When did he get it on his chest? I'm having a hard time following the continuity of it. I mean, near the end of the Supergirl line she's surprised to see it, but he has it on him when he engages Superboy... which is well before that.

It's probably a scar from his original tattered wardrobe. He was practically adopted into the family.

It tended to vanish and reappear at will, though it seemed to take a conscious effort to hide it. When his concentration was disrupted, I'm pretty sure it came back against his will.

Why would it scar backwards?

Doesn't H'el has the power to change into any form? He can hide a scar if he wanted...

Which might be why it vanishes from time to time... but that still doesn't explain where it came from. If the guy seeing him fall out of a spaceship with bloody hands and the backwards S carved into his chest was him just coming to Earth, then we can assume he did it to himself on the way.

If the S stands for Hope is it possible that the backwards S stands for Despair? That he carved it into himself after giving up all hope of saving Krypton before he came up with the plan we see him go with in the series?

He is Superboy Prime from the original universe. He even survived Flashpoint, all it did was flip his S.

or

He carved the symbol in a Mirror, and forgot how mirrors work.

I don't know how it came about in canon but it was put there originally because H'el was meant to be the New 52 Bizarro.

The reason why it vanished was because he was using his powers to hide it from Supergirl.

@guttridgeb: He wasn't though. They wanted one, but they made him his own character.

Point being, he obviously carved it into himself. His fingers were bloodied when he emerged from his ship. But why? Why carve the crest of your own adopted house into your chest backwards? H'el is smart, he'd realize it was backwards. I'm going to go with backwards meaning Despair until I hear something better.

He was the last Kryptonian, in his mind, the fact he was about to crash on an alien world without hope of saving his people somehow. Despair seems to fit into that for me. It was only afterwards that he found other survivors...

@raktus: I know they made him his own character, I was saying that was why it was there originally.

@guttridgeb: In a quote from Lobdell:

"And for everyone who wonders about the "S" on his chest? It is so far removed from Bizarro or Prime or anyone else that you can relax: By the time this story is over, you'll see that H'el and Bizarro can exist in the same world."

So it really has nothing to do with Bizarro anymore.

@raktus: That's why I said originally. Both times.

@guttridgeb: And I'm saying it has nothing to do with that.