The greatest man anyone can ever encounter is his father, and let us pray that our fathers are good men. In these men rest the foundations of every future adult. For no one was this sacred duty more important than Jonathan Kent, and few could have qualified for the tremendous task at hand for him and his wife, Martha. His son was no ordinary boy, who would grow up to become no mere man. There are good fathers and bad fathers, terrible fathers and extraordinary fathers, but there are few words for the type of father Jonathan Kent had to be in order to raise Superman himself. In order to be a father figure to that kind of man, to be Superman's Superman, he had to be a man of the ages.

There were certain things everybody knew about Jonathan. He was old-fashioned in his approach to many things. He was the idyllic Midwestern farmer, with classic values from an age long past. he held true to the type of things that never get old, no matter how often society looks the other way the more impersonal it got. He believed in truth, and assuming the best in people. He was also intensely loyal to the people in his life, to the point where he threw away a future to help his father on the farm. He was also incredibly stubborn, to a fault, but he did all these things for a good reason, and it was really quite simple why.

He loved people. He knew who he was and wasn't ashamed of it, which is always manly, but what makes him extraordinary is that he knew exactly how much he loved his son, his wife, his friends, and the common man. He knew what his obligations to them were and he would sacrifice himself to be a strong figure for them. He was an everyman, and everybody's man, and yet nobody owned this man except God. He would never sell himself to anyone and abandon what he believed. He was never higher than morality.

These values and more he imparted on his son, and in doing so was perhaps one of the most important figured in the DC Universe. He gave the most powerful man in the world a vision, and he gave him love. Not once did Clark ever feel unloved under Jonathan. Because Jonathan was stubborn, his stalwart demeanor could sometimes be frustrating. He was, after all, overprotective, and he also knew when to hold Clark back when Clark was being impatient or reckless. Yet, he was also always just gentle enough so that his son knew that this stubbornness came only from the deepest love he could give.

When I began watching Smallville, I began to really appreciate the first several seasons when Clark had both of his parents at home. Coming from a divorced household, I always liked to imagine what it was like to have two loving parents who I could always talk to, who could be my counselors when my heart was troubled, and who I could be open and honest with. Jonathan Kent was such a parent. Clark could always seek out the wisdom and love of his father, and always count on him to be stronger than him when he was week in spirit. Call that too good to be true, call that poor storytelling, but I soaked it all up, because I've seen enough stories where the household is torn, divided, and corrupted by dysfunction. I wanted to see a family as a family ought to be, a home that could give me hope and an ideal to strive for if someday I ever became a father. By God, Jonathan Kent was a father as fathers ought to be. I want him as my dad.