it’s important to me that tim drake is just Some Guy but i think he is also deeply weird. when you pull back the skateboarding teen underlayer there should be a freakish little guy inside. like how elementary school girls are.
#everyone he loves dies and he has a breakdown and starts cloning people #and then when they all come back he just snaps back to normal #and everyone who watched him descend into madness is like UH SIR #like he’s the normal one but ALSO the closest to being a supervillain
Jon used to have a personality before he was aged up. It wasn’t the flashiest, maybe, but it was there and I miss it dearly.
Jon is relentless and bad at taking no for an answer. He’s curious and he’s perceptive, same as Lois, and if he suspects you’re hiding something from him he won’t let go, he’s like a dog with a bone. Jon has a spine of motherfucking adamantium and won’t ever back down if he believes he’s in the right; during all the runs of the Super Sons you can see him getting on Damian’s face everytime he’s rude or selfish because no, Robin, that’s not acceptable and you’re going to apologize (the argument won’t end until someone else interrupts because Damian doesn’t back down either).
Jon is bright and cheerful and will always stand by his friends, no matter what. He’s a kryptonian but he’s also a little kid, he loves living in the farm, and watches anime (he has a Naruto poster), and his essays are a bit messy but he doesn’t like it when his parents try to butt in. Journalists, really, they always have advice to give.
He has a strong sense of right and wrong, because he has been raised by two people who truly believe in the goodness of humanity but also think being good is a responsability. Jon loves his powers but, at the same time, he’s scared of them. He loses control sometimes and he’s terrified that he’ll hurt someone. The first time it happens, he kills his mother’s cat and it shakes him to his core. A couple of months later a man from the future comes to kill him, with the news that he lost control and destroyed an entire city. They win, and Clark and Damian reasure him, but the fear never goes away. In the end, it’ll drive him to leave home with Jor El so he can learn to control his powers and not harm anyone. We all know how that ends…
He thinks that family is the most important thing in the world. Lois and her father are stranged (probably because all the genocides) but Jon defies his parents and keeps seeking him out because Samuel is his grandfather and that means he can’t be all bad. He extends the same benefit to Jor El, too. It’s because he’s young, and inocent, but also because he’s stubborn in his faith in other people.
Jon is a bit of a shit when the occasion calls for it. When Damian tells him to leave because he can take care of something, he will. He’ll come back with popcorn and wait until you ask him for help and for you to say please before he enters the fight again. Oh, you’re older? Funny that, because Jon is taller, don’t know if you’ve noticed. Unless his secret identity is on the line, he’ll clap back every single time and he’ll enjoy it.
Jon was a kind, friendly little boy with a strong sense of self and no time for your nonsense. He wasn’t the most original character ever created, but he was a joy to read and I miss him. I hate that all of that has been lost and they’ve made him a younger, bland version of Superman.
“He has to fund the Justice League. They often have a space program.”
“But couldn’t he do more good if he just invested-”
“The Earth is routinely invaded by aliens, gods, and the forces of an extraterrestrial god of tyranny.”
He has, like, three charitable organizations he funds, named after his father, his mother, and Alfred.
Between both Bruce and Batman’s contributions, Gotham should be a better city than it is, and the only reason it isn’t is DC Editorial Mandate that basically says Gotham has to get worse and worse and worse or there’s no Batman stories they can tell (and, obviously, they have no other characters besides Batman).
There’s a reason Batman thinks the city is literally cursed.
I want to see Bruce Wayne go off
“Oh, oh, just charity my way out of dealing with the Penguin, a living, breathing 19th century Marxist’s cartoon of the bourgeoisie? Just fund anti-Clayface measures? Crack down on corporations who put out shapeshifting cosmetics? What socio-economic pressures turn botonists into actual fucking dryads?! What inspires anti-animal terrorism? THAT’S NOT EVEN A REAL KIND OF ECO-FASCISM!”
