My apologies for diving into the Superman Mythos again so soon but with all the talk of the Man of Steel sequel with its too-horrible-to-contemplate Wonder Woman rumor, it got me thinking about Superman's home turf. Krypton is a fascinating place considering that everything that we've learnt about it came after it exploded. It was a fantasy land to Superman, a perfect place that he could never live in. Yet it dwelt on his mind constantly and its remnants were deadly to him and its relics continually menaced him. Its survivors ranged from the noblest to the vilest, family, friends and foes of the Man of Steel. But reading the stories growing up, there are several questions to be asked:
- How long did JOR-EL know about the destruction of Krypton? He was performing tests and experiments and had several contingencies and plans about evacuating the planet, despite its government ignoring his warnings. And he had a son during this time. Was it months or years that he knew?
- I read that Krypton had abandoned its space program after JAX-UR destroyed an inhabited moon but it adds to the question of time. Could everything have been dismantled and destructured so quickly that a space exodus was impossible? After all, those people on the moon got there through space travel. LARA was an astronaut or training to be one. How can an entire branch of science and technology be erased from an advanced civilization in such a short period of time? Also there was Adventure Comics #333 (Ju'65) [a Legion story, not a Superman story, true but it was still edited by Mort Weisinger] where Krypton tried to establish a colony on Earth thousands of years ago. It's a true conundrum.
- And if space travel was banned, why did no one notice Jor-El's test flights including the last one where KRYPTO was lost in space?
- Did Krypton have no contact with other worlds? Were they that xenophobic after the Vrang Invasion?
- When Lar Gand, the future MON-EL arrived on Krypton, did the authorities know about him? Did Jor-El and Lara have to hide him? Why didn't they try to contact Daxam for help? And why didn't the lead on Krypton affect him?
- Why didn't Jor release the PHANTOM ZONE PRISONERS on Krypton before it exploded and then use the Zone to save its citizens? He had already launched a Phantom Zone Projector into space. He could have sent instructions along to free the survivors. Even if he sent people there against their will, I'm sure that they wouldn't have minded after they saw the planet explode! In fact, he could have given a projector to Mon-El to free them on Daxam!
- Was the general population of Krypton that ignorant of their fate? I find it hard to believe that there were no cataclysmic upheavals prior to its destruction. Did life go on as normal until that fatal day?
- The joke has always been that it seemed that Jor-El and Lara were the only two people who died when Krypton exploded but you have to admit that there were a large number of survivors, considering that the vast majority ignored Jor's warning.
- Did Jor-El really know that his son would gain such astounding and nearly limitless power on Earth? Did other scientists know? Then why wouldn't ANY Kryptonian NOT want to go to Earth?
- How accurate are Superman's memories of Krypton? He was barely a toddler when he left and even with his super-memory, could he be remembering an idealized version of his home planet?
- Finally, Superman, JIMMY OLSEN, LOIS LANE and even LEX LUTHOR have travelled to Krypton's past. Could they have potentially run into each other?
The Silver Age gave Krypton a history and Superman a lineage that could truly be mourned. It showed us Jor-El and Lara as people, not statues. And it opened up the comics to new storylines, characters and situations, especially SUPERGIRL, KANDOR and the PHANTOM ZONE.
It was a nice place to visit but only if you know when to leave!
Looking forward to your Kryptonian Comments!
Replies
I'm not as up on Superman as you are, but I can speculate. On the space program I'd say that it's hard to create technology, it's easy to loose it. Or loose the capacity to use it. When they junked the space program and our future back in the 1970's they stopped making Saturn 5 rockets, to make those rockets and the engines required specialized metalworking techniques (The fuel mixing grate required new ways of brazing metal) that were tossed away with the workers. I doubt that the US could make a Saturn 5 rocket now without five years work just to train everyone. Also when something like a space program is abandoned you get a lot drift away and skill atrophy. Maybe you still had a few people on Krypton who could pilot a ship, but they were probably short range shuttles.
I think that Krypton was such a paradise that no one really wanted to leave. It was a peaceful place, no real crime, very stable society with technology that seemed to be able to solve problems as they arose. Looking at that map I wouldn't want to leave if I ever got there. That might have been part of the problem, everything had been good for so long the government just decided that everything always would be good. Societies tend to like 'always'. "We've always been the best so we'll always be the best," or "We've always been safe before so we'll always be safe in the future." Very few societies see their own end coming. It's usually only a very few that can see danger coming. Zor-El was one and he wasn't listened to because they didn't want to listen. No one worried about Pompeii after all. These people had weather control, they probably felt that they were the masters of their planet. Jor-El might have been regarded as a crackpot and so if anyone noticed him testing ships they would have put it down to his hobby or something.
