#all this to say I am still very excited about J'onn Absolute title! But I want to actually hear from it ;_;

[jesncin]

Are you at all excited for the upcoming Absolute Martian Manhunter book later this year? It'll be the most high-profile launch J'onn has been a part of for a long while, being DC's attempt at an "Ultimate Marvel" line. Given how the approach seems to be defined by removing elements of the characters' status quo - Superman has no Krypton tech, Batman is not a billionaire, Wonder Woman is the last of the Amazons etc. - I think there's a very real possibility that for J'onn they'd pivot in the opposite direction and give us a living Martian society. If only because J'onn has so little anyway, there's not as much to remove as with other members of the League, so the logical thing would be adding something back in to shake things up. I'm personally hoping for some combination of Weird and Noir.

I'm absolutely (heh) excited for it (because a new refreshing change even in an elseworld story is exactly what J'onn needs right now!) but also cautious and,,, concerned. DC's revealed the Absolute gimmicks for just about all the other solo supers but J'onn is essentially still a rumor? What's going on there? I was also concerned when Superman's Absolute gimmick was supposedly "he'll be more alien than human" "he doesn't have a fortress of solitude, no Kents, etc" which,,, sounds a lot like J'onn tbh but we'll have to wait and see. Sometimes writers do this thing where they try to do something new with Superman and it's just re-worked J'onn lore. And J'onn lore is fundamentally flawed so in turn that take on Superman doesn't work, but that's just me with early concerns.

Ooh! That's a good point actually! That feels like the most logical shakeup they could do, and YJa helped warm people up to the idea of a living Mars (which I also agree would spice things up and differentiate J'onn from Clark more). And I'd absolutely (heh) love more supernatural-weird-noir for J'onn! We finally had J'onn play into being a martian detective in the 2019 Identity run, but it was more cop drama than detective noir which I would love to see. My only addendum to the idea of a living Mars as an Absolute gimmick is, since YJa popularized this already, what else will this take do to innovate on that idea? My personal wish list is:

Revitalize J'onn's cast system (a mix of old and brand new characters. Don't just make him watch tv to care about humans. Give this martian relationships!!)

Figure out his themes outside of grief!! (I love sad Martian man but he needs to do more than that! It's been stagnating his character)

No Justice League stuff or other superhero cameos/team ups. (J'onn NEEDS to prove he can stand on his own as a solo character so he can stop being pigeonholed as the League's heart or therapist.)

Fresh new take on Martian world building (please get rid of Martian racism, it's dumb and never made sense. It's a shapeshifting society and the idea of characters like M'gann essentially "greenfacing" to "pass" is so weird)

Critical reimagining of J'onn's relationship to justice (we need to get rid of or critically examine his relationship to copaganda.)

Integrate Blackness more thoroughly into his character (CW Supergirl and that one Nubia Coronation special comic are still the only takes that have done this. Come on guys!!)

More thorough reflection of J'onn's multiple identities (undoubtedly what makes J'onn special. But the comics rarely dig into what it means for J'onn to be multiple people. I would love it if his identities [especially the racialized ones] weren't treated as so,,,disposable.)

Ma'alefa'ak please (I just want to see him again I don't even care if they do a bad job. However all I ask is he be a green martian and J'onn's twin again. And a slutty design.)

The last time we saw a big overhaul to J'onn's character was the New 52, and the major flaw of that run was that it had no clear thematic intention to how it interpreted his character. So we ended up with just a bunch of references and a convoluted edgy story that doesn't help J'onn become a self sustaining solo character. The Absolute line is the perfect platform to revitalize him as a character, but I hope the writers can think in the long term to combat his foundational issues.

[ninjagoat]

Supergirl 3x14 Speculation Post

As some of you may have heard, episode 14 of this current season of Supergirl will feature Academy Award Nominee Laurie Metcalf as Winn's mother, Mary, who abandoned him as a child after his father committed mass murder.

We know that she's been out on location with Ms. Benoist, possibly with Mr. Brooks and Mr. Wood. So far, it doesn't seem much like the kind of reunion we've seen in 3x03 with Maggie and her dad, or the "I'm dying and I want to make amends" type a la Iris and her mother we've seen on The Flash. The episode title, 'Schott The The Heart' is a play on the Bon Jovi classic 'You Give Love A Bad Name', and that would suggest heavy Mon-El or, indeed, Imra involvement.

Ms. Metcalf is great. She's been great for DECADES. And, as the ever-so-slightly angry people at the Winn end of the fandom will attest, Mr. Jordan brings it pretty much every single week (which is why he gets the Jeremy Jordan Award For Doing So Much With So Little time and time again). Their scenes together will be great.

This post is not about their scenes.

This post is about the *other* big scene: who does Winn confide in? Who does he tell his sob story to?

Because that's the actual story. 'Childish Things' is not the story of the Winslows Schott, but the story of Winn and Kara. Whoever gets told that backstory is the focal point of Winn's arc for the episode and - let's not kid ourselves here, because he's not likely to get another one - the season.

So let's look at the options.

Kara

Kara seems like an obvious choice. Not only does it rhyme with 'Childish Things', but Kara's been... distant from him recently, from him more than others. She's said some questionable things about their friendship. This would be a chance for her to reconnect with him, and by extension, with Kara Danvers.