For the record, Gotham is canonically curse, because it sits on some sort of evil swamp. I think.
There are like, half a dozen curses. The Lazarus Pits are leaching into the water, Slaughter Swamp is an unconnected body of water a few miles outside of the city that also ressurects people (see Solomon Grundy), the Bat-demon Barbatos and his followers (the Court of Owls) have been fucking up the city psychically and financially, the malevolent influence of the warlock Doctor Gotham’s tomb in the center of the city, the madness hypersigil of Amadeus Arkham (in Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth), there were several outposts of subterraneans and aliens beneath the city during the Silver Age, constant chemical warfare that makes it the equivalent of a WWI trench managed by MK-ULTRA, it’s in New Jersey, and I think God just hates it
tired: Batman could do more good by running charities than by fighting criminals
wired: Batman could save literally every other city on the planet simultaneously with the amount of effort and resources he’s pumped into Gotham, which is a lost cause, but this is his city damnit.
Inspired: Batman’s diligence is containing the menace that is Gotham’s madness from escaping too far from city limits.
For all his billions, for all his activity, for all his efforts, Gotham is a bonfire fed by the madness of mortal people, cultivated by dark powers and just existing there makes living souls like kindling for it. And left to its own devices,it’d become a breeding ground for supernatural unrest that no mere social service system or social awareness of activist campaign, no government program, no actions of a singular vigilante, could ever hope to undo.
Batman is single handedly if need be but fortunately not alone so often, holding back the noxious psychic influences of warp and wyrd entities and what they do to the very environment and landscape through the power of sheer, unbridled humanity.
Ascended: Gotham is containing Batman, because the forces of evil, consciously or not, have figured out that if let loose, this motherfucker and his sprawling adoptive family would’ve solved every crime in the world ever, so they throw literally everything they have at his home town in hopes that he stays there.
Because they were foolish and let Alan Scott escape. They aren’t making that mistake again.
The thing about the Joker is that he sees himself as The Only One Who Understands That Nothing Matters. Life’s a joke and all that’s real is the punchline, and he’s always the one with the last laugh. And this lends itself reallywell to a fourth-wall-breaking character who winks at the audience like Bugs Bunny, because he KNOWS nothing is real and no consequences can truly touch him!
But, and this is the Key Thing about the Joker, that never happens. He never winks at the audience. He’s never actually in on the joke. And that’s because he’s not funny lying to himself. Things matter to him all the time actually! Everything matters SO MUCH, because the Joker thinks he’s the center of the whole entire universe and when people aren’t paying attention to him, he doesn’t laugh about it, he throws a massive temper tantrum.
And it’s not that he wants the spotlight, exactly. It’s that he wants to be vindicated. He wants to prove that his worldview is the correct one. He wants to prove that he’sright,and always was and always will be.
Because he really does believe that he’s infallible. But you can’t tell a good joke if you don’t know how to laugh at yourself.
I almost wanna compare him to Deadpool, who can do the 4th wall break. But Deadpool actually seems to have the self-awareness to actually be funny and also not be an asshole
I was thinking of Deadpool the whole time I wrote this post! But I think there are two big differences between Deadpool and the Joker:
1. Deadpool is always the butt of the joke, and he knows it. He’s the king of laughing at himself.
2. The Joker thinks nothing matters except his feelings, so things like ‘society’ and ‘compassion’ are just fake, made-up things. Deadpool knows for a cold fact that his entire world is a fake, made-up thing, but people matter to him anyway.
Beyond his art, Neal Adams is rightfully remembered as an eternal champion of creators’ rights and for the part he & his work played in the Comics Code revision of ‘71 but his contribution to John Stewart’s creation is – I think – a rather underrated aspect of his career, especially as it’s such a great reminder of the kind of person he was. Taken from an interview conducted and transcribed by Allen W. Wright over at the Green Arrow: Bold Archer fansite, here’s Neal discussing John’s beginnings (x).
