Paragon of Diaspora: How Superboy’s Heritage Struggles Mirrored My Own

As I’m catching up on CW’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” they talk about Paragons: characters with undeniable virtues, embodiments of a defining trait. They name several in quick succession as the events stumbles on, but as I watch I wonder what other Paragons could possibly exist in different realities. And truthfully, there’s only one example that comes to mind.

Jon Kent is a Midwesterner, son of an immigrant and American military brat. He has only ever known one home and has only heard stories about the other. Neither of his parents know exactly what he’s going through, because they’ve gone through exactly what he’s going through. He’s not an alien, and he’s not human. Logically, he is something in between, but this means he is something more than just the simple sum of two parts. Jon Kent is a mixed kid, and he knows other mixed kids; they get some of the struggle but never all of it because while there are similarities, you can’t correlate the differences. It wouldn’t be fair to either. But his experience with diaspora helped me with mine. I think a lot about Jon Kent because my own story is more like him than any other character I’ve read in recent memory. There are not a lot of Filipino superheroes in American comics. If I were to go to my local comic book shop today, there would be exactly two comics that I could pick up that featured a Filipino hero: Agents of Atlas and Aero. Now, I am eternally grateful for Greg Pak for creating Wave and giving her a chance to shine…