Endorsement: Metamorpho

 Okay, now it starts to get WEIRD. Because now I am endorsing Metamorpho.

The tone is quite light-hearted but they don't shy away from any of Metamorpho's intrinsic weirdness.  The historic cast of oddball characters is there (Rex "Metamorpho" Mason, billionaire Simon Stagg, his daughter Sapphire, and his assistant Java the Thawed Out Neanderthal).  

Java is a Neanderthal. The only other Neanderthal left in the DCU is Vandal Savage.  You'd think they'd, you know, at least meet for a drink at some point.  

They even brought back Element Gal Urania Blackwell (after what Neil Gaiman did to her) as her original vivacious,  Rex-hungry espionage agent self. 

Not saying there was anything WRONG with what he did. That was an amazing read and remains one of the most moving comic books stories I have ever read.  But ... it still IS, whether it's "retconned" or not.  Readers really deserve to get over that hang-up.

And throw in some appropriately oddball additions, like Prince Ra-Man.

Linking the otherwise long-unused legend of Prince Ra-Man with Metamorpho's still mysterious origin in discovering the Orb of Ra is a smart move in dynasty-building for Metamorpho.

Rex Mason's transformation into Metamorpho is synopsized in the most elegant origin recap since the one Superman got in All-Star Superman:

Efficient alliteration.

The characters have been updated a tad, in good ways.

Stagg is still a ****, of course, but he's now a much more pro-active one, not always expecting others to save him (and his stuff).

And they give Simon his due. He's not merely an unscrupulous billionaire. He's a BRILLIANT unscrupulous billionaire.

Sapphire is no longer merely a brainless heiress, she's a talented internet sensation in her own right.  Java still works for Stagg, but the man's got some backbone now and is now longer the toady he originally was.

In fact, he seems to be the only person who gets away with back-talking Stagg, which is a welcome change.

As for Metamorpho himself, he's charming, funny, and loaded with chemical interactions, which have always been the character's stock in trade. 

On the one hand, Metamorpho is and always has been goofy and stupid. On the other hand, I have learned something from nearly EVERY Metamorpho story. How many characters can you say that about?

OTHER than Tennessee Tuxedo, of course.

 The creators gave him a power-appropriate opponent in "Mister Three" and a shadowy evil organization (CYCLOPS) to threaten him. They also cleverly give him his own city to work in (Jump City) and make it clear that it is very much its own place and one that sets the context and tone of Metamorpho and his adventures.

This makes it clear that, although obviously a contemporary setting, Jump City's vibe is a '60s-style go-go check one, rooted in the same era that the character of Metamorpho is.

Calling it "Jump City" is clever.  Anyone who knows Jump City as the location of the Teen Titans cartoon of the early 2000s will understand that this comic is going for a similar light-hearted tone (but with sufficient 'serious' action and challenge).  Besides, having your own fictionopolis is nearly essential to being a dynastic centerpiece in the DCU and it helps put Metamorpho on firmer footing.

Might not be a bad place for Plastic Man; although his roots are in a different time period, his surroundings need to be wacky-proof.

Even if you don't (historically) like Metamoprho, this comic is a master class in tone and timing.

Here is the comic showing "cinematic style" done right, since this action and motion, even if only implied, in each of these panels.

Here is the comic, in a mere two panels showing every major character, and their relationships with one another, while setting up the entire plot going forward.

Metamorpho is just about as good as Metamorpho can possibly be; I endorse completely.

P.S. I am endorsing not merely Metamorpho per se.  It's more than that; it is a repudiation of the Procrustean approach to editing and comics publishing. Metamorpho is a prime example of DC letting each character have its own world, its own genres, its own tone, rather than trying to stuff them all into some template for the sake of having a universe perfectly consistent in tone and type.

That universal "house-style" approach does have its benefits.  Marvel masterfully made the most of those by creating a shared universe and creating characters within it.  It makes crossovers (and cross-over appeal) easier and more powerful.

But DC is, and always has been, a colorful crazy quilt of different types of characters and storytelling.  They do (loosely) occupy the same universe, but that universe encompasses wildly different storytelling environments. To try and 'iron out' those differences and force them all to fit into one mode does a disservice to them all, gaining little and losing much; it disrespects the intelligence of the readers to think they cannot understand, accept, or enjoy this variety; it deracinates characters and IP from their original contexts, only to wither and die.  Books like Metamorpho signal that DC is finally playing to its own strengths, rather than stumbling over itself in a vain attempt to acquire the advantages of its competition.  In a healthy DCU, there might be a place for ANY type of storytelling that has previously happened in any DC comic (provide the market will support it).  