Kara will absolutely tell him he needs to give Mary a chance. When she says compassion for all, she means it. But Winn might not go for it. After all, why should it be his job to forgive the woman who convinced him, intentionally or not, that he would only ever be his father's son?

Lena

It's not going to be Lena. But I really want it to be.

It would be my absolute dream for this show if Winn showed up at CatCo after the initial encounter with Mary, looking to talk to Kara or James, he can only find Lena; and, in one of her moments where she believes she's good with people (she is, but it's an individual, case-by-case basis thing), she takes him into James office, expecting much ado about nothing.

And Winn dumps *everything* on her. His mother, his father, his time in foster care, everything. And she realises she's totally out of her depth.

Yes, Winn and Lena have paralleling backstories. But Lena's experience happened largely in isolation, both from other people and from the consequences of her family's actions: Winn's dad kills six people, he lost everything; Lena's brother tries to nuke California, and her immense wealth and privilege carries on as normal.

Winn, on the other hand, went into foster care. He'll have met ten, maybe twenty other kids while he was there. He'll have heard their stories, or at least parts of them. He probably doesn't even consider his story to be *that bad*, compared to others.

This would cause Lena to rethink her own history, and her attitude toward it. It would also put an end to the endless "Am I Evil?" stories, because if Winn can make it... she's got no excuse.

She should probably tell Winn that he should stand his ground against whatever Mary wants; but, more likely, will tell him he really needs the advice of someone else, because she is nowhere near qualified to handle this.

J'onn

Most of Winn's scenes this season have involved J'onn. Winn is also has a significant functioning relationship with J'onn's father, M'yrnn (or Mr J). J'onn's story this year is basically built around 'fathers and sons'.

You can see where I'm going with this.

J'onn being a father to Winn in this scene would be the final link between everyone being Winn's friends and people he works for to actually being his family. Plus, J'onn having lost his own mother, and known the joy of being reunited with his father, he is in a unique position to offer advice.

Mon-El

Mon-El has been, hard as it will be for some to believe, Winn's most consistent friend. He has always respected Winn: promises to let Winn make his superhero suit (even though he had no intention of being a hero when he did - I'll get to that later); congratulates Winn when he learns about Lyra, and asks Winn for relationship advice when he needs it; supports Winn when Lyra gets kidnapped; and, my personal favorite, his aphorism "Hope for the best, have Winn Schott plan for the worst".

He *also* knows which of Winn's buttons to press to get him to do things he doesn't want to do, or rather, says he doesn't want to do. This is a quality you want in a good wingman.

And, of course there's his *own* issues with his parents, which gives he and Winn a shared perspective. The most likely advice he would give about Mary would be that which mirrored Winn's previous advice to him; i.e, listen to her, but tempered with his new found leadership skills, he could emphasise that Winn doesn't have to give her what she wants, and he should stand up for himself.

ALEX

Dipping into speculation on the Winn/Mary side of the episode for the moment:

- Winn's supposed to be moving into some sort of leadership role this season (this may have just been the cross-over, or that might be foreshadowing for this arc)

- Mr. Brooks's IG pic shows him, Ms. Benoist and Mr. Wood in kind of a golf-cart, in the middle of nowhere. This feels a lot like a corporate 'team-building' exercise.

- The pic of Ms. Metcalf with Ms. Benoist appears to be at the same location, and her hair/costume choices seem... very Alex.

So, a theory. A decision is made: in order to beat Reign, Supergirl and Guardian and Mon-El will have to work as a team - kind of like National City's very own Trinity - with Winn as... not Overwatch, exactly, but in a similar leadership role as Iris currently has on The Flash; and so, in order to get them all working together, J'onn sends them all off with Alex to DEO boot-camp, where they'll get training from a legendary instructor.

Everyone's excited, but Winn's nervous too. He's never done anything like this, and he's got a huge responsibility here.

And it only gets worse when he finds out the instructor is Mary.

Now, to me, this would be very cool - which is why it's pretty much guaranteed not to be what happens - but the thing about it is that this moves the focus away from 'will he forgive her?' to 'will he win her approval?', while still being part of the main story arc.

So how does Alex fit into this?

Mary is Alex's possible future; a future where she can't balance her current life as a DEO agent with that of her desired life as a mother. Alex is going to see a woman who abandoned her child at a time when he needed her most - the kind of mother she has no interest in being - and she's going to hate her breathing guts.

And then she's going to tell Winn to kick Mary's ass at whatever challenge she's thrown at him, because that woman can go to hell. He doesn't need her approval. He can do this *his* way.

Those are the most likely candidates (and Lena). Here's my thoughts on the others:

JAMES

Please no. I can't sit through James giving his patented generic-but-somehow-uniquely-unhelpful advice on a subject he can't possibly understand (given that he never seems to go home to see his own mother at all). This is a bad idea.

(It's going to happen, isn't it?)

IMRA

An interesting idea, given that Imra's supposed to be a telepath, and particularly given the vague motions toward SaturnNerd in 3x07 and 3x09. She could put his muddled thoughts into order for him, help reconcile what he's saying with what he's thinking. But she'd need to develop a personality very quickly for that to work, because she sure doesn't have one now.

BRAINIAC 5

It'd be hilarious, but no.

CAT GRANT

There's no way. There is absolutely no way that this is happening.

BUT CAN YOU IMAGINE? :-D

So, there's my thoughts. Feel free to kick my ass/leave thoughtful comments.