Jonathan M. Sweet (character)

Fictional character biography
Jonathan Sweet is an eponymous character who first appeared in the debut issue of The Belch Dimension Comics. He is 16, and a student at Carbuncle High School in Jigaboo Junction. He is known for a love of books (esp. the work of Arthur Conan Doyle, but also comic books) and a passsion for his studies in school, particularly zoology and psychology). These skills serve him well in his detective work, often enabling him (like his idol Sherlock Holmes) to determine a villain's identity or motive from even slight clues, like a few bits of errant dirt or something odd in a person's speech or demeanor. As a young boy he frequently wore a baseball cap and a red bath towel about his neck that served as a cape, fancying himself a superhero.

One day Jon was exposed to gamma radiation from an explosion of chemicals. After several days in a coma he awoke to discover the radiation had given him a battery of super abilities. He changed from the ratty red towel and hat into a brighter, gold-colored cloak and button-decorated cap, deciding to use his love of comics to good advantage to become a bona fide superhero.

Jon is the de facto leader of a group of teens and preteens called The Treehouse Warriors, all either relatives or friends of his since childhood. Series creator J.M. Sweet confirms that all the main characters are based on himself and actual family members and friends of his growing up. Jon, as are the other Warriors, is rendered in the in-house stick- figure style. The few times Jon is actually seen with a realistic body, he appears to have a fairly impressive, muscular physique (though on a few occassions a large pot belly, if a joke requires it, is seen). On several occassions he sports a mustache and bushy sideburns, which is modeled after series creator Jonathan M. Sweet's own full beard.

Enemies
Perhaps Jon's most enduring and frequent foe is Snakeman, aka Hiss Hole. Jon first mentions his enemy's name and former occupation--Dr. James Allen, a brilliant young scientist--in "A Girl And Her Chair" (#9).

In #19, his background is delved into a bit deeper: Allen first met Jon a few months after his self-imposed exile following a lab accident; the boy, only nine years old at the time, never saw his future enemy's face (it was bandaged). Allen--or as Jon called him, "the mummy-man"--had just pursued and shot a young girl who had robbed his hotel room. In the ensuing struggle, Jon grabbed the object she'd stolen--a magic glass ball--and broke it on the sidewalk. He then stabbed the mummy-man in the chest with a piece of glass (perhaps only in self-defense or terror, but Allen took it as a gesture of truculence) and fled. Hiss Hole still bears a J-shaped scar under his left collarbone to this day, as well as a deep grudge.

Jon repressed the memory, although during his coma he spoke of it to Joshua, (whose formula had exposed his ailing friend to the gamma rays to begin with). He was unaware of doing so upon awakening. He also was unaware of why he chose to don a yellow cape, although it seems to have been inspired by something the girl said as she was dying (calling him "nino del oro'', or "golden child").

Snakeman (as he now called himself) reencountered Jon when he was twelve and had just gotten his powers. The two have continued to fight on and off, bitterly, for four years.

In "Demi-Jon", Josh recalls perhaps their most decisive battle, when Jon banished Hiss Hole to another world through a portal the reptilian wizard had himself conjured up, and thought him gone for good. However, Hiss Hole reentered our dimension in a bolt of lightning--the scene which kicked off the series--and the old emnity began anew.

Jon has frequent run-ins with a local tough named Tony Moneran, the neighborhood bully. Neither Jon nor Moneran (or "Monty", as Jon often calls him) remembers how they met; indeed, in issue #31 this is used to humorous effect as, when Jon tries to call up the memory, a black box reading NO CLIP AVAILABLE appears instead of the expected cutaway. Moneran seems to dislike Ben just as much as Jon, for whatever reason. Their confrontations are so frequent as to follow a formula: the two compete at something (a game show, a sporting event, a class assignment). Monty cheats to gain the upper hand or lays intricate traps that invariably backfire. In the end Jon comes out the victor; Monty, the loser.

Another foe Jon apparently has some history with is the sea pirate Captain Maggot. Maggot first appears in #5 ("High-Sea Hijinks"), but it's implied in their exchange that they know one another well. In "Fishy Business", issue #35, Jon admits it was he who cost the pirate his hand, and that's why today he sports a metal hook. He doesn't go into much detail, however.

Throughout the series Jon meets many other new foes for the first time: Ichabod Freely, Demi-Jon, Dung Tung Wu, Jiggawatt, and numerous others.

Love Life
Jon's most enduring and enigmatic relationship is with his friend Angela, whom he's known since kindergarten and cares for and respects deeply, if being somewhat oblivious to her feelings for him. In #19 Josh asks her right out about the nature of their relationship. "He's never asked," she answers, "and I've never said."

In "Once Upon A Time Warp" (#21), Jon and Angela are lost in time and, through a misunderstanding, end up as members of George Armstrong Custer's doomed 7th Cavalry. As they charge Angela blurts out, "I l--", but the battlefield noise drowns her out. When Jon asks her about it later, she coyly says it's unimportant, adding "Some things are better left in the past."

Sweet says that the Jon-Angela relationship is "something that could be very beautiful and enduring if these kids weren't so young and inexperienced...and perhaps in a few years--decades, even--if they could ever get their shit together, him stop being so damn dense, her quit being so damn moony-eyed, and both end up on the same damn wavelength, they might surprise one another."

When he was 14 Jon fell in love with a girl named Johanna Ralston. Being from the good part of town, she often upbraided Jon for being boorish and uncouth, which made their relationship stormy. It finally ended after the two argued about her new job coming between them. A day later Johanna was killed in a car bombing outside her house. It's revealed at the final page of the "SweetTart" arc that Johanna has been dead two years. At the end he visits her grave, where he, finally feeling able to move on, says "Let past be past." Sweet based aspects of this on his own onetime failed relationship with an upper-class girl.