I don't know about the Phantom Zone. Maybe a whole planet was just too big?
I'd say that Jor-El did know that his son would become powerful, but not just how powerful. As to memories of Krypton I don't know. Kryptonian minds may just work differently. Time travel is a bit different, but I remember an early Dr. Who where the Dr. and Vicky traveled to Rome and Ian and Barbara traveled to Rome and neither ran into each other. Krypton was a big planet after all.
First let me say that seeing the Map of Krypton takes me back. At one time I had the issue it appeared in, though I don't know which one it was.
How long did JOR-EL know about the destruction of Krypton? He was performing tests and experiments and had several contingencies and plans about evacuating the planet, despite its government ignoring his warnings. And he had a son during this time. Was it months or years that he knew?
The scenes I remember showed Jor-El working on his theories while baby Kal-El was nearby. I don't remember any stories showing his working on this before Kal was born.
I read that Krypton had abandoned its space program after JAX-UR destroyed an inhabited moon but it adds to the question of time. Could everything have been dismantled and destructured so quickly that a space exodus was impossible? After all, those people on the moon got there through space travel. LARA was an astronaut or training to be one. How can an entire branch of science and technology be erased from an advanced civilization in such a short period of time? Also there was Adventure Comics #333 (Ju'65) [a Legion story, not a Superman story, true but it was still edited by Mort Weisinger] where Krypton tried to establish a colony on Earth thousands of years ago. It's a true conundrum.
If they truly had thousands of years of space travel it's hard to believe that one incident would make them drop it completely. I don't remember Lara training to be an astronaut. Wasn't she a stereo-typical housewife?
Why didn't Jor release the PHANTOM ZONE PRISONERS on Krypton before it exploded and then use the Zone to save its citizens? He had already launched a Phantom Zone Projector into space. He could have sent instructions along to free the survivors. Even if he sent people there against their will, I'm sure that they wouldn't have minded after they saw the planet explode! In fact, he could have given a projector to Mon-El to free them on Daxam!
Since we have a LOT of divergent opinions on Earth it's hard to believe that nobody else of Krypton agreed with Jor-El. If they came to him maybe he could have sent them to the Zone. If he just started wandering the streets zapping people he probably would have been sent there himself.
Did Jor-El really know that his son would gain such astounding and nearly limitless power on Earth? Did other scientists know? Then why wouldn't ANY Kryptonian NOT want to go to Earth?
I seem to recall several instances of Jor-El commenting that Kal would develop super-powers on Earth. If this was generally known I would think some of the bad guys would have wanted to go there and take over.
How accurate are Superman's memories of Krypton? He was barely a toddler when he left and even with his super-memory, could he be remembering an idealized version of his home planet?
Yeah, super-memory would only work well with things that were well-understood. On Krypton Kal wasn't super yet so his recall of his infancy shouldn't have been any better than yours or mine.
The Silver Age gave Krypton a history and Superman a lineage that could truly be mourned. It showed us Jor-El and Lara as people, not statues. And it opened up the comics to new storylines, characters and situations, especially SUPERGIRL, KANDOR and the PHANTOM ZONE.
I agree that these stories went a long way towards humanizing Jor-El and Lara.
A lot more details were cleared up after Weisinger left as editor, because E. Nelson Bridwell tried to impose a consistent continuity on the Krypton stories--and ignore the ones that didn't fit. There were letters to the editor about things like Jimmy and others running into each other on Krypton--which is why Bridwell declared those stories apocryphal if they didn't add anything of value to the Superman mythology.
There was a story about Jor-El's Golden Folly, where he made a rocketship from gold (which was a cheap metal on Krypton) and Lara was an astronaut on board that ship.
I guess a major hurdle was breaking free of Krypton's intense gravity.
It seems like a lot of Jor-El's discoveries resulted from his desire to find a way to get off Krypton. I would guess the Phantom Zone was one such possibility.
Kal-El would have had a perfect memory of Krypton except that his exposure to Kryptonite had erased some of his memories. As Superboy, he developed a machine to help him better remember things from Krypton. He also discovered mind tapes that recorded a lot of detail about Krypton. No doubt, once Superman rescued Kandor, he learned more about his home planet. And when Supergirl arrived on Earth, she would have had additional information.
