger than we think we are.
Joe Shuster drawing us all into the story forever and never–ending.
Nasthalthia Luthor. Frank and Jamie’s final tour of the Fortress, referencing every previous issue on the way, in two pages.
All of issue #10 (there’s a single typo in there where the time on the last page was screwed up – but when we fix that detail for the trade I’ll be able to regard this as the most perfectly composed superhero story I’ve ever written).
I don’t think I’ve ever had a smoother, more seamless collaborative process.
NRAMA: The story is very complete unto itself, but are there any new or classic characters you’d like to explore further? If so, which ones and why?
GM: I’d happily write more Atlas and Samson. I really like Krull, the Dino–Czar’s wayward son, and his Stalinist underground empire of “Subterranosauri.” I could write a Superman Squad comic forever. I’d love to write the “Son of Superman” sequel about Lois and Clark’s super test tube baby.
But...I think All Star is already complete, without sequels. You read that last issue and it works because you know you’re never going to see All Star Superman again. You’ll be able to pick up Superman books, but they won’t be about this guy and they won’t feel the same. He really is going away. Our Superman is actually “dying” in that sense, and that adds the whole series a deeper poignancy.
NRAMA: Aside from the Bizarro League, you never really introduce other DC superheroes into the story. Why did you make this choice?
GM: I wanted the story to be about the mythic Superman at the end of his time. It’s clear from the references that he has or more likely has had a few super–powered allies, but that they’re no longer around or relevant any more.
For the context of this story I wanted the super–friends to be peripheral, like they were in the old comics. The Flash? Green Lantern? They represent Superman’s “old army buddies,” or your dad’s school friends. Guys you’ve sort of heard of, who used to be more important in the old man’s life than they are now.
NRAMA: Some readers were confused as to how the “Twelve Labors” broke down, though others have pointed out that Superman’s actions are more reflective of the Stations of the Cross (I note there’s a “Station Café” in the background of issue #12). Could you break down the Twelve Labors, or, if the cross theory is true, how the storyline reflects the Stations?
GM: The 12 Labors of Superman were never intended as an isomorphic mapping onto the 12 Labors of Hercules, or for that matter, the specific Stations of the Cross, of which there are 14, I believe. I didn’t even want to do one Labor per issue, so it deliberately breaks down quite erratically through the series for reasons I’ll go into (later).
Yes, there are correspondences, but that’s mostly because we tried to create for our Superman the contemporary “superhero” version of an archetypal solar hero journey, which naturally echoes numerous myths, legends and religious parables.
At the same time, we didn’t want to do an update or a direct copy of any myth you’d seen before, so it won’t work if you try to find one specific mythological or religious “plan” to hang the series on; James Joyce’s honorable and heroic refutation of the rule aside, there’s nothing more dead and dull than an attempt to retell the Odyssey or the Norse sagas scene by scene, but in a modern and/or superhero setting.
For future historians and mythologizers, however, the 12 Labors of Superman may be enumerated as follows:
1. Superman saves the first manned mission to the sun.
2. Superman brews the Super–Elixir.
3. Superman answers the Unanswerable Question.
4. Superman chains the Chronovore.
5. Superman saves Earth from Bizarro–Home.
6. Superman returns from the Underverse.
7. Superman creates Life.
8. Superman liberates Kandor/cures cancer.
9. Superman defeats Solaris.
10. Superman conquers Death.
11. Superman builds an artificial Heart for the Sun.
12.Superman leaves the recipe/formula to make Superman 2.
And one final feat, which typically no–one really notices, is that Lex Luthor delivers his own version of the unified field haiku – explaining the underlying principles of the universe in fourteen syllables – which the P.R.O.J.E.C.T. G–Type philosopher from issue 4 had dedicated his entire life to composing!
You may notice also that the Labors take place over a year – with the solar hero’s descent into the darkness and cold of the Underverse occurring at midwinter/Christmas time (that’s also the only point in the story where we ever see Metropolis at night).
It can also be seen as the sun’s journey over the course of a day – we open in blazing sunshine but halfway through the book, at the end of issue #5, in fact, the solar hero dips below the horizon and begins the night–journey through the hours of darkness and death, before his triumphant resurrection at dawn. That’s why issue 5 ends with the boat to the Underworld and 6 begins with the moon. Clark Kent is crossing the threshold into the subconscious world of memory, shadows, death and deep emotions.
Although they can often have bizarre resonances, specific elements, like the Station Café, are usually put there by Frank Quitely, and are not necessarily secret Dan Brown–style keys to unlocking the mysteries. I think there might be a Station Café opposite the studio where Frank Quitely works and the “SAPIEN” sign on another storefront is a reference to Frank’s studio mate, Dave Sapien. At least he’s not filling the background with dirty words like he used to, given any opportunity
NRAMA: For that matter, do the Twelve Labors matter at all? They seem so purposely ill–defined. They seem more like misdirection or a MacGuffin than anything that needs to be clearly delineated.
GM: They matter, of course, but the 12 Labors idea is there to show that, as with all myth, the systematic ordering of current events into stories, tales, or legends occurs after the fact.
I’m trying to suggest that only in the future will these particular 12 feats, out of all the others ever, be mythologized as 12 Labors. I suppose I was trying to say something about how people impose meaning upon events in retrospect, and that’s how myth is born. It’s hindsight that provides narrative, structure, meaning and significance to the simple unfolding of events. It’s the backward glance that adds all the capital letters to the list above.
Even Superman isn”t sure how many Labors he’s performed when we see him mulling it over in issue 10.
When you watched it happening, it seemed to be Superman just doing his thing. In the future it’s become THE 12 LABORS OF SUPERMAN!
NRAMA: And on a completely ridiculous note: All–Star Superman is perhaps the most difficult–to–abbreviate comic title since Preacher: Tall in the Saddle. Did you realize this going in?
GM: Going into what? Going into ASS itself? In the sense of how did I feel as I slowly entered ASS for the first time?
It never crossed my mind...
Newsarama: I’d like to know a little more about Leo Quintum and his role in the story. He seems like a bit of an outgrowth of the likes of Project Cadmus and Emil Hamilton, but in a more fantastical, Willy Wonka sense.
Grant Morrison: Yeah, he was exactly as you say, my attempt to create an updated take on the character of “Superman’s scientist friend” – in the vein of Emil Hamilton from the animated show and the ‘90s stories. Science so often goes wrong in Superman stories, and I thought it was important to show the potential for science to go right or to be elevated by contact with Superman’s shining positive spirit.
I was thinking of Quintum as a kind of “Man Who Fell To Earth” character with a mysterious unearthly background. For a while I toyed with the notion that he was some kind of avatar of Lightray of the New Gods, but as All Star developed, that didn’t fit the tone, and he was allowed to simply be himself.
Eventually it just came down to simplicity. Leo Quintum represents the “good” scientific spirit – the rational, enlightened, progressive, utopian kind of scientist I figured Superman might inspire to greatness. It was interesting to me how so many people expected Quintum to turn out bad at the end. It shows how conditioned we are in our miserable, self–loathing, suspicious society to expect the worst of everyone, rather than hope for the best. Or maybe it’s just what we expect from stories.
Having said that, there is indeed a necessary whiff of Lucifer about Quintum. His name, Leo Quintum, conjures images of solar force, lions and lightbringers and he has elements of the classic Trickster figure about him. He even refers to himself as “The Devil Himself” in issue #10.
What he’s doing at the end of the story should, for all its gee–whiz futurity, feel slightly ambiguous, slightly fake, slightly “Hollywood.” Yes, he’s fulfilling Superman’s wishes by cloning an heir to Superman and Lois and inaugurating a Superman dynasty that will last until the end of time – but he’s also commodifying Superman, figuring out how it’s done, turning him into a brand, a franchise, a bigger–and–better “revamp,” the ultimate coming attraction, fresher than fresh, newer than new but familiar too. Quintum has figured out the “formula” for Superman and improved upon it.
And then you can go back to the start of All Star Superman issue #1 and read the “formula” for yourself, condensed into eight words on the first page and then expanded upon throughout the story! The solar journey is an endless circle naturally. A perfect puzzle that is its own solution.
In one way, Quintum could be seen to represent the creative team, simultaneously re–empowering a pure myth with the honest fire of Art...while at the same time shooting a jolt of juice through a concept that sells more “S” logo underpants and towels than it does comic books. All tastes catered!
I have to say that the Willy Wonka thing never crossed my mind until I saw people online make the comparison, which seems quite obvious now. Quintum dresses how I would dress if I was the world’s coolest super–scientist. What’s up with that?
NRAMA: Was Zibarro inspired by the Bizarro World story where the Bizarro–Neanderthal becomes this unappreciated Casanova–type?
GM: Don’t know that one, but it sounds like a scenario I could definitely endorse!
Zibarro started out as a daft name sicked–up by my subconscious mind, which flowered within moments into the must–write idea of an Imperfect Bizarro. What would an imperfect version of an already imperfect being be like?
Zibarro.
NRAMA: I’d like to know more about Zibarro – what’s the significance of his chronicling Bizarro World through poetry?
GM: It’s up to you. I see Zibarro partly as the sensitive teenager inside us all. He’s moody, horribly self–aware and uncomfortable, yet filled with thoughts of omnipotence and agency. He’s the absolute center of his tiny, disorganized universe. He’s playing the role of sensitive, empathic poet but at the same time, he’s completely self–absorbed.
When he says to Superman “Can you even imagine what it’s like to be so different. So unique. So unlike everyone else?” he doesn’t even wait for Superman’s reply. He doesn’t care about anyone’s feelings but his own, ultimately.
NRAMA: The character is very close to Superman, so what does it say that a nonpowered version on a savage world would focus his energy through that medium? Also, does Zibarro’s existence show how Superman is able to elevate even the backwards Bizarros through his very nature?
GM: All of the above. And maybe he writes his totally subjective poetry as a reflection of Clark Kent’s objective reporter role. The suppressed, lyrical, wounded side of Superman perhaps? The Super–Morrissey? Bizarro With The Thorn In His Side?
But he’s also Bizarro–Home’s “mistake” (or so it seems to him, even though he’s as natural an expression of the place as any of the other Bizarro creatures who grow like mold across the surface of their living planet). He feels excluded, a despised outsider, and yet that position is what defines his cherished self–image. He expresses himself through poetry because to him the regular Bizarro language is barbaric, barely articulate and guttural. And they all think he’s talking crap anyway.
It seemed to make sense that an interesting opposite of Bizarro speech might be flowery “woe is me” school Poetry Society odes to the sunset in a misunderstood heart. He’s still a Bizarro though, which makes him ineffectual. His tragedy is that he knows he’s fated to be useless and pointless but craves so much more.
NRAMA: Zibarro also represents a recurrent theme in the story, of Superman constantly facing alternate versions of himself – Bar–El, Samson and Atlas, the Superman Squad, even Luthor by the end. Notably, Hercules is absent, though Superman’s doing his Twelve Labors. With the mythological adventurers in particular, was this designed to equate Superman with their legend, to show how his character is greater than theirs, or both?
GM: In a way, I suppose. He did arm–wrestle them both, proving once and for all Superman’s stronger than anybody! And remember, these characters, along with Hercules, used to appear regularly in Superman books as his rivals. I thought they made better rivals than, say, Majestic or Ultraman because people who don’t read comics have heard of Hercules, Samson and Atlas and understand what they represent.
For that particular story, I wanted to see Superman doing tough guy shit again, like he did in the early days and then again in the 70s, when he was written as a supremely cocky macho bastard for a while. I thought a little bit of that would be an antidote to the slightly soppy, Super–Christ portrayal that was starting to gain ground.
Hence Samson’s broken arm, twisted in two directions beyond all repair. And Atlas in the hospital. And then Superman’s got his hot girlfriend dressed like a girl from Krypton and they’re making out on the moon (the original panel description was of something more like the famous shot of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing in the surf from “From Here To Eternity.” Frank’s final choice of composition is much more classically pulp–romantic and iconic than my down and dirty rumble in the moondirt would have been, I’m glad to say).
Newsarama: Tell us about some of the thinking behind the new antagonists you created for this series (at least the ones you want to talk about...): First up: Krull and the Subterranosaurs...
Grant Morrison: We wanted to create some throwaway new characters which would be designed to look as if they were convincing long–term elements of the Superman legend.