Except "The DC Challenge!"; just **** that.

I (and I believe most DC fans) love the DCU precisely because it can be a place where a Speed Saunders, a Plastic Man, a Metamorpho, and a Justice League Unlimited can all co-exist for our enjoyment and amazement.  It's nice to see that DC finally seems to believe that, too.

Endorsement: The Atom Project

There is a lot happening in the DCU right now. And, surprisingly... I endorse almost all of it, including...

The Atom Project.

The ostensible plot of The Atom Project is that Ray "The Atom" Palmer, as the classic JLA's premiere scientist, has taken on the task of fixing the Wacky Power Scramble caused when (in DC's latest universe-changing crossover) Amanda Waller's army of Amazos blew up, forfeiting (somewhat haphazardly) all the powers they had stolen.

Paired with his fellow "The Atom", Ryan Choi, Palmer is having limited success, but exposits that working with Nathaniel "Captain Atom" Adam is the key to unlimited success.

There are so many reason to dislike Captain Atom that the stupidity of the "Adam/Atom" thing is sometimes overlooked.

Why is Captain Atom the key?  I'm not going to bother to explain the in-story reason (especially since I don't understand it), but the meta-reasons are obvious. First, no one ever knows what to do with Captain Atom,  DC's red-chested stepchild from the Charlton Universe. Certainly he has no fans other than complain about his use/misuse/abuse.  Second, he's an angsty, volatile character, making him a perfect unstable platform for "the Atom Project" to teeter upon.  Third, he is, quite simply, a hero with "Atom" in his name.

Because, clearly, one of the longer-term goals of this miniseries to is creating an Atom Dynasty (that is, a dynastic centerpiece model build around Ray Palmer, an idea I have obviously endorsed for, um, some time.

After all, how could you possibly go wrong centering your world around Ray Palmer?

The real Atom (Ray Palmer), the "ethnic counterpart"/"junior partner" (Ryan Choi), the sidekick (Atom-Smasher), the black sheep (Captain Atom).  It's a solid start.  

Sure, I'd love to see the return of the mysterious Molecule, 

Who, despite being nameless and appearing in perhaps three panels total, seems to have more potential than Vixen, Voodoo, and all of Stormwatch combined.

smart'n'sexy Enrichetta Negrini, 

Objectively, if I OF ALL PEOPLE think a woman is too smart and sexy to go to waste,
then she damned well IS.

and the ultimate animal sidekick, the bionic Major Mynah.

I do not love Major Mynah despite the fact he's absurd.
I love Major Mynah BECAUSE he's absurd.

But all this point I'm just happy that DC sees Ray Palmer as deserving of dynasty and making the effort to build one.

The creators clearly set up Ray and Ryan as a bad science-cop/good science cop duo, or, more accurately, and cold and calculating scientist / sensitive and humanist scientist duo.  I'm not really sure this jibes well with their past portrayals but, let's face it: neither Ray Palmer nor Ryan Choi have (or ever had) sufficiently strong characterizations in the past to complain that this new interpretation of them is off-model.  On the whole, Ray has generally been noted only his outstanding level of confidence (even for a superhero) and his problem-solving nature.  

The amount of confidence required to casually, commandingly SLAP JEAN "THREAT TO ALL WHO LIVE" LORING in the face is far beyond my ken.

And Ryan Choi, well, I think his most consistent and identifiable traits are hero-worship and haplessness.

You're a physicist, Ryan. Don't do engineering, it's beneath you and you suck at it.  Do you try to do your own dry-walling, too?

So, for the time being, it seems a reasonable way of not only distinguishing the two Atoms, of making them not just non-redundant but necessary counterparts.  There aren't a lot of crimefighter duos in comics anymore and two Atoms just might be more viable than one (something the Flashes have never made work).

As long as they are assembling a world of characters around Ray Palmer, it begs the question, where, if anywhere, is Jean Loring?

Again--try to imagine the confidence. This woman eats a bowlful of Karens every morning for breakfast and then shits Yelp reviews.

