>>149489181Alan is a horrible dad who plays favorites.
Their entire relationship is summed up in one panel in early Infinity Inc where, after their team beats Ultra Humanite, he tells Jade he would be proud if she were his daughter while ignoring Obsidian despite him standing right next to her. And in general it took him until COIE (which was a few months in universe) to finally relent and admit they probably were his kids.
And writers continued that trend. In Heart of Darkness where both of them were being controlled by the Starheart he basically called Obsidian a lost cause and didn’t really care that he was being controlled and only tried to stop/bargain the Starheart for Jade.
Robinson was originally going to use that for the Darkness Falls storyline. It's why in the first issue Robinson had Alan literally just not know what Obsidian was up to for the past few months, which was something Ian was going to use to manipulate him with, that his dad just didn't care enough about him to drop in despite him openly being a depressed mess in JLA. Whereas Johns changed it to a less-shitty-of-Alan "Todd is more mad that Alan just didn't know Todd existed" and then changed it AGAIN when he realized that made no sense and implied in Princes of Darkness that Alan could've followed or found their mom cause he's GL but he didn't.