Superman could also view the past by looking at light leaving Krypton, which took many light years to arrive on Earth--or wherever. I mean, given that Superman could presumably warp through space, he could do this for any period of time.
And, of course, Superman traveled to Krypton's past a few times.
The people of Krypton seem to have become inured to the ground-quakes on their planet. Maybe these had been frequent for centuries. So, just like people who live in areas of the world where there are numerous earthquakes, they simply accepted them.
I thnk of the cities on Krypton as city-states. A lot of Greek filters into the Krypton mythology, so if you think of it being like Ancient Greece (around 1000 B.C.), where city-states were divided by geography, then the extreme distances between city-states on Krypton meant that each governed itself. There might have been a loose alliance of governments, but maybe not enough to mount a group effort.
The Science Council--while it had political power--seems outside of state government. Maybe it was more like the Vatican. To gain privilege, scientists had to be part of the Science Council--and if they ran afoul of the Council's dictates, they could effectively be excommunicated.
Jor-El did a lot of investigations of Earth, but maybe he never communicated these results to scientists other than his brother, for fear of censure from the Science Council. Jor-El must have known something about warping through space--since this seems the only way that Kal-El's rocket could have arrived on Earth--and Jor must have been able to view Earth via some technology that could warp through space, as well. I would guess that things like the Phantom Zone were discovered when he was developing this technology.
Of course, all of these stories were written purely for entertainment, without much regard for science or continuity. It's only later that Bridwell and other fans had to make sense of all this and impose logic on these stories where none existed originally.
The original map came from Superman Annual #1, IIRC.
The second one came later, though I do remember that they added the island of "a highly developed black race" which I don't remember ever being shown in an actual story.
Great story about the Saturn 5 project, Mark. That never occurred to me.
Yes, Krypton is/was a big place but everyone who went there always stayed near Jor-El!
BTW, was it ever established if Supergirl was born on Krypton or was she born on Argo City after it was flung off? Being raised in a city floating through space is a lot different than being raised on a planet.
And why would Krypton abandon its planetary defenses? When Jor-El was designing massive rockets, BRAINIAC stole Kandor! More than enough reason to "keep watching the skies!"
The other map is from SUPERMAN 239/G-84 (June-July ’71), created by E. Nelson Bridwell and Sal Amendola.
Supergirl was born on Argo City. She was many years younger than Superman--so no way she was even conceived on Krypton, Einsteinian physics not withstanding. Obviously, there's no reason why time has to sync up, but it always does in the conventional DC world.
Did Krypton abandon its defenses?
Prior to Brainiac, I don't remember any stories of Krypton being attacked by space invaders. They always seem to have been attacked by their own.
In pre-Crisis continuity Krypton had been invaded and conquered by the Vrangs.
"Jor-El's Golden Folly" in Superman #233, the first Julie Schwartz issue, represented Lara as an astronaut. It was the first instalment of the "Fabulous World of Krypton" series.
Some Bronze Age stories depicted Superboy as using a ray to stimulate his memories of life on Krypton. The explanation was exposure to kryptonite had left gaps in his memory, making the ray necessary. The element might go back to the Silver Age; I don't know when it was first introduced.
(edited)
Oh right, that was back when Valor led the people to rebel against their alien conquerors. But the Kryptonians were more or less like the Jewish people rebelling against Pharaoh--they weren't technologically advanced.
Maybe Krypton was declared off limits, by the Guardians. The planet was in the same space sector as Tomar Re.
My recollection is "The Phantom Superboy" from Adventure Comics #283 seems to presuppose that there was only one Phantom Zone projector, the one sent into space in the cache of forbidden weapons. That wasn't lore later, though. In the 70s the Kandorians were represented as still using the Zone.
My recollection is in "The Untold Story of Argo City!" in Action Comics #309 Zor-El rejects the idea of using the Phantom Zone to escape Argo City's coming destruction because it would mean living among criminals.
The important question about the Phantom Zone is whether the Kryptonians sent voyeurs there.
On the second map, the caption "Vathlo Island - home of highly developed black race" is a little problematic in hindsight. A shame they felt they had to say they were "highly developed" when they didn't use that terminology for the rest of the Kryptonians.
...Well , it was making up for the fact that the mores/customs of the 40s-through-60s allowed for no black characters at all (When Ebony/Steamboat-style characters basically began to pass from acceptability as the Forties wore on , they were replaced by no black characters at all
, at that time .) , um , overcomphesating ? Making sure they were presenting " a positive image " , as the saying goeth ???
Richard Willis said:
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