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| The next super dad |
After a few weeks of no one really caring, Kevin Costner has signed on to play the father of Clark Kent in the upcoming franchise reboot Superman: Man of Steel. Most Superman fans recognize Jonathan Kent as the old guy in whose house Superman grew up in, but hardcore critics consider the guy to be a the flaming torch of American masculinity who guided a super powered alien into a blue unitard and a retarded cover story.
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| wholesome=boring |
In the past Pa Kent has stood somewhere between Wilford Brimley and Paul Newman, old enough to give you stale advice and creepily virile, dropping hints that when you left he was going to be ploughing Martha’s field. The Kents showed Clark that even though he could drive a person into the ground like a rail road spike it didn’t mean that had to. Jonathan and Martha were supposed to be the only thing that stood between humanity and a super powered sociopath.
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| Smallville's answer |
Even though the casting of Costner is a little awkward it does give away a lot about the direction the movie is likely to go in. Costner will likely be taking a prominent role meaning the film it is either going to be a long and diluted biopic, that will eat up time like a slow cancer (two hours of Smallville) or we will see superman dealing with his dark side.
But for every Jonathan Kent there is a super dad that accidentally or intentionally or callously turns their child into a walking ball of murder and discontent. So here is a list of characters that are much more relevant to the comic book narrative than the stale Mr. Kent and reasons why his story is barely worth telling.
Odin
Odin, Thor and Loki’s father, was locked into screwing up his kids from the beginning. First of all Thor is a planned bastard, the product of Odin and Gaea. The plan was for the boy to be as tough as his parents on both earth and Asgard, but when he looked at the kid Odin knew the little omnipotent crumb snatcher would be a problem.
So to balance things out he beat the giant Laufey to death and “adopted” his runt son Loki to even out the crazy in Thor, meaning that for every problem he tried to fix Odin made another one that was shit tons worse. This one eyed old man’s timing sucked. When his son stepped out of line he would repo all Thor’s powers, usually when some super powered jackass had his foot on the thunder god’s neck.
John Custer
Easily one of the biggest bad asses in the bunch is the father of a preacher man. John Custer’s dad fought in the pacific theater so when John was old enough he enlisted and landed “in the shit” of the Vietnam War. While he was there he smoked some weed, tried not to get killed, blew up a corrupt commander in a latrine, and carried his wounded friend over 10 miles through enemy territory, getting himself blown up and winning the medal of honor.
When he got back to the States his future wife spit in his face before calling John a baby killer. He charmed her with blank silence she apologized and they fell in love. They married and later Jesse “The Preacher” Custer was born. John taught his son to be kind to those who deserved it, respect women, love John Wayne, and never to give up when you have to make a point.
Later, his wife’s twisted relatives kidnapped John Custer and his family beating him neither to death, sparing his life only when they found out he was Jesse’s father. The relatives tried to brain-wash the Custer family, but John waited and made a doomed escape attempt and just before he was shot in the head he told his son, "You gotta be a good guy, Jesse. You gotta be like John Wayne: you don't take no shit off fools, an' you judge people by what's in 'em, not how they look. An' you do the right thing. You gotta be one of the good guys, son, 'cause there's way too many of the bad."
Howard Stark
Howard Stark is the type of rich dad that turns a trust fund into a noose. The elder Stark was basically Tony Stark-boring. An alcoholic over compensator who developed massive stock piles of weapons that came back to bite the entire free world in its collective ass. He rode his son like moped with a bullet hole in the gas tank, and essentially fed into the future Iron man’s stupefying narcissism.
The worst of the relationship started when Tony turned out to be smarter than his father, but much more prone to not giving a crap. Howard decided to continue grilling his son while making money off of the killing machines the younger Stark’s genius mind produced.
The Hulk
The Hulk is an example that shit parenting has a way of spreading. After being beaten like Kanye West at a Toby Keith concert for years, along with his mother, the young genius Bruce banner lost it and retreated and as a defense mechanism created alternate personalities, one of which was the Hulk.
Well eventually, after the earth had had enough of the hulk bulldozing things and a group of heroes launched him into space. The Hulk landed on a planet as violent as he was, met a nice queen and fathered two of the most destructive beings Marvel had ever seen.
