Jor-El

Jor-El is a fictional character that appeared in the Superman comics published by DC Comics. He is the biological father of Superman, and the husband of Lara (nee Lara Lor-Van).

Jor-El was a highly respected scientist on the planet Krypton before its destruction...a fate which he foresaw, but was unable to convince his colleagues of in time to save their race. Jor-El was, however, able to save his infant son Kal-El, sending him in a homemade rocket ship to the planet Earth just moments before Krypton's destruction.

After constructing his Fortress of Solitude, Superman honored his deceased biological parents with a statue of Jor-El and Lara holding up a globe of Krypton.

History

Jor-El was first referred to in Action Comics #1 in 1938, but made his first full-fledged appearance in the Superman newspaper comic strip in 1939, where his name was spelled as "Jor-L"; his name first appeared as being spelled "Jor-El" in a 1942 Superman novel.

A 1948 retelling of Superman's origin story first delved into detail about Jor-El, though his formal and more familiar Silver Age aspects were firmly established starting in the late 1950s and over the course of the next several decades, with a definitive summarization in the 1979 miniseries The World of Krypton (not to be confused with the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths late 1980s comic special of the same name).

As it was summarized in this miniseries (and in various other Silver Age stories), Jor-El was Krypton's leading scientific genius, having been the inventor of, among things, the "Jor-El" (a hovercar) and the discoverer of the Phantom Zone (and the inventor of the Phantom Zone projector). He lived in Krypton's major city of Kryptonopolis.

Jor-El had a brother that lived in Argo City named Zor-El, who eventually became the father of Kara Zor-El, alias Supergirl.

Jor-El eventually met and married Lara Lor-Van, an astronaut in Krypton's fledgling space program (which was soon permanently grounded after Jax-Ur blew up one of Krypton's inhabited moons), and the two soon had an infant son, Kal-El.

When Krypton began experiencing a series of earthquakes, Jor-El investigated, and soon discovered that Krypton's core was greatly unstable, and would eventually explode, taking the entire planet and its populace with it. Jor-El tried to convince the members of Krypton's ruling body, the Science Council, of this impending disaster, and urged re-establishing Krypton's space program so giant spacecrafts could be built to carry the populace to another habitable world. However, the Council was dismissive of Jor-El's findings, and refused to comply with his plan.

Frustrated, Jor-El continued his work on space travel on his own, hoping to build a spacecraft to save his own family; this included launching several smaller test rockets (one of which included the El family dog, Krypto). However, as time ran short, Jor-El soon found that he would only have enough time to build a spacecraft to save his son Kal-El. Jor-El decided to aim for sending Kal to Earth, realizing he would gain superpowers under Earth's yellow sun and lower gravity. As Krypton finally went through its final destructive stages, Jor-El and Lara placed their son in a rocket, and launched him toward Earth, before perishing along with nearly the rest of the planet's population.

After the 1985-1986 miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths and John Byrne's 1986 miniseries The Man of Steel rewrote Superman's origins, details about Jor-El's background and character were changed. Under Byrne's version, Jor-El inhabited a cold, emotionally sterile Krypton where even bodily contact was forbidden. Jor-El was considered a "throwback" for actually expressing emotions toward his wife Lara, and for his favoring the less sterilized days of past Kryptonian eras. Another change in this version was Jor-El genetically altering his son's fetus (gestating in a "birthing matrix") to allow him to leave Krypton (in this version of the mythos, Kryptonians were genetically "bonded" to the planet itself, not allowing them to leave), and merely attaching a rocket engine to the matrix instead of constructing a ship wholesale.

In the 2004 Superman miniseries Superman: Birthright, Jor-El, along with Krypton and Lara, was more-or-less reverted back to his Silver Age versions, though with updated touches (such as Lara contributing equally to the effort of sending Kal-El to Earth).

In other media

Jor-El has appeared (usually briefly) in various screen adaptations of the Superman story.

• Jor-El was portrayed by Nelson Leigh in the 1948 Superman movie serial.
• Marlon Brando played Jor-El in the 1978 Superman movie.
• Jor-El was played by George Lazenby in the late 1980s Superboy television series.
• Christopher McDonald played Jor-El in the 1990s Superman: The Animated Series
• Terence Stamp played Jor-El in the 2000s television series Smallville.

Media portrayals of Jor-El tend to vary greatly in how he's presented, often diverging from the original source material.

For example, in the first Superman movie, Jor-El is shown as wearing the Superman "S"-shield symbol, which in the comics was a creation of Ma and Pa Kent for Superman's costume.

As another example, in the Smallville television series, Clark Kent learns that he was sent to Earth by Jor-El not to be saved from the destruction of Krypton, but instead to conquer Earth---a great divergence from any other version of Jor-El, who is usually shown as having benevolent reasons for sending Kal-El to Earth.

In the Elliot S. Maggin text novel Superman: Last Son of Krypton, Jor-El is shown as having contacted a scientist on Earth (Albert Einstein, in this story) to arrange for him to find a suitable Earth family to find Kal-El's rocket and adopt him.

External links

• Supermanica bio on the pre-Crisis Jor-El (http://supermanica.info/wiki/index.php/Jor-El)
• DC Comics official website (http://www.dccomics.com)