We were trying to create a few foes who had a classic feel and a solid backstory that could be explored again or in depth. Even if we never went back to these characters, we wanted them to seem rich enough to carry their own stories.
With Krull, we figured a superhuman character like Superman can always use a powerful “sub–human” opponent: a beast, a monster, a savage with the power to destroy civilization. For years I’ve had the idea that the familiar “gray aliens” might “actually” be evolved biped dinosaur descendants, the offspring of smart–thinking lizards which made their way to the warm regions at the Earth’s core.
I imagined these brutes developing their own technology, their own civilization, and then finally coming to the surface to declare bloody war on the mammalian usurpers! It seemed like we could develop this idea into the Krull backstory and suggest a whole epic conflict in a few panels.
Dom Regan, the Glasgow artist and DC colorist, saw the original green skin Jamie Grant had done for Krull, and suggested we make him red instead. Jamie reset his color filters and that was the moment Krull suddenly looked like a real Superman foe.
The red skin marked him out as unique, different and dangerous, even among his own species. It had echoes of Jack Kirby’s Devil Dinosaur that played right into the heart of the concept. A good design became a great design and the whole story of who Krull was – his twisted relationship with his father the Dino–Czar, his monstrous ambitions – came together in that first picture.
The society was fleshed out in the script even though we see only one panel of it – a gloomy, heavy, “Soviet” underworld of walled iron cities, cold blood and deadly intrigue. War–Barges that could sail on the oceans of heated steam at the center of the Earth. A Stalinist authoritarian lizard world where missing person cases were being taken to work and die as slaves in hellish underworld conditions.
NRAMA: Mechano–Man?
GM: An attempt to pre–imagine a classic, archetypal Superman foe, which started with another simple premise – how about a giant robot villain? But not just any giant robot – this is a rampaging machine with a raging little man inside.
Giving him a bitter, angry, scrawny loser as a pilot turned Mechano–Man into a much more extreme and pathological expression of the Man of Steel/Mild–Mannered Reporter dynamic, and added a few interesting layers onto an 8–panel appearance.
NRAMA: The Chronovore – a very disturbing creation, that one.
GM: The Chronovore was mentioned in passing in DC 1,000,000 and would have been the monster in my aborted Hypercrisis series idea. It took a long time to get the right design for the beast because it’s meant to be a 5–D being that we only ever see in 4–D sections. It had to work as a convincing representation of something much bigger that we’re seeing only where it interpenetrates our 4–D space-time continuum.
Imagine you’re walking along with a song in your teenage heart, then suddenly the Chronovore appears, takes bite out of your life, and you arrive at your girlfriend’s house aged 76, clutching a cell phone and a wilted bouquet.
NRAMA: One more obscure run that I was happy to see referenced in this was the use of Nasty from the old Mike Sekowsky Supergirl stories. What made you want to use this character?
GM: I remembered her from the old comics, and felt her fashion–y look could be updated very easily into the kind of fetish club thing I’ve always been partial to.
She seemed a cool and sexy addition to the Luthor plot. The set–up, where Lex has a fairly normal sister who hates how her wayward brother is such a bad influence on her brilliant daughter, is explosive with character potential.
They need to bring Nasty back to mainstream continuity. Geoff! They all want it and you know you never let them down!
NRAMA: Speaking of Mike Sekowsky, I’m curious about his influence on your work. I have an odd fascination with all the ideas and stories he was tossing around in the late 1960s and early 1970s – Jason’s Quest, Manhunter 2070, the I–Ching tales – and many of the characters he worked on, from the B”Wana Beast to the Inferior Five to Yankee Doodle (in Doom Patrol), have shown up in your work. The Bizarro Zoo in issue #10 is even slightly reminiscent of the Beast’s merged animals.
GM: Those were all comics that were around when I was a normal kid, prior to the obsessive collecting fan phase of my isolated teenage years. They clearly inspired me in some way, as you say, but certainly not consciously. I’d never have considered myself a particular fan of Mike Sekowsky’s work, but as you say, I’ve incorporated a lot of his ideas into the DC Universe work I’ve done. Hmm. Interesting.
While I’m at it, I should also say something about Samson and Atlas, halfway between old characters and new.
Samson, Atlas and Hercules were classical mainstays of old Superman covers, tangling with Superman in all those Silver Age stories that happened before he learned from his friends at Marvel that it was possible to fight other superheroes for fun and profit, so I decided to completely “re–vamp” the characters in the manner of superhero franchises. Marvel has the definitive Hercules for me, so I left him out of the mix and concentrated on Atlas and Samson.
Atlas was re–imagined as a mighty but restless and reckless young prince of the New Mythos – a society of mega–beings playing out their archetypal dramas between New Elysium and Hadia, with ordinary people caught in the middle – and Superman.
Essentially good–hearted, Atlas would have been the newbie in a “team” with Skyfather Xaoz!, Heroina, Marzak and the others. He has a bullish, adolescent approach to life. He drinks and plunges himself into ill–advised adventures to ease his naturally gloomy “weighed down by the world” temperament.
You can see it all now. The backstory suggested an unseen, Empyrean New Gods–type series from a parallel universe. What if, when Jack Kirby came to DC from Marvel in 1971, he’d followed up his sci–fi Viking Gods saga at Marvel, with a dimension–spanning epic rooted in Greek mythology? New Gods meets Eternals drawn by Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson? That was Atlas.
Samson, I decided would be a callback to the British newspaper strip “Garth.” Although you may already be imagining a daily strip about the exploits of time–tossed The Boys writer, Garth Ennis, it was actually about a blonde Adonis type who bounced around the ages having mildly horny, racy adventures.
(Go look him up then return the wiser before reading on, so I don’t have to explain anymore about this bastard – he’s often described as “the British Superman,” but oh...my arse! I hated meathead, personality–singularity Garth...but we all grew up with his meandering, inexplicable yet incredibly–drawn adventures and some of it was quite good when you were a little lad because he was always shagging ON PANEL with the likes of a bare–breasted cave girl or gauze–draped Helen of Troy.
(Unlike Superman, you see, the top British strongman liked to get naked. Lots naked. Naked in every time period he could get naked in, which was all of them thanks to the miracle of his bullshit powers.
(Imagine Doctor Who buff, dumb and naked all the time – Russell, I’ve had an idea!!!! – and that’s Garth in a nutshell.
(Sorry, I know I’m going on and the average attention span of anyone reading stuff on the Internet amounts to no more than a few paragraphs, but basically, Garth was always getting naked. In public, in family newspapers. Bollock naked. Let’s face it, patriotic Americans, have you ever seen Superman’s arse?
Newsarama Note: Well, there was Baby Kal-El in the 1978 film...
(Brits, hands up who still remember the man, and have you ever not seen Garth’s arse? Do you not, in fact, have a very clear image of it in your head, as drawn by Martin Asbury perhaps? In mine, Garth’s pulling aside a flimsy curtain to gaze at the pyramids with Cleopatra buck naked in foreground ogling his rock hard glutes...).
Anyway, Samson, I decided, was the Hebrew version of Garth and he would have his own mad comic that was like an American version of Garth. I saw the Bible hero plucked from the desert sands by time–travelling buffoons in search of a savior. Introduced to all the worst aspects of future culture and, using his stolen, erratic Chrono–Mobile, Samson became a time–(and space) traveling Soldier of Fortune, writing wrongs, humping princesses, accumulating and losing treasure etc. Like a science fiction Conan. Meets Garth.
Fortunately, you’ll never see any of these men ever again.
Newsarama: How have your perceptions of Superman and his supporting characters evolved since the Superman 2000 pitch you did with Mark Waid, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer? The Superman notions seem almost identical, but Luthor is very different here than in that pitch, and so is Clark Kent. Did you use some aspects of your original pitch, or have you just changed his mind on how to portray these characters since?
Grant Morrison: A little of both. I wanted to approach All Star Superman as something new, but there were a couple of specific aspects from the Superman 2000 pitch (as I mentioned earlier, it was actually called Superman Now, at least in my notebooks, which is where the bulk of the material came from) that I felt were definitely worth keeping and exploring.
I can’t remember much about Luthor from Superman Now, except for the ending. By the time I got to All Star Superman, I’d developed a few new insights into Luthor’s character that seemed to flesh him out more. Luthor’s really human and charismatic and hateful all the same time. He’s the brilliant, deluded egotist in all of us. The key for me was the idea that he draws his eyebrows on. The weird vanity of that told me everything I needed to know about Luthor.
I thought the real key to him was the fact that, brilliant as he is, Luthor is nowhere near as brilliant as he wants to be or thinks he is. For Luthor, no praise, no success, no achievement is ever enough, because there’s a big hungry hole in his soul. His need for acknowledgement and validation is superhuman in scale. Superman needs no thanks; he does what he does because he’s made that way. Luthor constantly rails against his own sense of failure and inadequacy...and Superman’s to blame, of course.
I’ve recently been re–thinking Luthor again for a different project, and there’s always a new aspect of the character to unearth and develop.
NRAMA: This story makes Superman and Lois’ relationship seem much more romantic and epic than usual, but this one also makes Superman more of the pursuer. Lois seems like more of an equal, but also more wary of his affections, particularly in the black–and–white sequence in issue #2.
She becomes this great beacon of support for him over the course of the series, but there is a sense that she’s a bit jaded from years of trickery and uncomfortable with letting him in now that he’s being honest. How, overall, do you see the relationship between Superman and Lois?
GM: The black-and-white panels shows Lois paranoid and under the influence of an alien chemical, but yes, she’s articulating many of her very real concerns in that scene.
I wanted her to finally respond to all those years of being tricked and duped and led to believe Superman and Clark Kent were two different people. I wanted her to get her revenge by finally refusing to accept the truth.
It also exposed that brilliant central paradox in the Superman/Lois relationship. The perfect man who never tells a lie has to lie to the woman he loves to keep her safe. And he lives with that every day. It’s that little human kink that really drives their relationship.
NRAMA: Jimmy Olsen is extremely cool in this series – it’s the old “Mr. Action” idea taken to a new level. It’s often easy to write Jimmy as a victim or sycophant, but in this series, he comes off as someone worthy of being “Superman’s Pal” – he implicitly trusts Superman, and will take any risk to get his story. Do you see this version of Jimmy as sort of a natural evolution of the version often seen in the comics?
GM: It was a total rethink based on the aspects of Olsen I liked, and playing down the whole wet–behind–the–ears “cub reporter” thing. I borrowed a little from the “Mr. Action” idea of a more daredevil, pro–active Jimmy, added a little bit of Nathan Barley, some Abercrombie & Fitch style, a bit of Tintin, and a cool Quitely haircut.
Jimmy was renowned for his “disguises” and bizarre transformations (my favorite is the transvestite Olsen epic “Miss Jimmy Olsen” from Jimmy Olsen #95, which gets a nod on the first page of our Jimmy story we did), so I wanted to take that aspect of his appeal and make it part of his job.
I don’t like victim Jimmy or dumb Jimmy, because those takes on the character don’t make any sense in their context. It seemed more interesting see what a young man would be like who could convincingly be Superman’s “pal.” Someone whose company a Superman might actually enjoy. That meant making Jimmy a much bigger character: swaggering but ingenuous. Innocent yet worldly. Enthusiastic but not stupid.
My favorite Jimmy moment is in issue #7 when he comes up with the way to defeat the Bizarro invasion by using the seas of the Bizarro planet itself as giant mirrors to reflect toxic – to Bizarros – sunlight onto the night side of the Earth. He knows Superman can actually take crazy lateral thinking like this and put it into practice.
NRAMA: Perry White has a few small–but–key scenes, particularly his address to his staff in issue #1 and standing up to Luthor in issue #12. I’d like to hear more about your thoughts on this character.
GM: As with the others, my feelings are there on the page. Perry is Clark’s boss and need only be that and not much more to play his role perfectly well within the stories. He’s a good reminder that Superman has a job and a boss, unlike that good–for–nothing work-shy bastard Batman. Perry’s another of the series’ older male role models of integrity and steadfastness, like Pa Kent.
NRAMA: There’s a sense in the Daily Planet scenes and with Lois’s spotlight issues that everyone knows Clark is Superman, but they play along to humor him. The Clark disguise comes off as very obvious in this story. Do you feel that the Planet staff knows the truth, or are just in a very deep case of denial, like Lex?