Jean Loring was alive two or so years ago (in Cold Coast Asylum) but that was two years; how many times has the DCU been soft-rebooted since then? To my satisfaction, it has not really been established whether Jean Loring's long and storied history still stands in current continuity.  Is she still dead, eaten by sharks? Or has she NOT YET HAPPENED?!

AGAIN, try to fathom the degree of confidence required to propose to Jean "you vermin, I'll rip your face off" Loring ONCE, let alone FIFTY-SEVEN TIMES.

Oh, yeah. Let's get on that rollercoaster AGAIN, daddy!

Trinity (and a great many topics it touches on)

 Let's talk about How Bad An Idea This Is and In What Ways.

I have a feeling we won't be the only people.

This... creature, in case you do not already know. is the (theoretical) daughter of Wonder Woman. Or, as the Crimes Against Comics Division calls her, "Tom King's rap sheet, page #74."

Tom King is DC"s current exemplar of the Hot Young Auteur From The Outside World. It's one of DC's real-world tropes.  Such a person: 

has some sort of outside credentials the company thinks brings gravitas; 

is imagined by DC to have a following of readers independent of the characters they are writing; 

is give near carte-blanche to upset the applecart and take characters in New (unwise) Directions; 

usually has a distinct style that they adapt characters to, rather than the other way around.  

He's not the first and you can probably list them better than I. As the song lyrics go, "Such as —Wwhat d'ye call him, Thing'em-bob, and likewise—Never-mind;  and 'St,'st, 'st, and What's-his-name, and also You-know-who; but the task of filling up the blanks, I'd rather leave to you."

So, aa a dear friend of mine once said, "Let's start with your clothes."

I can only assume her civilian job is as a yoga teacher.

Judges...?

Thank you, Judges. Expertly put.

I only wish Blockade Boy were still with us to give his reaction to this monstrosity. Tom King mentioned in an interview that he used his 12-year-old daughter's interest in Wonder Woman as a reference point (just about the only positive thing he did say). Well, it sure looks like a 12-year-old designed that costume. "Y'know what's even COOLER than a magic lasso? THREE magic lassos!" 

After all, a girl can never have too many ropes.

Yeah, no; she LITERALLY has three magic lassos. What could be more practical in battle? One for the left hand, one for the right hand, and one for, um.... Let's play it safe and say "one for dragging".

I'm just going to assume her inevitable death by Isadora Duncan ia a future Fixed Point in time.

I'll leave aside the stupidity of that, which needs no belaboring. I will take a moment to linger on her hilarious (and surely dangerously sharply-pointed) heart-shaped breast-plate (which will CERTAINLY be lamp-shaded as such at SOME point,

"She wears her heart on her sleeve.
Well, maybe not her sleeve, exactly...."
< panel of her torso in chiaroscuro>
See, I can write bad comic book dialog just like the pros.

Trinity = Love, you see. Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, did I forget to mention her name? It's TRINITY.  You know, like in Christianity's creakily literal interpretation of Genesis 18-19 (et sim.)

Obviously, we have Augustine to blame for this, 
Aristotle would have slapped him silly had he been there to do so.

It is stunningly tone-deaf that (even) Tom King would have Greek Olypmianist Diana give her daughter a name (1) that's an English abstract noun and (2) so inextricably associated with an incompatible (and historically hostile) religion. Even a comic book geek should realize that's the primary evocation of the word "trinity".

Maybe there simply isn't any "Christianity" per se in the DCU. But there is always Christmas, right, so doesn't there have to be Christianity? Otherwise, how would machine gunners lure Wonder Woman onto roottops?

But in using the name King is trying, of course, to evoke the "DC Trinity" (i.e., Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman).  Which, well, I hate to have to resort to such an over-used and trite modernism as "cringe". But.. it's cringe.  Cringe-y? Let's go old school and call it "mortifying awkward to outsiders " (which I suppose is why people coined the term "cringey").  

The use of "trinity" to describe DC's three tip-top-tier heroes has always been tacky, due to its religious associations. But I've usually turned a blind eye to it for several reasons.  

First, there are so many people who don't know any better and don't think anything of it. I don't actually encourage the dominance of the shadow of historical Christianity over modern culture and thought, and it's an example of people kind of forgetting what 'trinity' originally meant, well... so be it, I guess.  I don't consider its usage "sacrilegious"; it's just tacky.  

