Favorite Superboy: Kal-El or Kon-El?

[Spiderboy12]

After reading the other "favorite Superboy" poll that was all about different takes on Kon-El, with many posters wondering why the original Superboy had not been included, I decided to start a poll that puts Kon-El in direct competition with Kal-El.

For this poll, Kon-El includes all versions: The original version (which you can split in the "Kesel/David" and "Johns/Lemire" versions if you wish), the "new 52" version, the "Smallville" character, the "Young Justice" (TV) version, and various parallel-world/Elseworlds versions.

Likewise, "Kal-El" includes all versions of Kal as SuperBOY (not Superman), including the pre-Crisis version (which you could split into "Golden Age", "Silver Age", "Bronze Age", "New Adventures of SB", etc. versions), the "Superboy" TV series version, the more recent pre-"New 52" version, and various parallel-world/imaginary story/Elseworlds versions... except, for the sake of argument, Superboy-Prime.

I'm also including the option of liking the two Superboys about equally.

Enjoy!

[Kurosawa]

It's kinda unfair to put a relatively obscure character like Kon-El against the greatest American pop culture icon of all time. So of course Kal-El. But Conner has always been a fun and interesting character and he deserves the name and the honor of carrying on the tradition of Superboy.

[stk]

Both have their good points. If I think of my favorite stories involving any Superboy ever, it would be Clark in the Legion of Super-Heroes.

But I do think Conner works better in a modern context. DC doesn't tell the kind of stories the Clark Superboy would have anymore. And I did like Conner in the DnA Legion. I wish that had gone on longer and that he started making regular visits. I also wish the DnA Legion had gone on longer, but that's a separate topic.

I also really liked the way they had Conner take Clark's place in the Forever People introduction story in the Young Justice cartoon. I thought that worked really well.

So favorite, for nostalgia's sake, would be Clark in the Legion and in both the 1980 and 1990 solo series.

But the version I would most like to see today is the Young Justice cartoon version transplanted into the current comics. I think that version is the one that would generate the most great stories today.

[Sacred Knight]

I have more investment in Kon because his birth was basically at the same exact time that I came onto the Superman comic scene, so I saw the character grow from the onset.

[House of Rao]

I just started reading comics a little after COIE happened, and I was too young to really understand them. It wasn't until the 90s that I was able to collect alot of comics and get what I was reading. I have quite a few of Kal's works as Superboy, approximately 1/3 I'm a huge legion fan, so Superboy's Legion, including the pocket universe is among my favorite all-time reads. However Kon has always been more relevant too me. Honestly, I prefer Kal as Superman as opposed to Superboy.

[Mr. Holmes]

Kon as Superboy, Kal as Superman. Pretty simple.

[marshal99]

[Last Son]

It's kinda unfair to put a relatively obscure character like Kon-El against the greatest American pop culture icon of all time. So of course Kal-El. But Conner has always been a fun and interesting character and he deserves the name and the honor of carrying on the tradition of Superboy.

Yeah but this isn't Kon-El vs. Superman. Is the original Superboy as well-known as his adult self?

[House of Rao]

At this point can we really call Kon obscure? IIRC he was second choice to die in IC because he was one of the more popular juniors.

[stephens2177]

Yeah but this isn't Kon-El vs. Superman. Is the original Superboy as well-known as his adult self?

Ugh thats exactly what it is though,clark is superman,and superboy which is still him,just younger,nothing is different.kon has only been superBOY,but at the sametime he has been changed up a lot,there is noconsistent version of him.

[MajorHoy]

I vote for young Kal-El out of personal sentiment . . . Superboy-Prime during CoIE was also good, but after that was a train wreck of awful (I'm assuming courtesy of Geoff Johns).
As for the one I refer to as "clone boy", the "original" Kessel version also had his good points, but I don't recall if he was ever referred to as "Kon-El" when I was reading him, or if that was an identity that came into use later on (after I had stopped reading comic books for a while).

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

Yes, stories about Superman in his younger days are still stories about Superman, but it's a very different kind of reading experience from the stories of a full-grown character who is the world's greatest super-hero.

And look how much came out of that concept. The first Superboy stories just tried to tell stories about Superman as a boy, but soon all kinds of new ideas spun off from that. Our vision of Ma and Pa Kent developed in those stories. Smallville, Lana Lang, Pete Ross, Krypto, the Legion of Super-Heroes, Mon-El, Lex Luthor (as opposed to just Luthor) and his friendship/contempt for Superboy/man--all came out of Superboy.

Of course, in turn, the development of those ideas in Superboy bled back into the adventures of Superman. And concepts from Superman adventures seeped back into the Superboy stories. So there was cross-pollination (Bizarro being a case in point). But Superboy was an important franchise for a good thirty years and it was something that you could read as a kid and feel a point of identification with it, which was different from the Superman stories.

Naturally, I'm totally biased. I've read a lot of Kal-El Superboy stories in my lifetime--and only a handful of Kon-El Superboy stories.

[The Frozen Reptile]

There was so much they were able to do with Superboy as Kal-El. It left space open to show how he became the man he is as well as some back stories (like the Superboy(man) Revenge Squad.) My only question from back then: how did Clark pay for university after his parents died? (According to the canon pre-Crisis, the store wasn't a huge moneymaker and Clark never sold the house.)

[marshal99]

There was so much they were able to do with Superboy as Kal-El. It left space open to show how he became the man he is as well as some back stories (like the Superboy(man) Revenge Squad.) My only question from back then: how did Clark pay for university after his parents died? (According to the canon pre-Crisis, the store wasn't a huge moneymaker and Clark never sold the house.)

Should be easy enough back in those days.

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

There was so much they were able to do with Superboy as Kal-El. It left space open to show how he became the man he is as well as some back stories (like the Superboy(man) Revenge Squad.) My only question from back then: how did Clark pay for university after his parents died? (According to the canon pre-Crisis, the store wasn't a huge moneymaker and Clark never sold the house.)

Maybe he won a scholarship.