GM: If I had to say for sure, I think Jimmy Olsen worked it out a long time ago, and simply presumes that if Superman has a good reason for what he’s doing, that’s good enough for Jimmy.
Lois has guessed, but refuses to acknowledge it because it exposes her darkest flaw – she could never love Clark Kent the way she loves Superman.
NRAMA: Also, the Planet staff seems awfully nonchalant at Luthor’s threats. Are they simply used to being attacked by now?
GM: Yes. They’re a tough group. They also know that Superman makes a point of looking out for them, so they naturally try to keep Luthor talking. They know he loves to talk about himself and about Superman. In that scene, he’s almost forgotten he even has powers, he’s so busy arguing and making points. He keeps doing ordinary things instead of extraordinary things.
NRAMA: The running gag of Clark subtly using his powers to protect unknowing people is well done, but I have to admit I was confused by the sequence near the end of issue #1. Was that an el–train, and if so, why was it so close to the ground?
GM: It’s a MagLev hover–train. Look again, and you’ll see it’s not supported by anything. Hover–trains help ease congestion in busy city streets! Metropolis is the City of Tomorrow, after all.
NRAMA: And there’s the death of Pa Kent. Why do you feel it’s particularly important to have Pa and not both of the Kents pass away?
GM: I imagined they had both passed away fairly early in Superman’s career, but Ma went a few years after Pa. Also, because the book was about men or man, it seemed important to stress the father/son relationships. That circle of life, the king is dead, long live the king thing that Superman is ultimately too big and too timeless to succumb to.
NRAMA: There is a real touch of Elliott S! Maggin’s novels in your depiction of Luthor – someone who is just so obsessive–compulsive about showing up Superman that he accomplishes nothing in his own life. He comes across as a showman, from his rehearsed speech in issue #1 to his garish costume in the last two issues, and it becomes painfully apparent that he wants to usurp Superman because he just can’t be happy with himself. What defeats him is actually a beautiful gift, getting to see the world as Superman does, and finally understanding his enemy.
That’s all a lead–in to: What previous stories that defined Luthor for you, and how did you define his character? What appeals to you about writing him?
GM: The Marks Waid and Millar were big fans of the Maggin books, and may have persuaded me to read at least the first one but I’m ashamed to say can’t remember anything about it, other than the vague recollection of a very humane, humanist take on Superman that seemed in general accord with the pacifist, hedonistic, between–the–wars spirit of the ‘90s when I read it. It was the ‘90s; I had other things on my mind and in my mind.
I like Maggin’s “Must There Be A Superman?” from Superman #247, which ultimately poses questions traditional superhero comic books are not equipped to answer and is one of the first paving stones in the Yellow Brick Road that leads to Watchmen and beyond, to The Authority, The Ultimates etc. Everyone still awake, still reading this, should make themselves familiar with “Must There Be A Superman?” – it’s a milestone in the development of the superhero concept.
However, the story that most defines Luthor for me turns out to be, as usual, a Len Wein piece with Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson– Superman #248. This blew me away when I was a kid. Lex Luthor cares about humanity? He’s sorry we all got blown up? The villain loves us too? It’s only Superman he really hates? Genius. Big, cool adult stuff.
The divine Len makes Lex almost too human, but it was amazing to see this kind of depth in a character I’d taken for granted as a music hall villain.
I also love the brutish Satanic, Crowley–esque, Golden Age Luthor in the brilliant “Powerstone” Action Comics #47 (the opening of All Star #11 is a shameless lift from “Powerstone”, as I soon realised when I went back to look. Blame my...er...photographic memory...cough).
And I like the Silver Age Luthor who only hates Superman because he thinks it’s Superboy’s fault he went bald. That was the most genuinely human motivation for Luthor’s career of villainy of all; it was Superman’s fault he went bald! I can get behind that.
In the Silver Age, baldness, like obesity, old age and poverty, was seen quite rightly as a crippling disease and a challenge which Superman and his supporting cast would be compelled to overcome at every opportunity! Suburban “50s America versus Communist degeneracy? You tell me.
I like elements of the Marv Wolfman/John Byrne ultra–cruel and rapacious businessman, although he somewhat lacks the human dimension (ultimately there’s something brilliant about Luthor being a failed inventor, a product of Smallville/Dullsville – the genius who went unnoticed in his lifetime, and resorted to death robots in chilly basements and cellars. Luthor as geek versus world). I thought Alan Moore’s ruthlessly self–assured “consultant” Luthor in Swamp Thing was an inspired take on the character as was Mark Waid’s rage–driven prodigy from Birthright.
I tried to fold them all into one portrayal. I see him as a very human character – Superman is us at our best, Luthor is us when we’re being mean, vindictive, petty, deluded and angry. Among other things. It’s like a bipolar manic/depressive personality – with optimistic, loving Superman smiling at one end of the scale and paranoid, petty Luthor cringing on the other.
I think any writer of Superman has to love these two enemies equally. We have to recognize them both as potentials within ourselves. I think it’s important to find yourself agreeing with Luthor a bit about Superman’s “smug superiority” – we all of us, except for Superman, know what it’s like to have mean–spirited thoughts like that about someone else’s happiness. It’s essential to find yourself rooting for Lex, at least a little bit, when he goes up against a man–god armed only with his bloody–minded arrogance and cleverness.
Even if you just wish you could just give him a hug and help him channel his energies in the right direction, Luthor speaks for something in all of us, I like to think.
However he’s played, Luthor is the male power fantasy gone wrong and turned sour. You’ve got everything you want but it’s not enough because someone has more, someone is better, someone is cleverer or more handsome.
Newsarama: Grant, a recurring theme throughout the book is the effect of small kindness – how even the likes of Steve Lombard are capable of decency. And Superman gets the key to saving himself by doing something that any human being could do, offering sympathy to a person about to end it all.
Grant Morrison: Completely...the person you help today could be the person who saves your life tomorrow.
NRAMA: The character actions that make the biggest difference, from Zibarro’s sacrifice to Pa’s influence on Superman, are really things that any normal, non-powered person could do if they embrace the best part of their humanity. The last page of issue #12 teases the idea that Superman’s powers could be given to all mankind, but it seems as though the greatest gift he has given them is his humanity. How do you view Superman’s fate in the context of where humanity could go as a species?
GM: I see Superman in this series as an Enlightenment figure, a Renaissance idea of the ideal man, perfect in mind, body and intention.
A key text in all of this is Pico’s ‘Oration On The Dignity of Man’ (15c), generally regarded as the ‘manifesto’ of Renaissance thought, in which Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola laid out the fundamentals of what we tend to refer to as ’Humanist’ thinking.
(The ‘Oratorio’ also turns up in my British superhero series Zenith from 1987, which may indicate how long I’ve been working towards a Pico/Superman team-up!)
At its most basic, the ‘Oratorio’ is telling us that human beings have the unique ability, even the responsibility, to live up to their ‘ideals’. It would be unusual for a dog to aspire to be a horse, a bird to bark like a dog, or a horse to want to wear a diving suit and explore the Barrier Reef, but people have a particular gift for and inclination towards imitation, mimicry and self-transformation. We fly by watching birds and then making metal carriers that can outdo birds, we travel underwater by imitating fish, we constantly look to role models and behavioral templates for guidance, even when those role models are fictional TV or, comic, novel or movie heroes, just like the soft, quick, shapeshifty little things we are. We can alter the clothes we wear, the temperature around us, and change even our own bodies, in order to colonize or occupy previously hostile environments. We are, in short, a distinctively malleable and adaptable bunch.
So, Pico is saying, if we live by imitation, does it not make sense that we might choose to imitate the angels, the gods, the very highest form of being that we can imagine? Instead of indulging the most brutish, vicious, greedy and ignorant aspects of the human experience, we can, with a little applied effort, elevate the better part of our natures and work to express those elements through our behavior. To do so would probably make us all feel a whole lot better too. Doing good deeds and making other people happy makes you feel totally brilliant, let’s face it.
So we can choose to the astronaut or the gangster. The superhero or the super villain. The angel or the devil. It’s entirely up to us, particularly in the privileged West, how we choose to imagine ourselves and conduct our lives.
We live in the stories we tell ourselves. It’s really simple. We can continue to tell ourselves and our children that the species we belong to is a crawling, diseased, viral cancer smear, only fit for extinction, and let’s see where that leads us.
We can continue to project our self-loathing and narcissistic terror of personal mortality onto our culture, our civilization, our planet, until we wreck the promise of the world for future generations in a fit of sheer self-induced panic...
...or we can own up to the scientific fact that we are all physically connected as parts of a single giant organism, imagine better ways to live and grow...and then put them into practice. We can stop pissing about, start building starships, and get on with the business of being adults.
The ’Oratorio’ is nothing less than the Shazam!, the Kimota! for Western Culture and we would do well to remember it in our currently trying times.
The key theme of the ‘Dark Age’ of comics was loss and recovery of wonder - McGregor’s Killraven trawling through the apocalyptic wreckage of culture in his search for poetry, meaning and fellowship, Captain Mantra, amnesiac in Robert Mayer’s Superfolks, Alan Moore’s Mike Maxwell trudging through the black and white streets of Thatcher’s Britain, with the magic word of transformation burning on the tip of his tongue.
My own work has been an ongoing attempt to repeat the magic word over and over until we all become the kind of superheroes we’d all like to be. Ha hah ha.
Newsarama: The structure of the 12 issues involves both Superman’s 12 labors and his impending death. Do you feel the threat of his demise brings out the best in Superman’s already–high character, or did you intend it more as a window for the audience to understand how he sees the world?
Grant Morrison: In trying to do the “big,” ultimate Superman story, we wanted to hit on all the major beats that define the character – the “death of Superman” story has been told again and again and had to be incorporated into any definitive take. Superman’s death and rebirth fit the sun god myth we were establishing, and, as you say, it added a very terminal ticking clock to the story.
NRAMA: When we talked earlier this year, we discussed the neurotic quality of the Silver Age stories. Looking at the series as a whole, you consistently invert this formula. Superman is faced with all these crises that could be seen as personifying his neuroses, but for the most part he handles them with a level head and comes across as being very at peace with himself. You talked about your discussion with an in–character Superman fan at a convention years ago, but I am curious as to how you determined Superman’s mindset.
GM: I felt we had to live up to the big ideas behind Superman. I don’t take my daft job lightly. It’s all I’ve got.
As the project got going, I wasn’t thinking about Silver Ages or Dark Ages or anything about the comics I’d read, so much as the big shared idea of “Superman” and that “S” logo I see on T–shirts everywhere I go, on girls and boys. That communal Superman. I wanted us to get the precise energy of Platonic Superman down on the page.
The “S” hieroglyph, the super–sigil, stands for the very best kind of man we can imagine, so the subject dictated the methodical, perfectionist approach. As I’ve mentioned before, I keep this aspect of my job fresh for myself by changing my writing style to suit the project, the character or the artist.
With something like Batman R.I.P., I’m aiming for a frenzied Goth Pulp-Noir; punk-psych, expressionist shadows and jagged nightmare scene shifts, inspired by Batman’s roots and by the snapping, fluttering of his uncanny cape. Final Crisis was written, with the Norse Ragnarok and Biblical Revelations in mind, as a story about events more than characters. A doom-laden, Death Metal myth for the wonderful world of Fina(ncia)l Crisis/Eco-breakdown/Terror Trauma we all have to live in.
The subject matter drives the execution. And then, of course, the artists add their own vision and nuance. With All Star Superman, “Frank” and I were able to spend a lot of time together talking it through, and we agreed it had to be about grids, structure, storybook panel layouts, an elegance of form, a clarity of delivery. “Classical” in every sense of the word. The medium, the message, the story, the character, all working together as one simple equation.
Frank Quitely, a Glasgow Art School boy, completely understood without much explanation, the deep structural underpinnings of the series and how to embody them in his layouts. There’s a scene in issue # 8, set on the Bizarro world, where we see Le Roj handing Superman his rocket plans. Look at the arrangement of the figures of Zibarro, Le Roj, Superman and Bizaro–Superman and you’ll see one attempt to make us of Renaissance compositions.
