YES LITERALLY sorry im like. a rambler and i sent a whole diatribe to talk abt kon-el to others before because the way the narrative approaches him with all its ALMOST POINTS makes me so sad, i guess at times. and very mad. and always chewing on my nails thinking.
like its all in the little things of like. almost acknowledging. so im gonna be referencing early arc in the run of like. the stuff in hawaii. (sorry im no real superboy head yet, im just a guy at the gates screaming AUUGHGG. LET ME IN. LET ME IN.) it'll be little moments of like tana always calls him kid, knockout as. a whole. (which wow when i found out theyve like massaged her character out in other dc stuff holy shit bc she is a. whole rant i have), or even more specifically, there's a bit in like... either #0 or #1 where there are other journalists who look down on tana's relationship with superboy and its literally said "hes not even 16" (a moment i remember bc i clipped it and went UH. HOLY UNETHICAL PRACTICES BATMAN!!!) and yet we're supposed to interpret that more along the lines of people standing in the way of their romance? we're being guided away from the grooming by the narrative. tried to see it in this separate lens. and that's only on the lines the exploitation from these women, let alone everything with rex as the case of child star exploitation (WHICH. wow is superboy such a metaphor for)
like. i found it very interesting that at the first mention of like "maybe you should be a cop" from a stable (relatively speaking) adult male figure in sam makoa that roxy immediately went for it. and how that speaks to rex leech as a character and father figure. and then the narrative basically acknowledges he's not a great guy - rather shitty, tbh - but they play him and dubbilex off in a sitcom couple way. he gets let off the hook, even tho the narrative will sometimes hold him to the fire as the classic exploitative hollywood agent. it'll turn and be like oh that money hungry rex, he said, stereotypically as the laugh track plays.
and then im sat here like. am i supposed to laugh??? i dont really find it funny! the reality of the world is on such a tightrope of serious and "aw teen boys amiright? aint this COOL?" that im just like save me superboy analysis save me!!!!!
augh i meant to answer this days ago and then I Forgor. so sorry!
BUT YEAH. this is the thing about superboy (1994) that metaphorically keeps me up at night + keeps me coming back to this comic and its themes. it's so... it is FASCINATING how kesel flirts with the idea of actually addressing rex leech as an exploitative and outright shitty person to both kon and roxy, but then backs away from having any actual commitment to those themes over and over.
because like - yeah! like you said: dubbilex calls him on it during the match-fixing arc with mon-el but then nothing actually comes of it. dubbilex doesn't actually get on his ass or give him any consequences for his actions, and they resettle into the same status quo as before where rex's actions get played off for humor.
honestly, i know that kesel just dropped the plot because he wasn't actually interested in following through about it, but the way it never comes up again that rex leech was the one who hired the stinger to attack kon in metropolis (and that tana knew!) to get gbs viewership up in competition with wlex... it makes me feel insane. because that whole plot in aos 502-503 really really looks like a setup for a whole plot about kon getting into deep shit while too naive to realize what he's getting into... only then it doesn't? go anywhere?
and those things - story beats and conflicts kesel brings up that definitely feel like they should go somewhere but then they just. don't. - are then just exacerbated in hawaii. like, tana's 23 and dating a fifteen year old and sam makoa is just. right there. a cop. recommending roxy get on the "straight and narrow" as it were and being a supportive figure to her as she studies and trains for the police academy. and says literally nothing about tana dating a teenager even though tana's coworkers gossip about it (and are painted as irrational/jealous/"they just don't understand our bond"). and obviously it's because kesel thinks tana is good for kon (too good for him, even, because she dumps him for being immature and flighty and living too hard in the moment... .. . ... ... . .. ... like a teenager ... .. .. .. .. ...) but man.
in some ways it's so hard to read and in other ways i'm gnawing on it like a dog with a bone. like this does in a lot of ways read like how a kid in a predatory situation might rationalize it and laugh it off - oh, haha, dubbilex fussing at rex again about money things, lol. haha people at work not getting tana and me, classic dumb grown-ups (not like tana, she's not like them). it's just also so bewildering because it doesn't always feel like kesel intends for these things to be totally brushed off - sometimes he does write them as "hey this is kind of fucked up"! but then he backs off instead of committing to actually following through with narrative repercussions and consequences. even when kon finally does realize rex is a scumbag, the major narrative consequence is kon's abandonment issues getting majorly exacerbated by months on furry island + barbara kesel establishing that roxy is like the only one who cares that he's missing, and then we move on to the cadmus arcs and largely just leave all of this in the past.
which again makes sense for how kon might deal with it! and the fact that when rex shows up again kon isn't even angry with him despite that rex doesn't really care... AUGH. in-universe it makes me so sad about kon being so unwilling to hold grudges against people who have hurt him. from the doylist perspective though i'm just holding karl kesel by the shoulders like can you PLEASE commit to rex actually being a character and not just a caricature when things get serious. it almost happened with the roller coaster and then it didn't because of the furries. PLEASE.
but god damn if those inconsistencies don't make me feel insane abt this comic all the time. augh.
