#FORGOT TO PUT THE READMORE AT FIRST IM SORRY FOR CLOGGING DASHES

[ectonurites]

does t-shirt conner and 90s conner and new conner all feel like different people to you, or is it just me? i know things get written, rewritten and rebooted but. they all just feel like different characters. it's weird.

Like... yes and no? It's complicated.

(Sorry in advance I'm starting out with mostly text citations rather than images, but theres images later. Also this got incredibly long. Sorry!)

Because at a glance I definitely agree there are differences between each of those eras of Conner, things that are pretty clearly apparent when you just pick up a comic from each timeframe

But like, at this point where I've read a lot of Kon stuff and see like... the connecting points between these Kons with context, I think it's not hard to rationalize where the changes in personality come from (even if the writers might not have put that same amount of thought into it that I have tbh) which can make it feel more like 'this is a person who is changing over time as he goes through life because of specific things he went through' rather than just 'this is a completely separate character suddenly when the writers changed' (like... the separate writers thing is more how Jason feels than any other character to me)

90's Kon comes fresh into the world unexperienced but wanting so badly to prove himself and be Superman, but he's just not quite there yet because of his age and naivety. He knows a lot of things because of Cadmus-implanted knowledge, but he doesn't necessarily understand all of them. He's immature, kinda rude sometimes bc he purposefully bases himself/his personality on what's popular (something gone into in Superboy Vol. 4 #83 when he spends a whole issue lamenting that he's lost his coolness) because he cares a lot about how people perceive him, but has a good heart and wants to see the best in people (that's kinda how he got into the damn Knockout situation in the first place, he was so convinced she couldn't have actually committed the murder she was accused of. She took advantage of his trust/desire to see good in others). He's fun and doesn't take things too seriously until it comes down to the wire, and he knows that's a flaw (Superboy Vol. 4 #91, with the "I can't believe this is my life. Wake me up, please. This isn't fun anymore.") and eventually that 'living life his own fun way' thing bites him in the ass a few too many times.

It's the combination of a few things that'd happened earlier (Tana's death during Sins of Youth, The arc with Jim's death and rebirth + just generally everything with Amanda Spence, Bart's half-death thing during Our Worlds at War) with Superboy Vol. 4 #100 and Graduation Day, that all leads to/marks the specific change in him that leads into 't-shirt Conner' even before the Lex/Clark reveal takes stuff a step further.

In Superboy Vol. 4 #100, because he had been living on his own in Suicide Slum with his public identity... he ends up putting his whole apartment building in danger when someone targeting him plants a bomb there. That's why he agrees to move in with Ma & Pa and adopt a civilian identity, because his carelessness with his identity displaced an entire building's worth of people of their homes and cost someone their life. Then, pretty shortly after, Graduation Day happens. He's one of the people who jumps into the action which makes things worse (something Tim angrily points out in their infamous closet scene) and then things go further and Donna dies, Cassie disbands the team because she thinks them not taking things seriously enough got them into the situation in the first place. These things weigh really heavily on him!

Him being a lot more reserved afterwards and kinda shrinking in on himself a bit... doesn't seem that insane to me. All of them saw the events of Graduation Day as a time to grow up. I think Cassie & Bart's specific changes were the ones that made the least sense in this era (and then while Tim was definitely edgier in TT 03 it's also a far less noticeable change than Conner's) but the core of what was going on in Conner's life leading into him revamping himself again does make sense imo. (execution could have been better! far better. But the core idea itself I get). And then when you throw in the Lex/Clark retcon which makes him, already in a place where he's doubting how he's been living his life up to that point, question everything he knows about himself... it does make an amount of sense that he'd just feel different. But I do feel the need to reiterate, he's really not quite as different as I see some people act like and I feel like that stems from the YJ cartoon being the immediate association with 't shirt Conner', even though in the TT 03 run he's still definitely got way more of his personality than that.

Anyways then... ya know plot happens. Luthor takes over and makes him attack his team, Superboy-Prime comes and calls him a fake, he saves everyone but dies in the process during Infinite Crisis. These are situations where a person might not be feeling most like themselves.