The sense of sunlit Zen calm we tried to get into All Star is how I imagine it might feel to think the way Superman thinks all the time - a thought process that is direct, clean, precise, mathematical, ordered. A mind capable of fantastical imagination but grounded in the everyday of his farm upbringing with nice decent folks. Rich with humour and tears and deep human significance, yet tuned to a higher key. We tried to hum along for a little while, that’s all.
In honor of the character’s primal position in the development of the superhero narrative, I hoped we could create an “ultimate” hero story, starring the ultimate superhero.
Basically, I suppose I felt Superman deserved the utmost application of our craft and intelligence in order to truly do him justice.
Otherwise, I couldn’t have written this book if I hadn’t watched my big, brilliant dad decline into incoherence and death. I couldn’t have written it if I’d never had my heart broken, or mended. I couldn’t have written it if I hadn’t known what it felt like to be idolized, misunderstood, hated for no clear reason, loved for all my faults, forgotten, remembered...
Writing All Star Superman was, in retrospect, also a way of keeping my mind in the clean sunshine while plumbing the murkiest depths of the imagination with that old pair of c****s Darkseid and Doctor Hurt. Good riddance.
Newsarama: This is touched on in other questions, but how much of the Silver/Bronze Age backstory matters here? What do you see as Superman's life prior to All-Star Superman? (What was going on with this Superman while the Byrne revamp took hold?)
Grant Morrison: When I introduced the series in an interview online, I suggested that All Star Superman could be read as the adventures of the ‘original’ Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Superman, returning after 20 plus years of adventures we never got to see because we were watching John Byrne‘s New Superman on the other channel. If ‘Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?’ and the Byrne reboot had never happened, where would that guy be now?
This was more to provide a sense, probably limited and ill-considered, of what the tone of the book might be like. I never intended All Star Superman as a direct continuation of the Weisinger or Julius Schwartz-era Superman stories. The idea was always to create another new version of Superman using all my favorite elements of past stories, not something ‘Age’ specific.
I didn’t collect Superman comics until the ‘70s and I’m not interested enough in pastiche or nostalgia to spend 6 years of my life playing post-modern games with Superman. All Star isn’t written, drawn or colored to look or read like a Silver Age comic book.
All Star Superman is not intended as arch commentary on continuity or how trends in storytelling have changed over the decades. It’s not retro or meta or anything other than its own simple self; a piece of drawing and writing that is intended by its makers to capture the spirit of its subject to the best of their capabilities, wisdom and talent.
Which is to say, we wanted our Superman story be about life, not about comics or superheroes, current events or politics. It’s about how it feels, specifically to be a man...in our dreams! Hopefully that means our 12 issues are also capable of wide interpretation.
So as much as we may have used a few recognizable Silver Age elements like Van-Zee and Sylv(i)a and the Bottle City of Kandor, the ensemble Daily Planet cast embodies all the generations of Superman. Perry White is from 1940, Steve Lombard is from the Schwartz-era ‘70s, Ron Troupe - the only black man in Metropolis - appeared in 1991. Cat Grant is from 1987 and so on.
P.R.O.J.E.C.T. refers back to Jack Kirby’s DNA Project from his ‘70s Jimmy Olsen stories, as well as to The Cadmus Project from ’90s Superboy and Superman stories. Doomsday is ‘90s. Kal Kent, Solaris and the Infant Universe of Qwewq all come from my own work on Superman in the same decade. Pa Kent’s heart attack is from ‘Superman the Movie‘. We didn’t use Brainiac because he’d been the big bad in Earth 2 but if we had, we’d have used Brainiac’s Kryptonian origin from the animated series and so on.
I also used quite a few elements of John Byrne’s approach. Byrne made a lot of good decisions when he rebooted the whole franchise in 1986 and I wanted to incorporate as much as I could of those too.
Our Superman in All Star was never Superboy, for instance. All Star Superman landed on Earth as a normal, if slightly stronger and fitter infant, and only began to manifest powers in adolescence when he’d finally soaked up enough yellow solar radiation to trigger his metamorphosis.
The Byrne logic seemed to me a better way to explain how his powers had developed across the decades, from the skyscraper leaps of the early days to the speed-of-light space flight of the high Silver Age. And more importantly, it made the Superman myth more poignant - the story of a farm boy who turned into an alien as he reached adolescence. I felt that was something that really enriched Superman. He grew away from his home, his family, his adopted species as he became Superman. His teenage years are a record of his transformation from normal boy to super-being.
As you say, there are more than just Silver Age influences in the book. Basically we tried to create a perfect synthesis of every Superman era. So much so, that it should just be taken as representative of an ‘age’ all its own.
In the end, however, I do think that the Silver Age type stories, with their focus on human problems and foibles, have a much wider appeal than a lot of the work which followed. They’re more like fables or folk tales than the later ‘comic book superhero’ stories of Superman when he became just another colorful costume in the crowd...and perhaps that’s why All Star seemed to resemble those books more than it does a typical modern Marvel or DC comic. It was our intention to present a more universal, mainstream Superman.
NRAMA: In your depiction of Krypton and the Kryptonians, you show the complexity of Superman’s relationship between humanity and Earth even further. Krypton has that scientific paradise quality to it, but the Kryptonians are also portrayed as slightly aloof and detached, even Jor-El. But from Bar-El to the people of Kandor, they’re touched by Superman’s goodness. What do you see as the fundamental difference between Kryptonians and Earthlings, and how has Superman’s character been shaped by each?
GM: My version of Krypton was, again, synthesized from a number of different approaches over the decades.
In mythic terms, if Superman is the story of a young king, found and raised by common people, then Krypton is the far distant kingdom he lost. It’s the secret bloodline, the aristocratic heritage that makes him special, and a hero. At the same time, Krypton is something that must be left behind for Superman to become who he is - i.e. one of us. Krypton gives him his scientific clarity of mind, Earth makes his heart blaze.
I liked the very early Jerry Siegel descriptions where Krypton is a planet of advanced supermen and women (I already played with that a little in Marvel Boy where Noh-Varr was written to be the Marvel Superboy basically). To that, I added the rich, science fiction detailing of the Silver Age Krypton stories and the slightly detached coolness that characterized John Byrne’s Krypton, which I re-interpreted through the lens of Dzogchen Buddhist thought, probably the most pragmatic, chilly and rational philosophic system on the planet and the closest, I felt, to how Kryptonians might see things.
We also took some time to redesign the crazy, multicolored Kryptonian flag (you can see our version in Kandor in issue #10). The flag, as originally imagined, seemed like the last thing Kryptonians would endorse, so we took the multicolored-rays-around-a-circle design and recreated it - the central circle is now red, representing Krypton’s star, Rao, while the rays, rather than arbitrary colors, become representations of the spectrum of visible light pouring from Rao into the inky black of space. In this way, the flag, that bizarre emblem of nationalism becomes a scientific hieroglyph.
Showing Krypton and Kryptonians was also important as a way of stressing why Superman wears that costume and why it makes absolute sense that he looks the way he does. I don’t see the red and blue suit as a flag or as rewoven baby blankets. There’s no need for Superman to dress the way he does but it made sense to think of his outfit as his ‘national costume‘.
The way I see it, the standard superhero outfit, the familiar Superman suit with the pants on the outside, is what everyone wore on Krypton, give or take a few fashion accessories like hoods and headbands, chest crests and variant colors. In fact, all other superheroes are just copying the fashions on Krypton, lost planet of the super-people.
Superman wears his ’action-suit’ the way a patriotic Scotsman would wear a kilt. It’s a sign of his pride in his alien heritage.
Newsarama: Although All–Star Superman ties in with DC One Million, you style of writing has changed dramatically since then. How do you feel about One Million now?
Grant Morrison: I just read it again and liked it a lot. Comics were definitely happier, breezier and more confident in their own strengths before Hollywood and the Internet turned the business of writing superhero stories into the production of low budget storyboards or, worse, into conformist, fruitless attempts to impress or entertain a small group of people who appear to hate comics and their creators.
NRAMA: Obviously, this book is the most explicit SF–Christ story since Behold the Man, only...happy. Superman/Christ parallels have existed for decades, but this story makes it absolutely explicit, from laying his hands on the sick and dying to...well, most of issue #12. You’ve dealt with Christ themes before, particularly in The Mystery Play, but outside of the comics, how do you see Superman as a Christ figure for the “real” world?
GM: The “Superman as Christ” thing is a little too reductive for me, and tends to overlook the fact that Superman is by no means a pacifist in the Christ sense. Superman would never turn the other cheek; Superman punches out the bully. Superman is a fighter.
When did Christ ever batter the Devil through a mountain?
The thing I disliked about the Superman Returns movie was the American Christ angle, which reduced Superman to a sniveling, masochistic wreck, crawling around on the floor, taking a kicking from everyone. This approach had an odd and slightly disturbing S&M flavor, which didn’t play well to the character’s strengths at all and seemed to derive entirely from a kind of Catholic vision of the suffering, martyred Jesus.
It’s not that he’s based on Jesus, but simply that a lot of the mythical sun god elements that have been layered onto the Christ story also appear in the story of Superman. I suppose I see Superman more as pagan sci–fi. He’s a secular messiah, a science redeemer with tough guy muscles and a very direct and clear morality.
NRAMA: Continuing the religious themes, in issue #10, you have Superman literally giving birth to himself, both philosophically and as a character – a nice little meta–moment showing how Superman inspires a world where he is only fiction. How did that idea come about?
GM: It came from the challenge we’d set ourselves: as I said, issue #10 had been left as a blank space into which the single most coherent condensation of all our ideas about Superman were destined to fit.
I wanted to do a “day in the life” story. So much of All Star had been about this threat to Superman himself, so we wanted to show him going about a typical day saving people and doing good.
Then came the title “Neverending,” which comes from the opening announcement – “Faster than a speeding bullet!...” of the Superman radio show from 1940, and seemed to me to be as good a title for a Superman story as any I could think of. It seemed to distil everything about Superman’s battle and his legend into a single word. And the story structure itself was designed to loop endlessly, so it went well with that.
On top of that went the idea of the Last Will and Testament of Superman. A dying god writing his will seemed like an interesting structure to use. Then came the idea to fit all of human history into that single 24 hours. And then to show the development of the Superman idea through human culture from the earliest Australian Aboriginal notions of super–beings ‘descended” from the sky, through the complex philosophical system of Hinduism, onto the Renaissance concept of the ideal man, via the refinements of Nietzche and finally, down to that smiling, hopeful Joe Shuster sketch; the final embodiment of humanity’s glorious, uplifting notion of the superman become reduced to a drawing, a story for kids, a worthless comic book.
And also what that could mean in a holographic fractal universe, where the smallest part contains and reflects the whole.
Of course the next panel in that sequence is happening in the real world and would show you, the reader, sitting with the latest Superman issue in your hands, deep within the Infant Universe of Qwewq in the Fortress of Solitude, today, wherever you are. In “Neverending,” the reader becomes wrapped in a self–referential loop of story and reality. If you actually, seriously think about what is happening at this point in the story, if you meditate upon the curious entanglement of the real and the fictional, you will become enlightened in this life apparently. According to some texts.
NRAMA: On a personal level, you’ve explored all types of religions and philosophies in your work. What is your take on religion and how it influences humanity, and the Christian take on Jesus Christ in particular?
GM: I think religion per se, is a ghastly blight on the progress of the human species towards the stars. At the same time, it, or something like it, has been an undeniable source of comfort, meaning and hope for the majority of poor bastards who have ever lived on Earth, so I’m not trying to write it off completely. I just wish that more people were educated to a standard where they could understand what religion is and how it works. Yes, it got us through the night for a while, but ultimately, it’s one of those ugly, stupid arse–over–backwards things we could probably do without now, here on the Planet of the Apes.
Religion is to spirituality what porn is to sex. It’s what the Hollywood 3–act story template is to real creative writing.
Religion creates a structure which places “special,” privileged people (priests) between ordinary people and the divine, as if there could even be any separation: as if every moment, every thought, every action was not already an expression of dynamic ‘divinity” at work.
As I’ve said before, the solid world is just the part of heaven we’re privileged to touch and play with. You don’t need a priest or a holy man to talk to “god” on your behalf: just close your eyes and say hello. “God” is no more, no less, than the sum total of all matter, all energy, all consciousness, as experienced or conceptualized from a timeless perspective where everything ever seems to present all at once. “God” is in everything, all the time and can be found there by looking carefully. The entire universe, including the scary, evil bits, is a thought “God” is thinking, right now.
