Crisis Insane Character Motivation Speculation #943 - Superboy Prime

Have you been reading The Crisis?

I know you have. You have to. The storyline represents 30% of the direct market at this point and time. Some of it has been good. Some of it has been bad. Most of it has been confusing, particularly the motivations of heroes and villains alike.

I shouldn't be spoiling anything for you since Didio expects you, just like me, to be up to date.

The motivations of Superman E2 have been consistent from the start. He's upset with the nature of Earth 1. He wants to save his love Lois Lane. He's ready to change things back to his way. He feels he represents something better. I can get behind that.

Alexander Luthor's motivations have been somewhat vague from the start. His true plan is unrevealed but the driving force behind his actions is his Luthorian Ancestry. Seeing what happened to Superboy, it's only a matter of time before the Luthor genes turn you evil. A little shaky but it makes sense.

Superboy Prime's motivations have been left incredibly unclear. He doesn't have an evil ancestry and in fact has a golden pinnacle to look up to. Why has he decided to stand on the wrong side of the angels?

In the grand tradition of Comic Book Shop Speculation, I attempted to rationalize why this is so. I thought this out and I realize why Superboy Prime and Alex Luthor are so close and why Prime trusts Alexander.

Superboy Prime has grown up under the shadow of Superman due to his name. Once he developed powers and met Superman, that desire became full blown.

But why does he fight against this nature? Why does he do horrible acts of near genocide knowing what it will reap? Why does Alexander Luthor reveal intimate details of his nefarious plan to him? The writing of IC has led me to believe the answer to these questions is that Superboy Prime is a closet homosexual engaged in a relationship with Alex Luthor!

Think about it, Prime is loyal to Luthor to a fault, ready to follow his every whim and command. He will do anything Luthor asks of him without question. He also shouts every few pages about how he wants to be Superman when he grows up. Superman represents the ideal hero, white, male and straight.

He hates Superboy not because he's squandering his superhero abilities, but because he's in a straight relationship with Wonder Girl. Superboy is basically throwing away a straight lifestyle that SBP would (as shown) kill for. Superboy Prime desires to be "normal". He can never have that life so he lashes out violently at the world in which he is forced to be only a spectator.

This dichotomy of wanting to be straight but in love with Alex Luthor, his first true homosexual partner, is what causes Superboy Prime to go crazy. His only enjoyment is doing something that stands against all he should be. This is why his moral system is so collapsed. He can smash planets together killing millions, but its wrong to kill one hero.

This is why he can despise a universe of heroes who have gone "dark" even though the actions he engages in are "dark" themselves. Shit, his sexual frustration at not being able to reveal his true nature has slipped into the DC universe, altering and birthing the dark things that he is angry about.

Among the questions I have been asking myself is why I am I entering into such ridiculous speculation to understand the character's motivation? Why has this character that we have barely seen before committing acts that are against everything he and his idol stand for?

Truthfully, it’s the only way that I can continue on to read the story. I have to invent insane conclusions to reconcile the missing pieces of the story. Johns is doing a very weak job of explaining why people are doing the things they are doing. I don't know if it’s the nature of his storytelling or the nature of an expansive crossover event, but as a reader I find it quite annoying that after nearly a year of story telling, I am not that much closer to understanding why the villains of the tale are doing what they do. It's not really my job to explain their motivations. It's obviously the writer's.

Dan Slott once asked that we as readers work around the occasional story mistake, the minor plot holes that have little to no bearing on the story itself. I'm prepared to do that. I'm prepared to overlook every silly story where someone who has been trapped someplace and could have easily used cellphone technology to call for help. I'm ready to ignore someone appearing in two places at once in two different comic books. Dan Didio is right about that, in many cases it's bad to let a previous bad story element ruin a potentially good story.

But when character motivations are just tossed out without little logical reasoning, how much am I expected to let slip by? How crazy are my speculations supposed to get before I begin to question the writer and the editor? Crisis is reaching my breaking point on this one and I'm happy that today, the last pre-One Year Later issue is being released. I couldn't take one more month of contemplating who was on the top or bottom.