But if Superman’s got everyone’s back, then who’s got him? No one has ever doubted Jon’s ability to live up to his father. Only by feigning a crisis of his own does Jay allow Jon the time and space to slow down, rest and consider his own needs. With his ability to enhance metahuman powers, Bendix magnifies Jon Kent’s super senses, sending him in a mad rush to resolve every disaster he can sense until he exhausts himself. But it’s also a question that addresses very much who Jon Kent is and the role that Jay Nakamura can play in his life.Īfter our 21st century Superman joins the Truth in calling attention to Gamorra’s refugee crisis, President Bendix devises a cunning strategy to burn out his new nemesis: weaponizing Jon Kent’s selflessness against him.
The title is an auspicious one, to be sure, echoing Lois Lane’s first words to Superman in the 1978 Superman movie which, all else considered, was ultimately a romance film. This brings us to the current issue, Superman: Son of Kal-El #5, “Who’s Got You?” And two, if he kept going like this, he would inevitably burn himself out. One, that he would sacrifice everything he had in a heartbeat to save the people around him. Junior journalist Jay Nakamura bore witness to Jon’s heroic transformation, and immediately, he knew two things about Jon Kent. Under the assumed identity of “Finn Connors,” Jon was attending his first day of college in Son of Kal-El #2 only to immediately abandon his cover to save the students from an active shooter. Jay Nakamura clocked Jon Kent as Superman in one issue.
It took Lois Lane 52 years to crack Superman’s secret identity once and for all. Most importantly, Jay Nakamura is pretty quick on the uptake. In other words, he’s the last person Jon ever needs to worry about saving. As we discover in Superman: Son of Kal-El #4, Jay has the power to turn intangible seemingly reflexively, protecting him from all potential threats. Some of his greatest successes include an earlier queer super-couple you may be familiar with already: Midnighter and Apollo.īendix’s latest success seems to be Jay Nakamura himself. In the past, Bendix has been a proponent of “posthuman” experimentation, genetically manipulating human subjects in pursuit of generating superpowers. If those names are familiar to you, then you were probably really into comics in the ’90s-Bendix and Gamorra were frequently featured in WildStorm titles such as StormWatch and The Authority. Jay Nakamura is a refugee, from the island nation of Gamorra ruled by the tyrannical President Bendix.
Not for a great Metropolitan newspaper, but as part of an underground online collective of citizen reporters who call themselves “The Truth.” Together, they shine the light on international ugliness and corruption that a sanitized media landscape would rather its viewers not see. Jay Nakamura, like both of Jon’s own parents, is a journalist. Sure, we’d gotten a few glimpses of Jon Kent’s pink-haired paramour, smooching Superman in that splash page from Tom Taylor and John Timms’ Superman: Son of Kal-El #5. This was the point where I ran out of answers. “Oh right,” my dad said, recalling his own Bronze Age Superman comic collection. But originally, he was conceived and born during a year when Superman was depowered and Metropolis was captured by Brainiac,” I answered, summarizing Jon Kent’s origins in 2015’s Convergence: Superman. “But how did they even have a kid?” was their next question, some ‘70s thought experiment about metal and tissue paper not far from their minds. “This is a new Superman,” I explained, patiently. “What happened to Lois Lane?” they asked me.
Maybe it’s just because I’m known as the comics guy in my family, but around me, this seemed second only to my sister’s nuptials in the conversation. Everyone from my own parents to relatives I hadn’t seen in over a decade wanted to talk to me about this. “Superman has a boyfriend,” the headlines read. I was in London, on the way to a family wedding, when the news broke last month.