As far as I can figure it out from my own reading and my own experience of how the spiritual world works, Jesus was, as they say, way cool: a man who achieved a state of consciousness, which nowadays would get him a diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy (in the days of the Emperor Tiberius, he was crucified for his ideas, today he’d be laughed at, mocked or medicated).
This “holistic” mode of consciousness (which Luthor experiences briefly at the end of All Star Superman) announces itself as a heartbreaking connection, a oneness, with everything that exists...but you don’t have to be Superman to know what that feeling is like. There are a ton of meditation techniques which can take you to this place. I don’t see it as anything supernatural or religious, in fact, I think it’s nothing more than a developmental level of human consciousness, like the ability to see perspective – which children of 4 cannot do but children of 6 can.
Everyone who’s familiar with this upgrade will tell you the same thing: it feels as if “alien” or “angelic” voices – far more intelligent, coherent and kindly than the voices you normally hear in your head – are explaining the structure of time and space and your place in it.
This identification with a timeless supermind containing and resolving within itself all possible thoughts and contradictions, is what many people, unsurprisingly, mistake for an encounter with “God.” However, given that this totality must logically include and resolve all possible thoughts and concepts, it can also be interpreted as an actual encounter with God, so I’m not here to give anyone a hard time over interpretation.
Some people have the experience and believe the God of their particular culture has chosen them personally to have a chat with. These people may become born–again Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, devotees of Shiva, or misunderstood lunatics. Some “contactees” interpret the voices they hear erroneously as communications from an otherworldly, alien intelligence, hence the proliferation of “abduction” accounts in recent decades, which share most of their basic details with similar accounts, from earlier centuries, of people being taken away by “fairies” or “little people”.
Some, who like to describe themselves as magicians, will recognize the “alien” voice as the “Holy Guardian Angel”.
In timeless, spaceless consciousness, the singular human mind blurs into a direct experience of the totality of all consciousness that has ever been or will ever be. It feels like talking with God but I see that as an aspect of science, not religion.
As Peter Barnes wrote in “The Ruling Class”, “I know I must be God because when I pray to Him, I find I’m talking to myself.”
Newsarama: When we spoke earlier this year, you talked about some of your ideas for future All Star stories. Are you moving forward on those, or have you started working on different ideas since then?
Grant Morrison: I haven’t had time to think about them for a while. I did have the stories worked out, and I’d like to do more, but right now it feels like Frank and Jamie and I have said all there is to be said. I don’t know if I’m ready to do All Star Superman with anyone else right now. I have other plans.
NRAMA: You end the book with Superman having uplifted humanity – having inspired them through his sacrifice and great deeds, and with the potential to pass his powers on to humanity still there. Do you plan to explore this concept further, or would you prefer to leave it open–ended?
GM: I may go back to the Son of Superman in some way. At the same time, it’s best left open–ended. I like the idea that Superman gets to have his cake and eat it; he becomes golden and mythical and lives forever as a dream. Yet, he also is able to sire a child who will carry his legacy into the future. He kicks ass in both the spiritual and the temporal spheres!
NRAMA: The notion of transcendence – always a big part of your work. But the debate about All Star Superman is whether or not it "transcends its genre." Superman becomes transcendent within the series itself, and inspires the beings on Qwewq, but does the work aspire to more than that? Is it simply the greatest version of a Superman story, and that’s enough?
GM: That would certainly be enough if it were true.
It’s a pretty high–level attempt by some smart people to do the Superman concept some justice, is all I can say. It’s intended to work as a set of sci–fi fables that can be read by children and adults alike. I’d like to think you can go to it if you’re feeling suicidal, if you miss your dad, if you’ve had to take care of a difficult, ailing relative, if you’ve ever lost control and needed a good friend to put you straight, if you love your pets, if you wish your partner could see the real you...All Star is about how Superman deals with all of that.
It’s a big old Paul Bunyan style mythologizing of human - and in particular male - experience. In that sense I’d like to think All Star Superman does transcend genre in that it’s intended to be read on its own terms and needs absolutely no understanding of genre conventions or history around it to grasp what’s going on.
In today’s world, in today’s media climate designed to foster the fear our leaders like us to feel because it makes us easier to push around. In a world where limp, wimpy men are forced to talk tough and act ‘badass’ even though we all know they’re shitting it inside. In a world where the measure of our moral strength has come to lie in the extremity of the images we’re able to look at and stomach. In a world, I’m reliably told, that’s going to the dogs, the real mischief, the real punk rock rebellion, is a snarling, ‘fuck you’ positivity and optimism. Violent optimism in the face of all evidence to the contrary is the Alpha form of outrage these days. It really freaks people out.
I have a desire not to see my culture and my fellow human beings fall helplessly into step with a middle class media narrative that promises only planetary catastrophe, as engineered by an intrinsically evil and corrupt species which, in fact, deserves everything it gets.
Is this relentless, downbeat insistence that the future has been cancelled really the best we can come up with? Are we so fucked up we get off on terrifying our children? It’s not funny or ironic anymore and that’s why we wrote All Star Superman the way we did. Everything has changed. ‘Dark’ entertainment now looks like hysterical, adolescent, ‘Zibarro’ crap. That’s what my Final Crisis series is about too.
NRAMA (aka Tim Callahan): Continuing with the theme of transcendence: The words "ineffectual" and "surrender" are repeated throughout the book. Discuss.
GM: Discuss yourself, Callahan! I know you have the facilities and I should think it’s all rather obvious.
NRAMA: What was the inspiration for the image of Superman in the sun at the end? (I confess this question comes as the result of much unsuccessful Googling)
GM: I didn’t have any specific reference in mind - just that one we‘ve all sort of got in our heads. I drew the figure as a sketch, intended to be reminiscent of William Blake’s cosmic figures, Russian Constructivist Soviet Socialist Worker type posters, and Leonardo’s ‘Proportions of the Human Figure‘. The position of the legs hints at the Buddhist swastika, the clockwise sun symbol. It was to me, the essence of that working class superheroic ideal I mentioned, condensed into a final image of mythic Superman, - our eternal, internal, guiding, selfless, tireless, loving superstar. The daft All Star Superman title of the comic is literalized in this last picture. It’s the ‘fearful symmetry’ of the Enlightenment project - an image of genius, toil, and our need to make things, to fashion art and artifacts, as a form of superhuman, divine imitation.
It was Superman as this fusion of Renaissance/Enlightenment ideas about Man and Cosmos, an impossible union of Blake and Newton. A Pop Art ‘Vitruvian Man‘. The inspiration for the first letter of the new future alphabet!
As you can see, we spent a lot of time thinking about all this and purifying it down to our own version of the gold. I’m glad it’s over.
NRAMA: Finally: What, above all else, would you like people to take away from All Star Superman?
GM: That we spent a lot of time thinking about this!
No. What I hope is that people take from it the unlikelihood that a piece of paper, with little ink drawings of figures, with little written words, can make you cry, can make your heart soar, can make you scared, sad, or thrilled. How mental is that?
That piece of paper is inert material, the corpse of some tree, pulped and poured, then given new meaning and new life when the real hours and real emotions that the writer and the artist, the colorist, the letter the editor translated onto the physical page, meet with the real hours and emotions of a reader, of all readers at once, across time, generations and distance.
And think about how that experience, the simple experience of interacting with a paper comic book, along with hundreds of thousands of others across time and space, is an actual doorway onto the beating heart of the imminent, timeless world of “Myth” as defined above. Not just a drawing of it but an actual doorway into timelessness and the immortal world where we are all one together.
My grief over the loss of my dad can be Superman’s grief, can trigger your own grief, for your own dad, for all our dads. The timeless grief that’s felt by Muslims and Christians and Agnostics alike. My personal moments of great and romantic love, untainted by the everyday, can become Superman’s and may resonate with your own experience of these simple human feelings.
In the one Mythic moment we’re all united, kissing our Lover for the First time, the Last time, the Only time, honoring our dear Dad under a blood red sky, against a darkening backdrop, with Mum telling us it’ll all be okay in the end.
If we were able to capture even a hint of that place and share it with our readers, that would be good enough for me.
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Everyday I've Missed You
Clark Kent X Wife! Wayne! Reader
Warnings:suggestive content, explicit language, angst, and torture.
Words:1394
Arthur's notes! Conner is from young justice and Kon is 90s Superboy. Also Jonathan and Jordan from Superman and Lois series are readers young set of twins
Clark's disappearance takes it's toll on the family..
It was early night with a bright night sky. Y/N Kent was sitting on her bed with her youngest two son's. Two sets of twins and all four were boys. Conner and Kon were only 10 when Y/N was pregnant with Jordan and Jonathan.
"momma when's daddy gonna be back?" Jordan asked yet again, laying his small head on her chest "is, he ok? I really miss him"
Before she could reassure her deeply concerned little boy his twin cut in "yeah it's been 3 weeks! This sucks" Jonathan whined laying on her arm
She kissed Jordan's forehead and then kisses the side of Jonathan's face. She was miserable but she had to be strong. She couldn't let them see the worry that tried to creep up to her e/c eyes. It was the hidden heaviness in her heart that showed through her face only when she is alone.
"oh my sweet boys. Don't you worry. Your Daddy is gonna be back home as soon as he can. It's gonna be OK"
"promise?" Jon asked holding her hand tighter
"I promise"
....
Many miles away from the Kent farm. Conner groans popping his knuckles and twist his neck to loosen his tight muscles. Kon twisted his back trying to make a louder popping noise.
With Superman gone it brought up much responsibility for them to keep the world a safer place. The two teenagers flew above the sky headed for the large farm. The couple bought it with Y/N's inheritance of her parents that her children were never able to meet.
The two brothers share a sadden smile seeing their mother sitting on the roof. She was wearing her lounge pants, house-shoes and tank top with Clark's plaid jacket. She was clinging to the jacket with her eyes shaking.
Conner and Kon gently land onto the roof beside her. She looks to her son's softly smiling.
"hey boys. How.. How was patrol?" she asked trying to distract herself and her boys from her bitter mood.
"it was fine..." Conner casually said more concerned with his mom.
Kon and Conner sat beside their mother taking her hands into their own. She remained silent as saying anything would bring her to tears.
After her husband was doing missions off planet. Sudden silence came, Clark hadn't been seen nor heard form, in 3 weeks. Bruce had been searching for his brother in law ever since.
"it's uh getting late. I know you two are half-Kryptonite like your Dad but your half-human like me.. So let's all go to bed" she ordered moving to her feet.
The oldest twins stand onto their feet with their mom. She feels so lonely. Clark had never been gone this long for years. She new who he is but she can't help but worry.
Conner wrapped his arms around his mother into a heartfelt hug, along with his twin Kon. The twins lay their heads on her shoulder. So much of her heart wanted to cry.
Y/N laid in her lonely bed clinging to Clark's pillow. She quickly covered her, mouth to muffle the impending sound of her crying. She takes a deep breath in and out. As she finally was able to calm her heartbeat down...
"AHHHH!!!" Jordan screamed panicking
"Jordan what's wrong?!" Jon asked his twin
"g-get away from me!!" he frightfully said holding his hands over his ears hearing.. Everything. His head began to pulse.
Conner and Kon speed into their younger brothers room. They see Jordan's arms over his eyes as he is curled in ball crying. Conner touches his arm gently
"hey Jordan what's wrong buddy?" Conner asked
"did you have a nightmare kid?" Kon asked
"Jordan baby what's wrong" Y/N said entering the room.
She sits on his bed, holding his arms with her hands. Jordan hugged his mom begging her to make it stop, as he started to lose control of his breath. She recognized the anxiety in his voice being the similar sound of Kon and Conner when it happened.
"shhh shhh listen to my voice. Listen to me. Take a deep breath in and out, ok? Can you do that for mommy please?"
Jordan did exactly what his mom asked him to "what's happening to me?" he asked genuinely scared.
"it's OK. It's all completely normal for a half-Kryptonian. It's OK. Do you remember Daddy telling you about, how you may be able to hear a lot of things? And be able to see certain things like a x-ray?"