What happened with Hiro-Kala and Skaar is pretty much an example of what you get when daddy isn’t around. The longer The Hulk was out of their lives the more the universe suffered.
Hiro-Kala destroyed his home planet, poisoned a galaxy, drove Galactus insane, and went about murdering worlds to send his father a message. Skaar who was a little less malicious, butchered his way to earth nearly crippling the Silver Surfer and being one of the few folks in the universe to spit in the face of creation. When Skaar finally hit terra firma he levelled the place until his father showed up and tried to kill him.
Not that Banner/ Hulk was absentee father of the year. When her found out Skaar was on earth and his kid, he resigned himself to the fact that he might have to kill the boy.
Brian Banner
But Brian Banner, Bruce Banner’s father, was an old fashion model of mean, who routinely tried to beat the monster out of the child he never wanted. He was the cause of the crazy which created the Hulk, making him one of the most destructive men in Marvel history by proxy.
He killed his wife when she tried to stop his “correction” of little Bruce. When Brian found his son at his mother’s grave the older banner started a fight that ended getting his neck broken on his murdered wife’s tombstone, the first step in Bruce growing as a person.
Wolverine
Wolverine would have probably been a decent father if he hadn’t been screwed by fate so frequently. The first kid (Daken) was supposed to have been murdered in Japan. In response this tragedy Wolverine did what any good father would have done, slipped into psychotic catatonia and murder his way out of Japan. The second kid was a clone daughter (X-23), built with a homicide trigger who Logan didn’t meet until she was about 17.
Both of the kids were used like weapons, Daken was turned precise assassin, while his “sister” X-23 was more like a hand-grenade. Wolverine stepped in, and in both cases and tried to talk/beat the killer out of his kids to varying degrees of success. X-23 was trained past being just a killer and joined the X-men, while Daken decided to focus on killing people who deserved it, namely anyone who crossed him.
Thomas Logan
Even though we never heard about the guy until recently Thomas Logan is the archetype for all the shitty things a father can do to his children over the course of a half life time. Thomas spent the latter years of his life drinking and beating his first son Dog at regular intervals out of drunken boredom. His second son James Howlett (Wolverine) was generally ignored by him because the boy was the result of an affair Thomas had with Elizabeth Howlett, and lived on a large estate being raised as John Howlett’s son. But after years of feeling slighted Thomas forced Dog to help him rob the Howlett house, murdering the only decent father figure Wolverine ever knew. A few seconds later when the young boy that would be an X-man slipped into his first blind rage, Thomas Logan became the first person Wolverine ever killed.
Thomas Wayne
Thomas Wayne is probably the best argument for money not ruining people, and proof that all other characters who have let cash wreck their kids are just bastards. He was supportive, doting, and before he died catching bullets with his chest to protect his son, he made enough money to finance the Batman.
Magneto
Even if you think that the master of magnetism has gotten a raw deal on the sliding scale of good to evil he is still an awkward fit as a daddy under the best cases and a neglectful ass in most others. For the past few years he has manipulated his son Quicksilver into leading a terrorist group on at least two occasions, and then ducked out on the job whenever he felt itchy and leaving poor Quicksilver holding the bag.
In an effort to reclaim his relationship with his daughter The Scarlett Witch, Magneto decided to use her as a living nuke, sabotaging her marriage and perhaps causing not only to the deaths of his own grandchildren but the near eradication of mutant kind.
Professor X
In the worst case continuity irony Marvel’s greatest father figure has managed to develop one of the worst paternal relationships in Marvel history. His son Legion was genetically predisposed to insanity thanks to his mother own mental illness. So as a consequence one of the most powerful mutants in the world was born bat-shit crazy.
Legion's mother neglected to tell Xavier about his son until the boy had began his own crusade against mutant oppression...I mean until he started murdering random people. At first Professor X tried to get the young man under control until he realized it was best if Legion just stayed in a coma of Xavier’s design.
So looking at this list should help you realize how irrelevant and unimportant Jonathan Kent really is, Just like Waterworld, and how focusing attention undermines Superman. Other characters either had a paternal figure with more blood on his hands than Genghis khan or a plan to eventually give their offspring a dirt nap for the greater good. If they were “lucky” their parent died before they were old enough to have their first wet dream. Considering this odds watching Jonathan Kent will feel like slow brain rot.