Then he comes back, and when he's back is definitely an era I enjoy more in terms of 'times he's wearing the t-shirt' overall, because you can see that he's kinda taking a step back from the problems he was going through + not handling the best way early in the TT 03 era, and re-examining them from a slightly more mature lens. Like, he's not suddenly always handling things perfectly as evidenced by the whole 'List of what Superman does and list of what Lex Luthor does' thing, but it's definitely a slightly more rational/mature approach to dealing with that situation. He's not just going 'agh i was born evil......' now its more 'okay lets... lets see who I actually act more like-'

That arc specifically also does something that I think really rings true to an aspect I brought up earlier about his 90's characterization: puts a focus in on how he's trying to see if there's any good in Lex. That's why he's seeking him out in those first few issues. Obviously he comes to the eventual conclusion that no, there isn't this guy fucking sucks, but it's still that attempt to hope that really does feel like the same Conner when he's just grown up a decent amount. It's not blind faith like things were with Knockout, but a regular hope that someone could be better that feels like it stems from that same place inside him.

In the following stuff once he's thrown the journal with the lists out and come to his own conclusions about how he's never going to be like Lex, he's walking this new line of 'Okay, but I also can't just try to live my life as Clark, so how am I gonna live my life?' It's him wondering about just kinda... who exactly he is. What it is he's doing, what his sense of direction's gotta be.

(Superboy Vol. 5 #6)

The other day I'd made a big post talking about Kon's view on wanting to be Superman, and some of that feels relevant around now. Here Kon is at this point in his life where he definitely wants that title one day, but he's not in a rush to get there. And post-Boy of Steel he is acknowledging the distinctions between himself and Clark more, but he's still choosing to stay in Smallville and loosely follow Clark's path.

He also kinda re-defines his reasoning for coming to Smallville in this run to separate it from just trying to be like Clark in Boy of Steel, into more... looking for answers about how his life could have been if he'd been more like Clark.

(Superboy Vol. 5 #11)

This ending to me is him accepting that he's gotta find his own path rather than try to find answers about a life he didn't life. He's a hero and not normal and that's okay, he's gonna stay in Smallville and be his weird hero self with his weird friends and not worry about the stuff that doesn't apply to him. He's not Clark, but Smallville's his home now too.

Which is why what YJ 2019 then did with him is actually really fascinating to me. It builds off some of these different thoughts he was having in ways that like... sorta kinda almost make sense, it's like the last piece of the 'I don't need to live my life in a pre-defined way' idea clicked.

Like... if we consider the YJ 2019 flashbacks as picking up shortly after Superboy Vol. 5 ended (which is definitely the implication) then Conner has come to terms with that stuff I just said above, but he's still living his day-to-day life in a relatively unchanged way. He's still living at the farm and going to school and all that kinda normal life stuff outside of times he's actively being Superboy.

But when his teacher here talks it all really hits him that even though he likes living in Smallville, sitting around playing Clark Kent Jr. during the school days because he feels like that's the path he should be going down/the rules he thinks he should follow... just isn't the best use of his time. Kinda connecting back to that 'sense of purpose' thing from his talk with Tim, him feeling like what he was at the time doing in Smallville wasn't quite the answer. And he even reiterates he only started like going to school like this in the first place because of trying to be like Clark.

(Young Justice (2019) #3)

So this is kinda him having a taste of rebellion again, after spending a decent amount of time trying to more closely fit the mold of Clark's life. Not necessarily rejecting being at all like Clark or life in Smallville in general or anything like that, but making a choice to figure out his own path picking and choosing the bits he likes (Smallville itself, The farm, Ma) and leaving behind the parts he doesn't want (his secret identity being so similar to Clark bc that's the only way I can read him putting on a leather jacket again as he walks straight out of school, going to school in general)

That's I think a big reason why while he's stuck on Gemworld he decides to switch back into something more like his original outfit, it's him returning more to just what he likes and how he wants to do things which is closer to how he lived life back in the 90s, but going at it with some more maturity from having spent time more reserved trying to follow in footsteps. It's a full circle thing, it's arriving back closer to his original self but with more intent this time so of course it's not exactly the same.

i guess the tldr:

90's Kon was his own rebellious experimental thing but he also really didn't know what he was doing yet because he was so new to the world -> early 2000s Kon was so concerned with how others perceived him -> 2003 Kon was having to adjust to a new way of living and new revelations about who he really is -> post-resurrection Kon was trying to define who he was outside of just Lex/Clark's clone and figure out what path he was going to go down -> YJ 2019 Kon is re-approaching his original self with all the experiences he now has under his belt and kinda a new purpose especially in the aftermath of spending a decent chunk of time stuck separated from his loved ones

So like... because in my mind it just kinda clicks how all these different versions of Kon connect into one another, they don't feel quite as separate to me? If that uhhh.. makes sense.