"Y-yeah" Jordan mumbled
"well sweetheart that's what's happening. You're getting your powers like your Dad"
"really?! I'm gonna be a like Conner and like Kon and like Dad! Ooh do I get go on patrol"
"no!" she quickly said "Kon and Conner will teach you how to use your powers but for right now I want you all to get some sleep"
"ok, Ma.. I can't wait to tell Dad!" he exclaimed
"he'll be very happy for you"
Y/N kisses her son's head goodnight and then the other boys. She departs for her cold bed that would not bring her any form of warmth.
In the Bat-cave, Bruce sits on his chair looking at the picture on his desk. Bruce was being hugged by his sister and Clark. It was during his surprise birthday party, which of course he already suspected. All while Diana was behind the camera.
The four of them had always been close, going on double dates, and fighting crime together.
"you should go see her" Diana told her husband
"not until I fix this" Bruce responded bitter
"Bruce this isn't your fault" Diana quickly intervened
"the issue at hand being my fault or not is irrelevant. I promised her I would find him and I intend on not stopping until I do"
Darkness surrounds him, snow blankets as far as he could see. His red cape was torn, his hands were wrapped with part of the fabric from his cape to keep his arms warm. His hair had grown to his shoulders and his beard was half as long. He opens his palms to the fire trying to warm himself. A unusual feeling, that was becoming a bitter normalcy.
Darkseid had seized the man of steel and taken him. For weeks torturing him, no words left his lips but only agony. They kept him far enough from the yellow sun that which gave him his powers.. He was defenceless.
In his darkest moments he remembered her. He held onto her sweet voice with the memory of her comforting skin. He had to survive for his sons. Darkseid underestimated his fight to live. He left his body to rot on the planet.
He suddenly was in a beautiful dream. There she stood above him holding his face in her hands, as he was on his knees. She leaned down to his face and kisses him softly.
“wake up my dear” she whispers
When Clark finally slowly opened his eyes, he was cold.
The detective had found a lead.. he knew his sister had every right to know, but it wasn’t worth the risk he could be wrong.
Hope was finally here. He runs and runs through the snow. The plane entrance opens, he smiled to see his loyal friend. Bruce smiled to his brother in bond.
Clark didn’t waist any time.
As Clark's powers were restored. Clark went home to his family. While flying he is instantly overtaken by two teenagers in tears. He hugs them both tightly.
“boys” he cried, he gasped seeing his little boy “Jordan?!?”
“DAD!!”
Clark was right over the farm. He looks down seeing Jonathan running on the ground in tears yelling up to him. Clark quickly speeds to the ground and picks up his little boy to hold him. Jon began to cry squeezing his neck.
He leans into his Dad's neck "you kept your promise"
"I always keep my promises" Clark cried kissing his head
He hears her footsteps running, her heart racing and he hears her tears falling onto the floor. Clark put his son down.
As he sees her knees begin to tremble. He speeds to her lifting her into his arms. She squeezed his neck tightly as now she let her pain be heard in the warm embrace. He kissed her lips no longer cold
Requested taglist@too-strong-to-losee @asrainterstellar
#Clark Kent X Wayne! Reader#Clark Kent X Reader#conner kent(young justice)#Kon-El Kent 90s Superboy#Angst#Jordan Kent#jonathan kent#Fluff#Crying#Hurt#Comfort#batman#Superfam#Batwonder#Supermom
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Kon with Child of Hecate S/O HC (Request)
Okay so basically this kid has the intelligence of Luthor and a great education
Idk why people write him as dumb cause he's got to be super super smart
so basically he already knows who your mother is
You and Koa hit it off after a little while
The two of you had to get used to each other at first
He was so out there and because of who you were raised by, you were so... not out there
he was so interested in you considering that you were so unlike the other heroes and villains that he had met
it was enticing and immediately he fell
This time he was first very very quick to want to start something
But he knew that this time he'd have to approach you as if he was just befriending
You didn't play hard to get, you just played it safe
He knew this and after a while, you told him that you felt the same way
So you start dating and basically, he wants to know EVERYTHING about mythology
He just wants to know all about you and not in a creepy way, but in a really endearing kind of way
He'll ask you all about things that have to do with mythology and how you grew up
he'll take you to museums and ask you questions
He's super fun to talk to and he always has the best ideas and comments on history and things that you grew up doing such as magic
Kon joins in on some of the rituals that are simple that you preform just watching and mentally taking notes on them
You take him to meet your mother and they hit it off
She knows that he's dedicated and will stay loyal
Basically she can read him and knows everything that he's done to make sure that you're okay and she LOVES Kon
She wants you to know that she accepts the relationship and approves of it
Because Hecate is okay with it, the rest of the gods are pretty chill
Which Kon really appreciates
He'll always be there when you get homesick and makes sure that you're alright
#dc x reader#dc comics#dc characters#batfam x reader#batboys x reader#batfam#headcanon#teen titans x reader#teen titans#teen titans x y/n#reign of supermen#superboy x you#superboy x y/n#superfamily headcanon#superfamily head canon#superfam#superfamily x reader#90's superboy#superboy x reader#kon kent x you#kon kent#kon kent x reader#conner kent x y/n#conner kent x you#conner kent imagine#conner kent#conner kent x reader
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The Legion of Super Heroes Reviews: The Legion of Substitute Heroes or Unsung Heroes
Happy 29th Birthday to Me! Yes it’s my birthday which means it’s time for reflection, griping about getting older and cake. And after an exausting weekend of grappling with a growth, i’m not going to go into anymore detail, I can finally, relax celebrate and get back to reviewing. And since i’ts my big day, that means I decided to dedicate today’s reviews to things that mean a hell of a lot to me and in one way or another shaped me as a person. A self indulgant way to reflect on my past, look to the future and show y’all some stuff I really like. So with that out of the way let’s talk about the Legion of Super Heroes.. and their oddball sub team I love dearly.
This is also my first chance to talk about DC Comics on my blog. I’m honestly shocked that in the year i’ve been reviewing stuff regularly, the other half of the big two superhero comic publishers hasn’t come up. While I do tend to lean towards marvel, in part because Marvel is simply better at collecting their stuff and putting it on sale more often, it’s still the home of some of my faviorite properties: Justice League International, The Green Lanterns (Minus Hal), Teen Titans, Wonder Woman, Oracle, Batgirl (All of them, particularly Steph and Cass), Young Justice, Supergirl, my personal boy The Martian Manhunter.. the list dosen’t go on by much but it indeed goes on. I”ve been reading dc comics since I was in middle school, and I haven’t stopped since and don’t intend to stop now and maybe in the next year I can get around to tackling some of their awesome cartoons and comics more eh? But yeah among these titans, including the actual titans, are the Legion, one of the most unique and awesome super team concepts in my humble opinon and , even for DC, one of the teams with the most tangled up histories.
First created in the Silver Age by writer Otto Binder and Artist Al Plastino, The Legion of Superheroes is DC”s first successful teen superhero team, predating the titans by a few years, though I dearly love both wildly diffrent teams. The Legion is defined by their high concept: A thousand years into the future, three super teens from diffrent worlds who happened to be on the same ship with billionare RJ Brande, saved Brande from some goons hired by his crooked buisness partner.
And exposed him. Inspirired by their courage, heart and skill, Brande latter called the three together to form them into a super team, one inspiried by the legends of teen hero Superboy.
No not Conner though it was nice to get to show off my poster of him. While he was part of the second continuities legion, we’ll get to that, he’s not the superboy we’re looking for. He is damn great though and it’s good to have you back bud.
Not Jon either, though I do miss this kid’s pre-bendis version and he was the inspiration.. for another version of the legion. (SIGH). Try. AGAIN IMAGE SEARCH.
......
No not the cool bad boy turned troubled good boy, not the child who was inexpciably aged up by that bald smeghead, and not the great idea turned into a editiorial mouthpiece. I”m talking about THIS superboy.
This is where the name came from: From the silver age till crisis on infinite earths, Clark Kent was active as a kid in smallville, and thus was Superboy, superman when he was a boy. He dealt with similar stories just with Lana replacing Lois, and Luthor as a ginger teenager. And it was these deeds as a teen hero on his own, one of the first honestly, that inspiried the legion and brande and forged the team.
And it was naturally a super boy story where they were first introduced as the legion’s founders went back to recruit Superboy after putting him through some trials, and were intended as just one of many silver age one off concepts.. but caught on with the readers so much they were brought back, and had their ranks expanded and eventually not only added supergirl, yes the one your thinking of this time, to their ranks, and yes sometimes she and superboy were in the same place at the same time, Clark willingly had founding member and telepath Saturn Girl put a mental block in his head for any info he’s not supposed to know yet so it’s cool . But yeah not only that but they eventually became their own feature in Adventure Comics, where Superboy’s stories were published, but overtook him in popularity with time.
Over time a number of distinct aspects were established: The roster eventually got as large as 20 plus legionarres, almost all from diffrent worlds, and they eventually set up bilaws. Some are silly and dated such as “Legionarres marrying means they retire” which was eventually done away with in the 70′s, but others were simple logic: each member must have a unique power, no using weapons and such which rather than be super power snobbery is so said tech dosen’t fail and the legion later fully allowed Karate Kid, a martial artist, to join, no killing.. just common sense stuff that adds to it. And one of those is the centerpiece to today’s story, which we’ll get to in a moment.
Obviously given they’ve been around since 1958, there is a LOT more to the Legion’s history I will dig into at a later date: The short version is that Crisis on Infinite Earths, Dc’s first big reboot, fucked the team up badly by retconning superboy out of existance and dc editorial made it worse by shooting down EVERY solution the team came up with to fix the issue. So eventually things got so messy they nuked the whole thing during the event Zero Hour and rebooted fresh with Mark Waid taking the helm and updating the concept for the 90′s and being a more lighthearted, if still not without weight, comic in the sea of 90′s edge. Waid would reboot the team again due to sagging sales, a far weaker reason this time, with a more rebllion slant, the original team would be reinstated, and then ended for a while before recently being rebooted by Brian Micheal Bendis... who sadly is long past his creative prime from books like Ultimate Spider-man and alias and is instead stewing in his own toilet dinner these days and thus it’s not pretty.. well okay art wise i’ts VERY pretty, it’s just story wise it sucks dirty ass in thunder storms. There was also an awesome cartoon that sadly lasted only two seasons that I will DEFINTELY be digging into, especially since unlike x-men evolution, it’s not you know 50 some episodes and me biting off way more than I can chew but a slim 26 that still has fans to this day. I”ll get into ALL OF THIS, some ohter time hopefullly and I mostly outlined it since some of you might be familiar with another version or “Sigh” the reboot and this helps clear things up.
So yeah with all that out of the way we’re going back to the silver age and the first story I ever read of hte team, how I met them with “The Legion of Substitute Heroes” and a later subs story I genuinely love. I first read this story in one dc’s old expensive archives collections I got from the library. Oh how I miss the library. Your probably wondering who the legion of susbstite heroes are.. but since the first story covers that we can jump right in after the break!
So we open with a teen in a parka uniform disembarking from a spaceship from another planet, which a passerby notes is just like the airplanes people used to ride from country to country.
But we meet our hero, Polar Boy, whose in a winter themed outfit and has come to try out. This is the tradition I was saving for now: The Legion Tryouts. Like a club or sports team would, but I like it because it makes sense: The Legion NEEDS to be as big as it is because while their headquartered on earth, their mission scope is anywhere in the united planets which spans GALAXIES. They could be called on any time and need their full force or need to have severa l members on a smaller mission and frequently having members away on a mission was cleverly used to reduce the cast to whoever was needed for the story.
So it only makes sense to frequently look for new membbers to help strengthen their ranks... but given their teens and are recurting teens they need to be careful and need a logical way to reduce crowd flow. I mean you saw how many people used to line up for american idol before that died a justified death, people will do anything to be famous and they need to weed out those whose powers and skill just aren’t up to snuff yet, or those who are just dicks as, unsuprisingly, several stories have been built on assholes who applied and were rejected turning evil and attacking.. even though the Legion wasn’t even paticuarlly harsh. They also are more than fair as applicants CAN try again or if they prove themselves in other ways can be let in, as Bouncing Boy, my favoirite legionarre, was intially rejected for his power of .. well...
