#and i emphasized more of her vaguely neurodivergent aspects of her character

[bmpmp3]

new lia ref!

[davidmann95]

Supposedly, there's a very large chance that Mr Oz, the cloaked muster man we had have been seeing since 'Men of Tomorrow', is actually Jor El, Supes' Kryptonian father. Now your said planets of times, Supes is better written as well Superman/Kal El as opposed to Clark Kent but also you've said Krypton should only really be mentioned as the birthplace for him but nothing else. Can you clarify this thinking for me please? Also your thoughts on this theory for Mr Oz?

He’s better I think as Clark, the nice but private alien from Kansas who shows aspects of himself through both Superman and Dorky Metropolis Clark, but if I have to pick one over the other I prefer Superman for reasons I’ve already talked about. For Krypton itself, it’s not that I think it shouldn’t be a factor at all, just that it’s only relevant insomuch as it impacts and foreshadows his (and Kara’s) life, and while I like a lot of what that’s given us, the more it turns out yet another 50 Kryptonians have survived or whatever the more the primal nature of it in that regard feels reduced. It’s also probably because, while obviously his status as a refugee first-generation American is foundationally, irreducibly important to his character, my personal frame of reference for his isolation is neurodivergence, which is a topic for another time.

As for Oz: yeah, they haven’t come out and said it, but he’s clearly Jor-El at this point. While it’s nice that means Dan Jurgens hasn’t had creative control over Ozymandias - and that this means there’s some slim chance he’ll gone by the time of Doomsday Clock or at least irrelevant to it (are they just gonna drop “also Jor-El’s been known to be alive for over a year in-universe” in the middle of book surely designed as a perennial like that?), since at this point I’m pretty good and goddamn well sick and tired of him dramatically intoning that ALL WILL SOON BE REVEALED, CLARK* - at the same time I’m pretty disappointed at the last vestiges of my hope he’d be Superboy Prime seemingly blowing away in the wind. Seriously, I will write a post formally forgiving Jurgens’ Action Comics run for consistently being total dogshit if next week’s issue opens with the debut of the Rebirth-era Risk, and Oz revealing his identity by showing up to tear one of his arms off for old times’ sake.

Anyway, having Jor-El come back as a villain does seem like the kind of dumb on-the-nose hyper-literal way of emphasizing that Superman’s really One Of Us that Geoff Johns would come up with, especially if it turns out there’s some crazy continuity reason for the Oz moniker. It’d just be following up on the Kryptonians-as-dicks stuff he established with New Krypton, and it could turn out his original prisoner is somehow Ma Kent so they’ll have an excuse to bring her back. He’s an iconic enough character that if they really do bring him into Doomsday Clock as a major player he won’t be out of place, and it’s so obviously a temporary and easily reversible thing - or at least ignorable in the aftermath given he’ll surely sacrifice himself nobly to save Kal or his grandson - that there’re not that many concrete reasons to dissuade Jurgens and Johns from going into all that Father Vs. Son, Grandfather Vs. Grandson, Jor-El’s Intended Destiny For Kal-El Vs. Who Clark Is business they’re no doubt going to be angling towards. And he’s smart enough, and powerful enough if he has Kryptonian abilities, that I can buy everything he’s done, up to and including imprisoning Mxy.**

So yes, I find the idea that it could be Jor-El quite believable. As for whether or not it’s a good idea? Well, either you find that obvious boring hack bullshit to prop up what’s in all reasonable likelihood going to be an unbearably rote and mediocre story that will in no way make up for the three years of dreary buildup, or you, uh…don’t, I guess? I suppose that’s a possibility. I will say that if Jor-El makes it into Doomsday Clock proper rather than purely being Jurgens feasting on Johns’ table scraps, there’s a slightly better than zero chance something vaguely interesting might happen with it. My fingers aren’t exactly crossed though.

* Someone suggested the end of Doomsday Clock will probably be him watching the aftermath of Manhattan’s defeat from his monitor room and muttering something like “And now…it truly begins”, and I find that gut-churningly plausible.

** Speaking of forgiving Jurgens, I’ll be willing to offer up a lot of goodwill if Jor-El routing a 5D imp is used as an excuse to mention him repelling the Multitude.