Second, call me old-fashioned, but I'm still conscious of how artificial a construct DC's "trinity" is.  Real world references to it are one thing but any in-universe references are painfully forced.  The "trinity", remember is entirely a post-Crisis concept, in which DC decided to elevate a re-launched Wonder Woman into a tier which previously included only Superman and Batman (and by extension Robin). I am not saying this was a bad idea, per se, but it comes with challenges.  Much of post-Crisis disappointment in what's been done with Wonder Woman stems from how the bar has been raised for the character, perhaps beyond a point the concept can reach.  

Besides, DC blew its chance to do the obvious in a post-Superfriends era: create a QUATERNITY, with both Wonder Woman and Aquaman raised to the top tier.  

DC, you had a generation (or more) prepped from childhood to view this a quarternity of top-tier iconic heroes and you wasted the opportunity. You are incredibly good at wasting opportunities.

They are kinda/sort slow-rolling that nowadays, but Aquaman is sometimes as much "over there" as he is "up there" in the heroic hierarchy.  I suspect the lingering hand of Pope Innocent III, whose Fourth Council of the Lateran rejected the concept of the Quaternity in 1213.

Who would make an awesome addition to Aquaman's rogues gallery.
Kind of like an updated Torpedo Man.
"Continue to enjoy your graceless state!"

Third, there's not really a much better term. "Triumvirate" doesn't work because that refers to three men  etymologically, and to political rulers, a very bad connotation indeed.  "Trio" is a musical group, "triad" a musical chord", "troika" is too Commie-sounding, "ternion" is AWESOME but no one without pince-nez is going to use it, etc.

"Trigon", unfortunately, was already taken.

But, as stated, while I'll endure its use in our world, its use in-universe is unacceptable.  And the idea that Wonder Woman would name her daughter that?  Honestly, it's the most "cringey" fan-ficish thing I've seen since I don't know when.

I'd have to give it some thought.

Add to this the "me-too!-ism" of it all. Superman and Batman have children now, so Wonder Woman has to!  Because rather than have her, gods forbid, be her own person, we have to have her mimic Superman and Batman in order to remain at their level.   

It's a modern day mutation of the Dynastic Centerpiece Model, you see. We still WANT Kid Sidekicks but we feel bad nowadays about heroes picking them up at circus fire-sales, dressing them in bright colors, and throwing them at gun-wielding gangsters.  Plus, so many readers nowadays aren't children but rather HAVE children that we want heroes who share that condition so we can continue to identify with them.  So now the craze is for our heroes to have children who are way older than they should be, whom they dress in bright colors and throw at gun-wielding gangsters. But it's their own children, so it's okay.

Therefore our only actual sensible sane responsible adult iconic superheroes are Hal and Barry. Just you think about that.

So, how IS Wonder Woman's child inappropriately-old already? Oh, that's easy.... she's hasn't been born yet. This is a FUTURE person.  From the FUTURE.  Where fashion has gone to hell, apparently.

Yes, it just keeps getting worse and worse.  It's another "possible future that's definitely going to happen" that one writer creates and fans takes as gospel, because well, we actually like pretend this stuff makes sense, rather than just "whatever nonsense the most recent Auteur was allowed to spit out".    No offense to Mark Waid, but DC's readership is STILL in collective therapy from Kingdom Come.  So, rather than do the work, King is just skipping to the answers in the back of the book.  

Well, this is wrong on so many levels.  I'm going to pass over the obvious ones that come from this approach. We've all seen them before and can identity them easily enough. I'm just going to point out the irony of taking this approach to creating WONDER GIRL.  The only reason there was ever a Wonder Girl character separate from Wonder Woman to begin with was because sloppy editors/writers at DC weren't paying any attention to the fact that, when they created Teen Titans, the character Wonder Girl WAS WONDER WOMAN as a youth (in the same way Superboy was Superman).  DC has spent 60 trying to fix that mistake (still unsuccessfully).  So, yeah; having Wonder Girl be from a different time period? Not a great plan, historically.

Longtime readers know there is only one writer who could have cared so little about continuity.
Until now.

And that brings us to our final point. DC's slash-and-burn approach to Wonder Girls. To be fair, they have this approach to a LOT of characters.  

Some versions may deserve to be slashed and burned, however.

No matter what snow they shovel at you now, these characters were not made to work with one another. They were made to supplant one another. 