Jon has several brief flings, too, throughout the series. In "A Girl and Her Chair" Jon was introduced to Jeanne Stonehart, the paraplegic niece of Eustace M. Stonehart. Hiss Hole abducted her on her way home from her new friends' treehouse, in an attempt to force her to divulge her father's secret mutagen formula. When Jon learned of this he became furious; the others comment they have never seen him so upset. After Hiss Hole is dealt with, the two spend some time together, with her uncle's blessing.

She is later seen in one panel of a filler comic seen in #18, "The Seven Deadly Sins". Interestingly, Angela ("Envy") appears to be jealous of her and Jon's relationship, though she didn't seem to mind it before.

In "Fishy Business", during a battle at sea, Jon fell off the deck of Capt. Maggot's ship. He was rescued by a gilr named Maria Eisner, who revealed she was actuall yamermaid. She was once a normal girl before being exposed to toxic waste that was full of dead fish. (An early draft of the script has Jon indirectly responsible for the mutagen that turned her ending up in the sewers, thus making her mutant state his fault, but that was cut for length.) Maria helps Jon save his friends, then disappears into the ocean waves, but not without promising they'll meet again.

Personality
On the whole Jon is a very optomistic, easy-going character, though at times prone to fits of melancholy. He has a deep sense of justice and doesn't hesitate to fight back if his honor or that of a friend or family member is threatened. Though brilliant he is prone to normal adolescent fits of bravado and arrogance, which often lead him to take great, even foolish, risks. If he makes a mistake he takes it deeply to heart. He takes time to remember great personal tragedies and losses, such as the anniversary of his first girlfriend's death (revealed in issue #27 to be in February, which coincides with both the creator's real-life breakup between him and another young woman he fell deeply for, and losing his job at the campus newspaper). On these occassions he will retreat into himself and become moody, inconsolable, and even more violent than usual, often for weeks or months at a stretch.

Like his creator, Jon's politics are staunchly conservative, and sometimes he espouses his beliefs in long, drawn-out, and angry rants about the sorry state of his community or the injustices he sees, which his family and teammates often blithely listen to until he's finished.

Powers and abilities
Jon developed a number of superpowers following an explosion of unstable chemicals in the treehouse where the Warriors keep their club. Josh, Jon's best friend since grade school, believes it was actually something in Jon's blood that let him survive such high doses of radioactive energy and awoke long-latent abilities. In "Demi-Jon", he mentions (in a long soliliquoy) that Jon came from a line of obscure ancient Scottish nobility that supposedly practiced arcane magicks. His theory is that the chemical reaction in his cells served as a catalyst for the powers from "magus ancestors...lay dormant for forty generations" present in his genes. However, the other members of his family seem perfectly normal, though Jon's brother Ben seems to naturally manifest his own unique abilities without aid from chemical exposure.

Jon exhibits a number of major and minor powers, such as super-strength, invulnerablity, flight, and a degree of low-grade mental telepathy that can read a person's surface thoughts if he is in close quarters with them, such as the cab of a vehicle or a small room. He first used this in "Hiss Hole Comes to Town" on Tony Moneran, when they were forced to team up temporarily, to discern his plan to double-cross the Warriors after all was said and done.

The degree of his invulnerablity often varies for comic effect. He is impervious to bullets in #1. Yet he does demonstrate symptoms of discomfort at times, such as in "Driving Miss Crazy"(#4), when he flies out the windshield of the Crook Buster into the pavement, and appears to feel the blows of a gang of blacks' weapons in "Guidance System" in #16. (It is worthy to note that a number of the characters in the series do, according to the rules of cartoon physics, exhibit the ability to survive blunt object trauma, explosion, and falls from great heights, unless the script calls for otherwise--hence, many times a safe or an anvil to the head does no harm to, say, Moneran, yet a trash can dropped from a mere 40 feet strikes a fatal blow in "SweetTart". )

In "A Fair Fight"(#3), Josh first mentions Jon's IQ is 181 points.

Jon first uses telescopic vision to identify a Cobra Clan crest on some boxes in "High-Sea Hijinks". Presumably he can see several miles distant (though ironically still requires glasses).

Jon first shapeshifts in "Driving Miss Crazy", turning into first a lump of clay and then a peanut. He later uses this ability, as well as a knack for mimicry, to imitate celebrities and assume character roles, such as "Dr. Belcher", a white-bearded GP (usually seen in the company of "Dr. Ruthless Eastheimer", played by Angela), or actor and bodybuilder "Armhold Swinenhogger".

Jon first flies in "Paleozoic Error" (#7) by flapping his arms rapidly; this is later changed to him simply soaring similarly to Superman, with arms held out before him.

Jon's superspeed, first seen in a flashback in #23, could be an extension of this ability. Rather than actually running on the ground, he is possibly flying very close, perhaps only an inch or so above, terra firma.

Jon first uses both invisibility (cloaking) and teleportation in #26. He can transport himself from one place to another, simply by concentrating, and take someone with him by holding their hand (as seen an issue later in "Stoopid!"). He seems to use this ability rarely--possibly because it has a fairly short range, possibly mere yards; still, it's useful for dramatic effect, and when a fast exit or escape is needed that's less destructive than breaking a door, ceiling, or wall.

Jon is weak against electric current and toxic lead, and can be bested by supernatural forces such as demons and dark magic.