Hey, have you been following the adventures of the new DC Comics hero, Superman: Son of Kal-El that was launched last year? If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t feel bad. You’re not alone. It sounds as if almost nobody was buying the new offering and the series will end in December after just 18 editions. It was certainly something different than the old Superman many of us grew up with, though. The secret identity of the new Man of Steel was Jonathan Kent, the son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane. And rather than fighting for truth, justice, and the American way, Jonathan had a very different agenda. Instead of fighting Lex Luthor, Jonathan was battling climate change and rescuing “undocumented immigrants” from evil immigration officers. Oh, and he was also bisexual. For some strange reason, the new character didn’t seem to resonate with the fans. (National Review)

DC Comics is canceling Superman: Son of Kal-El, a book series it launched last year about a bisexual Superman, amid poor sales.

The series’ 18th issue, due out in December, will be its final installment, the publisher announced at New York Comic Con, according to reports. The series saw a 17-year-old Jonathan Kent, the son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, take on a number of social issues including climate change, school shootings, and the rescue of “undocumented migrants.” The series even featured face coverings in an effort to help mitigate the spread of Covid-19 in fiction.

The teen hero of the series begins a relationship with a male friend named Jay Nakamura in the fifth issue.

As noted in the excerpt above, Jonathan supported facemasks to battle the threat of a virus. As far as making the caped crusader bisexual, the author of the series said that “replacing Clark Kent with another straight white savior felt like a missed opportunity.”

You probably recall the superhero’s motto that I mentioned above, right? Truth, justice, and the American way. Well, that slogan had to be modified to fit in with Son of Kal-El also. It was changed to “Truth, justice, and a better tomorrow.” After all, you wouldn’t want the word “American” to show up in any sort of description of something desirable or aspirational, would you? America is bad, after all.

So why didn’t this offering catch on with the public? The easy answer for those on the left is that all of the straight, white, male, probably-MAGA homophobes out there refused to purchase it. It’s all about the homophobia all the time. That’s almost as endemic as institutional racism and toxic masculinity, am I right?

But I’m fairly confident the failure to launch didn’t have anything to do with that. It’s not that Superman was portrayed as being bisexual. Who really cares at this point? But why did Superman even have to be sexualized at all? Was he ever shown kissing Lois Lane in the original comics? (Well, actually they did kiss all the way back in issue number five, but it was never a very sexualized, hot and steamy relationship.)

In reality, I’d be willing to wager that this series was just too much of the wrong thing at the wrong time and in the wrong venue. The country is overdosing on wokeness as it is and people are starting to push back. The left pushes the theme of toxic masculinity like they get paid to do it (and many certainly do) and Superman is the ultimate model of traditional masculinity. Those looking for entertainment that sterilizes the concept of gender were likely not shopping for Superman fare, and those with an affinity for Superman almost certainly weren’t looking for this.

But in a way, it’s almost sad that we didn’t get to see where the series might have gone next. Would Jonathan Kent have begun flying around and hurling Pfizer syringes at the unvaccinated? (He could check for their vax passports in their wallets or purses with his x-ray vision.) Might he have smashed oil refineries to pieces by swinging the tower of a wind turbine like a giant baseball bat? Would Greta Thunberg have shown up as a temporary sidekick for a brief story arc? Who knows what sort of victories he might have racked up in his battle for Truth, Justice, and the American… er… “a better tomorrow.”