Originally posted by C-mom:
Finally, there is one character who is truly expendable, who is routinely killed off in the LnC universe, and that is Jonathan.
I don't agree with that statement. Jonathan has not been killed a lot in LnC. He has indeed been killed in the larger Superman mythos, though.
Siegel and Shuster introduced Clark's foster parents but never allowed the parents to be part of the Superman stories. (The kids were young and didn't want their own parents around, no?)
DC then created the character of Superboy, young Clark Kent, and suddenly Jonathan and Martha became very important, as they had to be there for their son all the time.
Superman and Superboy lived different lives and seemingly inhabited different universes. But DC realized that Superboy had to grow into Superman one day. And they decided that when Superboy had grown into a man, his parents couldn't be around. Everybody knew that they were never around in Superman's life.
So DC decided that Jonathan and Martha must die at some point during those transitional years when Superboy grew into a man. I actually read the story where they died. I know that they died at the same time and for the same reason, although I can't remember what it was.
Anyway, DC created the idea that when Superman is an adult, his foster parents are dead.
Along came
Superman the movie in 1977. This movie said that Jonathan died when Clark was eighteen years old, and that was when Clark decided that he had to leave Smallville and grow into a man. Martha, however, lived on. So it was the movie that created the idea that Jonathan died while Martha lived on.
In 1986, John Byrne revamped the comics. He brought back both Jonathan and Martha into the adult Superman's life. Byrne made Jonathan and Martha important to the adult Superman.
When LnC premiered in 1993(?), they took their cue from the comics, so Jonathan and Martha were alive and very active in their son's life.
Then came Smallville. The show has been running for a million seasons, and the writers have to come up with new, interesting story ideas all the time. One such idea they came up with was that young Clark Kent should have sex with Lana. Another idea was that, yes, let's kill Jonathan the way they did in that old movie! So they did.
Interestingly, if I have got things correctly, Smallville tried to suggest that it was Lana who was going to die. Since she was the main character along with Superboy in that show, she couldn't die. So Clark somehow saves her, but at the cost of his father's life. In Smallville, Clark sacrifices Jonathan for Lana.
Ah, but in LnC, Clark came within an inch of killing Lois himself with his freezing breath in order to save his parents. That Clark would have killed Lois for his parents' sake.
Lois "came back from the dead" in that episode. To do so is an "anomaly" for a woman. Therefore that storyline has been "rectified" in LnC fic, so that Lois died and stayed dead. But TOGOM has never been "rectified" so that Clark died, shot by a kryptonite bullet. There has also never been a fic where TOGOM happened at a time when Clark was powerless after a kryptonite episode, so that he could be killed by a bullet like an ordinary man.
Killing Clark can't be that hard in a world where it sometimes seems as if everybody and his aunt is in possession of kryptonite.
Back to the idea that Jonathan is dead. Smallville reinforced the picture that had been presented by
Superman the Moive. And lo and behold, now the comics have picked up the ball. Yes, Jonathan is dead in the comics, too. And if you saw
Superman Returns, you must have seen how Superman fell to the world in flames, to be cradled by Martha the way Mary held her dead son Jesus in her arms. In
Superman Returns things are the way they are in Smallville and the comics - Jonathan is dead, but Martha is alive.
Here in LnC, however, I think there have been very few fics where Jonathan has died. But if we start seeing more of the Jonathan deathfics here, too, it will because the larger Superman mythos seeps into this little fandom, too.
Which makes me wonder what it will take to kill off Lois officially and permanently in the larger Superman world. Superman doesn't need Lois now, does he, now that Lana is around?