Yeah.. on paper inflating like a ball and bouncing around is kind of silly. In practice he can ricochet off enemies, walls, and obstacles and is fairly durable in that state. It’s why I don’t really brook mocking the guys power: yes it’s goofy.. but say that again when he hands you his ass. It’s the same with matter eater lad who yes is an actual character: While being able to eat anything is gloriously goofy.. it means he can chew through ANY substance and digest ANYTHING. Hell in the cartoon episode intorducing the subs they used both of these guys to great efffect: Bouncing Boy, who in the cartoon had to try out multiple times in his backstory, encouraged the future subs while Matter Eater Lad got in by EATING A FUCKING BOMB. He also had shades which I dind’t know he was missing but now I do. My point is the process is fair and well thought out and leads to some really fun scenes.
But yeah joining the legion is naturally Polar Boy’s dream, as he walks down the avenue of heroes, basically a series of statues honoring the legion and hopes all his hard work paid off. We then cut to the auditions, where he apparently waited all night. What I like about this story is that unusually for the silver age legion where it was mostly a sea of powers attached to a bunch of cardboard, really the dc silver age in a nutshell and why marvel broke out so much for having more dynamic and realistic characters, Polar Boy has more of a personality. It’s not MUCH but he’s a dedicated, hard working kid who just wants to join his heroes and seems really in awe of htem, a feeling we can all relate to. We’ve all had people we’ve looked up to, admired, and we’ve all had groups we wanted to join as kids, teens or what have you. And of course.. we all know what it’s like to be rejected by someone or something you badly wanted to be a part of. And that’s what happens to poor polar boy, who comes from a world with an intense sun thus his people developed super cold powers.. but he can’t control them well so while their impressive, they also freeze the legion. HIs powers are good... but due to their strength and radius he’s also a liablility. They give him an consolation anti-gravity belt.. they had these before eventually compressing them into the much cooler flight rings.. which I still desperatly want one of. I have the flash’s costume ring and a green lantern corps ring, but still no legion ring.
Naturally this devistates the poor boy and he wonders around dispondent till nightfall, convinced he’ll never be one of them. He soon meets Night Girl, a fellow reject with super strength given to her by her dad’s formula.. but only in darkness as she’s from a world without sunlight. She also faces a “hopeless future” but it’s then Polar Boy’s true strength reveals itself: he decides screw giving up on their dream and if they can’t be in the legion they’ll start their own Legion.
Though not to compete but to serve as a subtistute, in case the legion is ever incapacitated. So Night Girl gathers the other rejects the next morning. Cleverly one of them, Chlorophyll Kid was seen with Night Girl herslef at the tryouts behind Polar Boy. We soon learn about them and each of their origins: Stone Boy can turn himself into an immobile stone statue, as his world has half a year long nights and thus his people hybernate, Fire Lad who can spit hot fire literally and set anything combustable on fire and Chlorphyll Kid who can make plants grow rapidly. Each were rejected for resonable powers: Stone Boys powers too static, Fire Lad’s is too dangerous and Chorlpyl Kids toos pecific. But upon seeing all of this Polar Boy says they STILL have fantastic powers and still can help people and the legion.
Thus the Legion of Substittue Heroes is born. And I love them as much as the originals. As a bit of a misfit myself I relate to these guys: They have strange specific powers, got rejected by the big team.. while that trope is nothing new at the time it was unique and even now it’s a nice and inspiring message. Instead of giving up they form their OWN team to do what htey can anyway. They might not be the best like the legion but they can still help and still do what’s right even if not on their scale. It’s a great concept and really makes them endearing. Again I have a thing for the underdogs but I still really like these guys. It’s why it annoys me they got kind of spat on with time: While I love Keith Giffen and Paul Levitz run on the legion, and feel it’s the best of that contnuinty it’s not without fault and the two basically spent a full issue mocking the team and split polar boy off from them before making their own subs with only ONE of the originals. It just felt.. disrspectful. And so far no continuity has used them again until the recent bendis run, which has them announced for the Future Slate special. It took BENDIS, who dosen’t get how to use the team properly and is up his own ass, to bring them back in a new continuity and I find that obnoxious. The subs are a great concept and deserve to be honored as such and as such are one of my favorite superhero teams.
But their careers don’t start well as they doubt themslves, except for Polar Boy who boisters them along, and constnatly just end up going to missions the legion already has covered and when the legion go to fight some robot ships, they refuse the subs help.. which is fair though, as Brainy puts it they can’t risk putting untrained volunteers in harms way. Their about to just quit, in a really sad moment.. when CK, because I can’t spell cholophill and hate having to use spell check notices some odd seeds spread about.. and when he grows one a horrifying tree man shows up. They struggle with it till the setting son finishes it’s job, meaning Night Girl is at full power and whollops it and the subs spend the night destroying the seeds.
They find out the next day the seeds came from the same planet as the robot ships, meaning the ships are a distraction for whoevers doing this and since they can’t just call earth, as the full force of the legion is needed with the robots and all it’d do is cause a panic, it’s down to them. Night Girl however is scared.. and I like that. It shows that while their regaining their confidence.. it’s sitll risky. Their a bunch of barely trained fanboys, and girl, going up against an alien invasion, with it down to them. They CAN save the world but it’s alright to be entirely terrified when your thrust into it this fast.
They make their way to the planet, having built a ship earlier and lie low, finding out what’s going on: The plant men are fully intellegent, and grow themselves..though how they know to attack and go to the bathrom and what not out of the seed I don’t know but I assume it’s a genetic thing or they might be some form of hive mind. point is the seed plan is to grow troops all over the world via rockets for an invasion, and it’s a brilliant concept for one too. Aliens who simply GROW the troops right into battle, born with the knowledge to do so, and right where they can ambush them. It’s down to our heroes and Stone Boy, whose been the most pesemistic, valiantly dives in to provide a distraction so they can destroy the factory and the seeds. Turns out he is useful as the most the treeple have is a space lead pipe.. yes really. I love the silver age. But they’ll bring ray guns soon, so Stone BOy knows it’s a suicide mission and now our heroes have a timer. But luckily.. our heroes are stronger than they think. Night Girl punches a way in till Night passes, while Polar Boy and Flame Lad use their powers in concert to make an opneing.. but with time running out Polar Boy finishes things by having CK grow all the seeds now they have acess.. thus exploding the planets population, destroying several cities from the number of bodies, and thu discourguing the treeple from trying again. Stone boy is able to flee with the rest of our heroes and the day is saved.
The heroes opt not to tell the public, as to take away glory for the Legion. It’s a noble gesture.. they do DESERVE credit, but they choose not to take it, preferring to let the legion get theres for stil lsaving the world from the robots. They stand firm, now confident they may someday make it to the big leagues.And it’s this that really makes me love them: Thier not the strongest or best, but they try anyway for the reasons a hero should: to help people, and not for the glory. THey remain unsung heroes and are fine with that.
Eventually the Legion WOULD find out about them, but naturally instead of being dickheads about it, fully accepted them, even offering them some contests for membership, but that’s a story for another day. THey’d remain stalwart allies and valuable backup in crisis situations for years to come until the bollocks outlined above. But they’d never leave my heart and thanks to them.. the legion never left either.
Final Thoughts:
While I do love the story for it’s personal signifigance to me, It’s stilll a really good story for the time. A bit stilted as was the style, but still good, well paced and with an endaring cast of underdogs who prove themselves in the end. It’s something diffrent from the usual clean cut ahead in life wasps these stories usually followed at the time. While the team’s still all white and all that, their outcasts and misfits who just want to help and have trouble beliving in themselves. Their a good standard to live up to.. and a good inspiration for me and my constnatly self hating self doutbing self. And I hope you enjoyed htem too.
If you’d like to comission your own review, just dm me. It’s 5 bucks for individual issues. Later days.
#the legion of super heroes#the legion of substitute heroes#polar boy#fire lad#night girl#chorophyil kid#stone boy#silver age#comics#comics reviews#birthday
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90′s Superboy x Batsis reader
AN: Here is one of my one-shots from my wattpad with some tweaks hope you like it.
Warning: Mentions of sex
You sat in the cave playing with your brother's trinkets as you waited for Bruce to get back from patrol. Tim had left a pile of things on his desk and you had been messing with them for the past hour while he was out with his team. He had left for the Young Justice headquarters yesterday and wasn't set to come back till tomorrow.
It was the perfect time to go through his stuff since you were on house arrest. You had gotten in trouble for sneaking out last Friday. You were banned from patrol and Alfred was checking in on you every five minutes. You were livid at your punishment. You had watched Damian crawl out his bedroom window countless times to visit Jon but you do it once and you're stuck here.
Bruce was practically your father after he had taken you in when you were younger. He saw you as his little girl and he didn't like the idea of you running off in the middle of the night going who knows where.
Bruce wasn't all to blame though. He said he would lift your punishment if you just told him where you went so he could have peace in his mind but you refused.
This had caused him to think of the worst things and punish you for it. You couldn't tell him you climbed out your bedroom window to go visit your secret boyfriend in Metropolis.
You had been dating Kon for four months now and you were both still in the honeymoon phase. You didn't want to get your families involved especially since Bruce had never been a fan of the cocky leather-wearing Kryptonian. Tim would be the worst though considering Kon was his best friend and your relationship totally breaks the bro code.
If you are being honest Tim was the only one in your family that liked Conner. Dick thought he was too cocky, Jason thought he was too stubborn and Damian just saw him as Jon's annoying older brother.
However, you and Kon had grown close over the Summer while Tim was with the Teen Titans. You filled in for him with Young Justice and you had gotten along well with the team.
You liked working by yourself or with the other Batgirls. It was awkward being on Young Justice because they knew you were just replacing Tim after he left them to lead a different team. You first met Kon after during a battle. Tim called you in to help them and right when you showed up you got a 5 ft 10 sack of muscle thrown at you.
He shielded you from the ground when you both slid across the gravel. He had wrapped you in his arms and you buried your head in his chest until you came to a stop. He made a flirty remark followed by a quick wink. You groaned rolling your eyes and dusted yourself off returning to the fight.
"What are you doing!" Tims piercing voice interrupted your thoughts. You looked up at him and the Young Justice team behind him at the entrance of the cave.
"Nothing." You answer nonchalantly brushing your h/c hair out of your face.
He huffs and takes the little gadget out of your hand, "Don't touch my stuff y/n you are going to blow yourself up."
"Sorry." You mumble getting off of Tim's seat.
When you stood his eyes widened and you could see his teammates blush and turn away. You caught Kon smirking at you while struggling to hold in his laughter. You looked at your own appearance and blushed a bright shade of red seeing your outfit choice.
Your shirt is one that Conner had gifted you as a joke when you first started dating. It was a blue shirt with his logo on the front that you had cropped. You had paired it with some loose short shorts that may have exposed the bottom of your but.
In your defense, it was hot in Gotham at the moment and that had caused the cave to shoot up in temperature. You didn't think anyone would be with you so you put on the most comfortable thing you could find. The amount of skin showing wouldn't have been as bad if there weren't hickeys that littered the inside of your thighs as well as your neck.
You thanked the gods they couldn't see the ones hidden under your shirt and shorts. You slowly walked backward out of the cave not wanting to expose your behind and definitely not wanting them to read the sentence printed of the back of your top. Kon had thought he was being funny when he added ' SuperDaddy' to the back of the shirt. You had laughed at the joke too except now you don't want to see Tims reaction to that. So you inched out of the cave stalking backward and up the stairs before making a break for it into your room.
~~~~
You sat on your bed cuddled into one of Kon's black hoodies and comfy black shorts. Your laptop was on top of your knees as you scrolled through different youtube videos trying to find one that would interest you for a little while. You had locked yourself in your room for the past couple week only leaving for food and patrol.
You were upset, to say the least. Kon had to go off the planet for a mission. He had been gone for three weeks as of today and you had missed him more than ever. You were doing fine the first week and a half after he was gone. Since he was in space wich ent you couldn't even call him.
After being away from him you where just craving to be around your handsome boyfriend again. This past week you had been down. Your brothers had noticed your sad demeanor and had started to get worried.
They had asked Bruce if something was wrong but not even the worlds greatest detective could figure out what was wrong with his adoptive daughter. You had snuck into Kons room stealing his jackets and spraying them with his cologne and as you sat in your bed now you took in his familiar scent as you curled deeper into the sweatshirt. There was a knock at your door. You crawled out of your bed and open the door revealing your beloved butler.