Kid sidekicks/youth heroes (and the broader heroic dynasties they are part of) are at the heart of conflict between two opposite tendencies at DC.  DC often mixes up the concepts of heroic "legacies", to show that heroism is a tradition that is carried on rather than dying with an individual, and "replacism", the avid rush to ditch any existing version of a character for a newer version that The Kids or a Different Audience Might Like Better.

POOCHIE IS FROM SPACE AND HE'S THE NEW GREEN LANTERN

When you have all the copies and younger duplicates lying around, it becomes VERY tempting to the powers that be to ditch That Old Character They Didn't Create and Feel Constrained By and Don't Have Creator Rights To.  The very tools that are supposedly created to respect the past are used to kill it.

And Replacism has a strong pull in an era given to narrowcasting rather than broadcasting; where we make a lot entertainment tailored to smaller varied audiences rather than a few shows designed to appeal to a broad audience.  The classic DC icons are "broadcast" icons designed to appeal broadly and they are correspondingly generic.   

Almost interchangeable.

The more people who can identify with Mr./Ms. Secret Identity, the fewer people can identify with him/her CLOSELY.  Hey, I'm Modern! I don't want your generic old white guy superheroes, like stupid brain-damaged Hal Jordan! I want a Green Lantern I can IDENTIFY with, who's like me. Somebody gay. Blond. Left-handed. Independent. With fashion flair. Who despite being not too young, looks REALLY good for his age. And likes dark-haired guys named Alex.

Okay, DC. You win this round.

But this can lead to increasingly rapid turnover/proliferation in a character that instead leaves everyone with next to nothing.  Instead of one Green Lantern we can all see a little of ourselves in every month, we each get one Green Lantern we could see a lot of ourselves in... if we ever saw them, which we don't, because there are 87 of them.  

In recent years, DC (or certain forces at DC) have been smarter about this issue and drawn a line in the sand. Despite taking guff for it, for example, Geoff Johns rolled back the turnover-cascade that had taken over Green Lantern and Flash by re-establishing Hal Jordan and Barry Allen as those mantle-bearers.

A task they handled easily, even after being dead for twenty years, because making it look easy is what they do.

One can complain about Johns' bringing back "his generation's version" of those characters, but the choice is defensible as where the problem started. If you draw the firebreak anywhere else, the choice seems arbitrary and the problem might take root again.  His recent work with reintroducing kid sidekicks and the Justice Society is also his attempt to re-inject the concepts of Dynasty and Legacy to help stabilize how DC deals with balancing past, present, and future.  

"Trinity" is... pretty much that opposite of that. She's just The Latest Author's Version of Wonder Girl, since I guess we've already consigned Yara Flor to the Discount Bin of discarded versions of Wonder Girl.

Remember her? Me, neither. I literally have never seen her in anything. At least her costume is marginally less ridiculous than Trinity's.

Except this one comes with the cheap trick of being Wonder Woman's daughter, which King clearly hopes will insulate her from eventual elimination (as it has odious Damian and the incomprehensible and blandly controversial Jon Kent).

It's a headline-grabbing, de-stabilizing pyrotechnic thrown out by an author who can't write a mystery, so instead he 'subverts expectations".  Well, what I expected from the Dawn of DC was certainly better than "Trinity" so consider my expectations subverted, Mr. King.

The Lavender League

The Gay Bloggers Union has officially requested that I weigh on an issue I have been punting on, one of the truly novel phenomena in contemporary comics: the sudden proliferation of gay legacy characters.

Now, we have had gay characters before in the DCU, and not just fly-by-night ones.

Not quite what I meant. Besides, Mr. & Mr. Estate-Sale are hardly "in the DCU" as much as they are "owned by DC now and kept in the attic". You know it's true.

At first it was supporting characters, like The Great Extraño (1988), Maggie Sawyer (1988), Mitch Sekovsky (1989), Pied Piper (1991) Terry Berg (2000), Renee Montoya.  

We all love "Auntie" Gregorio (IN RETROSPECT), but let's not kid ourselves. Despite all the in-story hype, nobody really believed the "New Guardians" were going to amount to anything or even last long and we were right.  They just props in a miniseries to make a point about about diversity and bigotry.

I'm not counting all the revisionist bisexual box-checkers like Constantine, Ice (Maiden), Blue Starman, Cat-Man, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Harley Quin, et al., because I think that's a different and much less significant phenomenon and if you'd like to argue about that, let's do.