"Hello miss y/n dinner is ready." He smiled.
"Okay, thanks, Alfred."
You followed him down the hall to the dining room. You were surprised when you entered and saw your whole family sitting at the table. It was very rare to get all of you guys at the table together. Even Jason was there sitting across from Tim.
Dick gave you one of his signature big hugs when you made your way to your seat. He held in his arms in a very comforting way that reminded you of the hug Kon gave you before he left. When he pulled away though he looked a little confused before going back to sit beside Jason and whisper something in his ear. You sat in your normal spot between Tim and Damian across from Dick who was between Jason and Barbra. At the head of the table was Brice with Barbra on one side and Damian on the other. Stephany sat on the other side of Dick across from Duke who was placed between Jason and Cass.
Alfred placed the food down on the table and you all dug in loading up your plates with lots of food. Your siblings all made small talk and you stayed quiet thinking of the one time Kon took you for dinner and you had mashed potatoes that couldn't compare to Alfreds.
"What do you think y/n?" Dick had asked you his big blue eyes gleaming.
"Huh?" you hadn't been paying attention to the conversation they were having.
"What do you think about Tim and Steph dating? I mean Stephanie is your best friend aren't you upset your brother is dating your best friend?" he asked again.
"Oh uhm..." you looked at the couple next to you as they pleaded with big eyes. You didn't know they where dating you guessed that is why everyone was here so that they could announce their big news. It hurt a bit knowing they had kept it from you your two best friends and siblings but you weren't one to talk. "No, it doesn't bother me I know Tim would support me in whoever I dated," you responded hoping that Tim would agree.
He let out a forced laugh," I don't know about that." he exaggerated.
"Wh-what do you mean?"
"Well me dating Steph is different than you dating my friends," He answered.
"What do you mean it's different?" Jason butted in.
Tim rolled his eyes irritated his family didn't get him, "Well take Conner for example," you tensed at his name," If y/n was dating Kon that is completely different. Because Steph is a nice girl we've known for years. Conner, although he is my best friend, is stubborn and would cause trouble.
I would not approve of that because he's my teammate I'd have to see him all the time it would be weird he's not allowed to be with my sister. I would have to beat the shit out of him, he's my best friend I don't want to do that," Your face paled as he finished his tangent and the whole table was silent, "But that doesn't matter cause it's not like you're dating Conner " he laughed nervously. His smile fell flat at your silence," Right?".
~~~~
You sat in the lobby of the watchtower as you watched Tim cuss out Kon in front of you. After dinner last night Tim had come to the conclusion you were, in fact, dating his best friend and he was more than mad. His mind went back to the hickeys he saw littering your body weeks ago and shivered at the realization of who put them there.
Bruce had ordered Clark bring Conner back immediately. Once his feet hit the ground of the watchtower Tim was on him like he was a cup of coffee. He was livid at his ‘best friend’. Not caring about the other leaguers starting to watch. Tim screamed at the boy and he just stood there taking it only flinching at some of Tims harshest words.
You were restrained by Jason who scowled at the teenage boy waiting for his turn to shoot at him. And he meant literally shoot. When Tim had tired his voice his rage still bubbled and he threw a punch at Superboys head. Kon dodged the punch Tim was tired and his emotions were making him easy to read. The leaguers gasped when Tim tried to fight his friend. You struggled against Jason trying to save your beloved boyfriend from kryptonite to the heart.
"Stop!" Bruce yelled making everyone's head turn. Everyone disbanded except for your family and Clark. "Tim that's enough." Tim stopped fighting taking deep breaths trying to calm his anger. "Look Clark and I have talked and we both agreed that y/n and Conner are both old enough to date each other and we shouldn't get in their way."
"What!" Tim screeched clearly not agreeing
"Timothy calm down." Bruce's stern voice made Tims trap shut, "Of course there will be rules I don't want any doors closed and you can't be alone in the house together but other than that there is no issue." he sighed.
"No! That's not going to stop the B they have already had sex! I saw the hickeys he left her!" Tim was flailing his arms around not noticing the bright red blush that covers both yours and Kons cheeks.
Bruce's eyes narrow at Conner with a murderous glare. "Okay that's it," Jason loaded his gun and aimed it right at the seventeen-year-olds head.
"Woah Woah Woah Woah calm down Jay," Dick grabbed Jasons pistol out of his hands trying to calm everyone. "Y/N is a big girl she can make her own decisions okay."
You took Kon's hand in yours and squeezed it tightly trying to release the stress that came with your family knowing about your relationship with the teen of steel. Damian made his way in front of you both and stared up at your boyfriend with his fathers scowling eyes. "I guess you can suit my sister for now however I do not wish for you to procreate so maybe keep it in your pants Kent." The young boy hissed.
Everyone gasped at Damian's words and you burst out laughing after a couple of seconds of shock. Damian just growled and stomped back to his father grumbling.
You just turn to Kon giving him a kiss that he gladly returns. Your brothers all groan in disgust making you giggle. Even though Tim is upset now you know he is happy that you are happy. Kon is good to you and you really love him so your brothers will get over it eventually until then though you are going to have to deal with the groans.
#kon el kent#batsis#batbros#tim drake#conner kent#young justice#batman#jason todd#dick grayson#superman#superboy#dc universe
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It's crazy: I only cracked open one early-90s X-Men issue with Exodus, wrote him off as one of those Maddening Assholes Who Never Ever Get What Should Be Coming(TM), and here he is STILL douchecanoe-ing it up three decades later. With the endorsement of what passes for leadership among X-peeps these days. Alongside goddamn Apocalypse & Sinister. We sure this isn't some Animorphs crossover where Scott, Xavier, et al were made Controllers off-panel?
Marvel has some... weird fetish when it comes to absolute monsters, in the sense that they really like to "redeem" them or show how "actually good guys" they are or just try to shove them down everyone's throats and shit, like... AT LEAST we're not getting Batman who Laughs or Superboy Prime levels of shilling, but its still weird how easily some people can get to a position of power so easily like, Kingpin is Mayor of New York right now, that's pretty fucked up too (if on a lesser scale).
It's getting ridiculous at this point really, Dock Ock almost nukes the world one issue later we're supposed to think he's trying to be a superhero now, Apokolips, Exodus, Mr. Sinister etc. get "a seat at the table" just because they are powerful and prominent figures, some are even brought back to life, despite all the shit they did.
(At least Really small grace here but AT LEAST Hybrid wasn't brought back (probably in lieu of not many modern authors or readers knowing the bastard outside of maybe me due to him technically being more of a ROM Spaceknight villain if still a Mutant and a X-Men villain), but given how technically worse people have been brought back I wager it was more done (in universe) due to him being half alien and so not a "pure mutant" and less for the, you know... sexual slavery and eugenic breeding programs.
Or maybe they did bring him back just for Illiana to stab him again like he deserves, could be both).
At this point this is either Krakoa (living island) fucking with everyone's mind the longer they are there or it's just yet another case of marvel characters being on stupid pills AGAIN.
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Bubblegum
pairing: conner kent x gn!reader
warning: zilch
a/n: when I say conner I almost always mean 90′s kon-el lmao. also this is dedicated to my one anon who asked if I wrote for 90′s kon, ily babe and yes I do lol
“Nah, that’s not how you do it.”
You made a noise of protest at the judgment in Conner’s tone, face already red from how long you had been trying to succeed in your latest mission. It offended you how hard he was trying to suppress a laugh, the corners of his mouth twitching as he tried to maintain his very, very cool demeanor.
Okay. So clearly, it wasn’t going all that well, but that wasn’t all your fault; one would think that if you had a product literally labeled bubblegum, you’d be able to actually make a bubble with it.
But you clearly couldn’t, so if anything, it was the gum’s fault.
Sensing your (somewhat) obvious struggle, Conner finally fully turned his attention away from the TV screen to face you, one brow arched as you attempted to blow a bubble with your bubblegum once again.
“Don’t give me that look,” you scoffed, pausing from your attempts to shoot a half-assed glare at him. “I almost got it, I had something for a sec-”
“‘Course you did, babe,” Conner agreed with an infuriatingly easy grin, already reaching over you to grab the bright pink packet sitting beside you. “I totally saw it. You were real close, just like you said you were five minutes ago-”
“Like I said,” you interjected, continuing to aggressively chew your gum as he unwrapped a piece and tossed it into the air, catching it in his mouth like a show-off. “I almost have it-” The corners of his lips were twitching once again in his gracious attempt to keep from laughing as he watched you make another attempt. You gave him a glare while you tried again, a twinge of hopefulness rising in your chest when you started off with a meager bubble after long last - and felt said hopefulness pop along with said bubble about 0.2 seconds later.
“So close!”
“Oh, ha ha,” you began with a huff as he finally burst out laughing, elbowing you while you tried to glare at him again. It was difficult since the whole thing was so ridiculous you couldn’t even blame him for it. “You just love seeing my misery-”
“No, no, that’s not it!” he insisted, making a whole show of calming himself down through his laughter and wrapping an arm around your shoulders, flashing you one of his crooked, obnoxiously playful grins to show how apologetic he really was. Totally apologetic. “That was a real good start.”
“Real good start,” you repeated with a raise of your own brow, but it was hard to stay mad at him when you were still trying not to laugh yourself. “I had it, you just - you distracted me!”
To that, he gave you an incredibly solemn nod, sighing heavily as he slipped on his glasses for absolutely no reason. Inside the house. You figured it was just for dramatic effect - he always had a theatrical flare about him without even trying.
“And I’m totally sorry about that. When you’re as sexy and charming as I am, it’s hard not to be a - hey, you can’t just leave!”
“No, I gotta leave, Conner,” you insisted, already rising to your feet despite his protests, “I think I’m gonna hurl after hearing all that-” You burst out laughing as he yanked you right back onto the couch with just a little tug, laughing himself as you leaned over to kiss his cheek to make up for it.
“You should see a doctor for that, babe. All I said were straight facts.” Your cough sounded suspiciously like bullshit and it was him who was trying (and failing) to level a glare at you over his glossy round shades. “Okay, so you don’t appreciate my charm and sexiness! Fine, I don’t listen to people who can’t make a bubble with bubblegum anyways-”
“I almost did!” you protested yet again as your face flared about the same shade as your gum. “Can you do it?” Conner scoffed very loudly, as if you had personally offended him somehow.
“I’ll do you one better! I’ll show you how to do it,” he told you, turning his head to face foward while dramatically running a hand through his meticulously-styled hair. His entire hair routine alone was about as long as your morning everything-routine. “Just watch and learn, babe.”
Now, you had known Conner Kent had a certain level of over-confidence for just about everything he said and did since, well, the day you first met him. And as much as he was working towards getting that sorted out with help from you, his teammates, friends, and family, sometimes it was still very apparent in the things he did.
Like now.
“You just put your lips together,” he started, “and blow.” Instead of whistling, he actually managed to successfully make a bubble, raising his brows at you in a very cocky expression as he did so. “See? Easy.” You would most certainly beg to differ, but even you couldn’t help but be rather impressed by it.
“Okay, so you can do it. Fair enough.” He was still going, the bubble steadily getting bigger and bigger while he continued to nonchalantly lounge beside you. “...Conner, you might wanna stop while you’re-” The bubblegum unceremoniously exploded over his face and your boyfriend let out a slew of very creative words that would’ve made his grandmother wash his mouth out with soap. “-ahead.”
And it was your turn to laugh your ass off.
“I meant to do that,” Conner announced all-too loudly, the rest of his face already turning the same shade of brilliant pink the gum was as he moved to take his beloved shades off. At least they had protected his eyes. “I totally saw that coming.” Apparently, you wheezing out “so did I” was not the glowing model of support he had been anticipating, judging from his groan. “Babe!”
At least he could find joy in knowing he taught you how to make a bubble with bubblegum.
Tag list: @cipheress-to-k-pop
#pandemonium scrawl#and we're back to this week's episode of WHAT is in my drafts#conner kent x reader#conner kent x y/n#conner kent x you#superboy#superboy x reader#superboy x you#90's superboy#dc#dc comics#dcau#fluff#gender neutral fanfic#gn!reader#yyyyep that's it
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