But the first real high-profile DCU gay hero, of course, was Batwoman who was introduced in 2006 as a crime-fighting socialite (NOT yet Bruce Wayne's cousin; that was an ingenious retcon that happened in a later universal reboot, I forget which one-- so..many...reboots...).  

She had an immediate, widespread, and lasting impact on lesbian fashion.

There have been new gay characters with tenuous or no dynastic connections (e.g, Bunker, Anissa Pierce, Grace Choi).  There have been some pre-existing heroes now revealed to be gay, like the Tasmanian Devil, the Ray (current multiversal status uncertain?), or, most prominently, Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott and his son, Todd "Obsidian" Rice.  

That awkwardness when your date intercepts and misinterprets a hologram message from your actual dad, who happens to be a serious zaddy.

Prominent or not, such characters are still in the 'suburbs' of superhero-dom; they are on the edges of the real metropolises: the dynasties of DC's Big Iconic Heroes. That's the classic Justice Leaguers, of course: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman; Green Lantern & Flash; Green Arrow & Aquaman. Arguably others could be included, but over time they are DC's most consistent roster of royalty.  

Characters like Batwoman and Alan Scott are certainly well known and pedigreed; they are definitely dukes and duchesses in DC's royal houses.  But they are not in the line of succession, so to speak; they will not inherit that seat at the Justice League table.

Who wouldn't want THAT thrilling opportunity to watch Hal stare at his own beautiful hands?

Naturally, NO ONE will actually inherit that seat, as repeated attempts to oust the original JLAers have proven over the years (including several recent spectacular failures).  "Batman/Superman/et al." aren't just costumes and skill sets, they are actual individuals. You can give the codenames 'Superman', 'Aquaman', 'Green Lantern', and 'Flash', to Jon Kent, Jackson Hyde, Girl with Weird Glasses, and Wally West (yeah, I went there), but that's all you are doing.  Superman is still Clark Kent, Aquaman is still Arthur Curry, Green Lantern is still Hal Jordan, and the Flash is still Barry Allen. Despite 70+ years of various creators/editors to 'fix' the "problem" they feel that consistency represents.

Nowadays we're not just talking about Odd Man's nephew, Queer Fellow, or Woozy Winks adopted pansexual son Flirty, or even some Black Canary-lite with short dark hair, butch skillz, big boots, a motorcycle, and a leather jacket, who immediate pair-bonds with literally the first available person she meets.

Waitaminute:
That IS Black Canary.

No. Now,  we are talking about the "heirs apparent".  We are talking about: 

Batman's protégé, Tim Drake.  A long-standing character (1989) who served as Robin--many believe as the best Robin--for twenty years. He's been buried in the background for years since Bruce Wayne's son Damian began his reign of terror as Robin (2009).  His recent emergence from Damian's shadow has coincided with the reveal of his bisexuality.

Uhhh...
13 does NOT look like the minimum age for that ride.

Aquaman's protégé, Jackson Hyde. A comparative new character (2016), son of Black Manta and a Xebellian rebel, Jackson was introduced as a gay teenager.  He seems to have had some trouble gaining traction, probably because his look, power set, and origin are clearly based on the "Kaldur'am" character in the Young Justice cartoon and yet... he is very much NOT that character.

For one thing, Jackson understands how important it is that Aquaman-characters have fabulous hair.

and Superman's instant-son, Jon Kent.  Through temporal shenanigans driven by fan-service, Clark Kent and Lois Lane wound up with a pre-pubescent 10 year-old son after some reboot (Convergence 2015) without they or readers having to slog through the real-world tedium of, you know, pregnancy and infancy and toddlerhood and childhood.

 I mean, any SILVER AGE writer knows those are the FUN part. Aren't those playsuits ADORABLE?

Jon's principal narrative function in the DCU seemed to be as saccharine poured over Damian Wayne stories to make them less bitter and easier to swallow.  As previously discussed, Damian's clearly on his way out of favor as l'enfant terrible among DC's editorship, so some more temporal shenanigans were employed to have Jon suddenly become a POST-pubescent 17-year-old son of Superman. Puberty came with the reveal of bisexuality (his love interest is male; that he is bisexual and not gay is known only through external evidence from the creator and publisher, not internal story evidence).

 

You know, Jon, I'm sure Jackson would be glad to go through a stylebook with you at Supercuts.
Heroes are here to help those in need, after all.

How do I feel about all this?

Let's discuss that tomorrow; but feel free to tell me your thoughts today.