Krypton (planet)
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This article is about Krypton, the fictional planet which was the birthplace of the comic book superhero Superman. For other meanings of Krypton, see Krypton (disambiguation).
Krypton is a fictional planet. In comic books, it is the birthplace of the superhero Superman.
Named after the chemical element Krypton, the planet was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for the syndicated daily newspaper strip in 1939 and later brought into the comic books. Krypton no longer exists in the DC Comics universe, as it exploded as a result of highly unstable geological conditions. The entire civilization and race of Krypton perished in the explosion, except for one sole survivor: the baby Kal-El, who was placed in an escape rocket by his father Jor-El and sent to the planet Earth. Kal-El grew up to become Superman. In some versions of the mythos, a few additional survivors, such as Krypto, Supergirl and the criminal inhabitants of the Phantom Zone, were also survivors of the cataclysm.
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Versions
There have been four versions of Krypton so far in the history of Superman. The first and second versions, appearing in the Golden Age and Silver Age comics, developed gradually over the course of nearly fifty years of Superman adventures in comic books, radio, television, and prose stories, from Superman's debut in 1938 until his origin revision in 1986.
Golden Age Krypton
Originally, Krypton was an idyllic world in another part of the universe, which had given birth to a race of "supermen". The first fictional portrayals of Krypton depicted all inhabitants of the planet as having super powers similar to what Superman originally had in the 1940s. In fact, the first telling of Superman's origin shows the scientist "Jor-L" (eventually renamed "Jor-El") racing through the streets of Krypton at super-speed, and making a gigantic leap through the air to reach the balcony of his home. Over time, the status of the inhabitants of Krypton was changed, largely to answer the question of why the entire population perished when the planet exploded, if they could have used their super powers to simply fly away and find a new world to live.
As a means of explaining this, it was soon established by the early 1950s that Kryptonians (as the inhabitants of Krypton were known) were powerless on their own planet, and would only gain superpowers under a lower gravity environment (versus Krypton's heavy gravity). In the early 1960s, added to this was the additional need to be exposed to the rays of a yellow sun (versus Krypton's red sun) to gain superpowers, with the yellow sun aspect soon gaining the much greater emphasis. With the rise of DC's Multiverse in 1960s stories, it was also revealed that the earlier, Golden Age version of Krypton (where all Kryptonians had superpowers while on Krypton) was in the Earth-Two universe, while the more familiar Silver Age version of Krypton (with non-superpowered Kryptonians) existed in the Earth-One universe.
As revealed in various 1970s stories that took place on Earth-Two, the sole survivors of this version of Krypton were Superman and his cousin, Power Girl.
Silver Age Krypton
The Silver Age Krypton, as firmly established by the late 1950s, was depicted as a super-advanced paradise where science ruled above all. Through the use of science, Kryptonians had freed themselves from all worries, cares, chores, and wars. Robots and computers were used for everything on Krypton, even for determining what career paths the young boys and girls of Krypton would take as they grew up. One Superman story from the 1950s that asked the question, "What if Krypton had not exploded?", depicted life in a setting that epitomized the cliche of the "future" as seen in science fiction stories of the time. Superman also traveled in time to Krypton's past before it exploded in the 1960 story "Superman's Return to Krypton," where he fell in love with a Kryptonian actress named Lyla Lerrol. In the 1980s, writer Alan Moore also gave a somewhat darker glimpse into the world of Krypton in his story "For The Man Who Has Everything".
There were two major cities on Krypton: Kandor and Kryptonopolis. The city of Kandor was the capital of Krypton, but when it was shrunk by the evil android Brainiac and taken away, Kryptonopolis became the capital.
There were many strange animals and plants on Krypton, including such incredible species as a giant mole that could eat through metal. Many of these beasts lived in a wild area of the planet called the "Scarlet Jungle." Such landmarks as a "Gold Volcano" and the "Jewel Mountains" were a few sources of the various forms of Kryptonite, created in the planet's explosion.
Krypton had two moons, but one of them was accidentally destroyed by the Kryptonian scientist Jax-Ur when he was experimenting with space travel. The disaster killed millions of inhabitants of the moon, and because of this Jax-Ur became the first criminal to be banished to the Phantom Zone, which had been discovered by Jor-El. This disaster also prompted the Science Council of Krypton to ban space flight completely, providing another explanation of why Krypton's civilization perished with the planet.
Krypton exploded due to a build-up of internal pressures at its core. The explosion transformed most of the matter which made up the planet into various sorts of radioactive Kryptonite, which would have various (generally adverse) effects on the few survivors of Krypton in the future years.
When the planet exploded, one entire city of Krypton survived the cataclysm. This city, named Argo City, drifted through space on an asteroid-sized fragment of Krypton, which had been transformed into Kryptonite by the explosion. The super-advanced technology of its Kryptonian inhabitants gave the denizens of Argo City the ability to construct a life-sustaining dome that allowed them to survive for several years, in addition to building a lead shield that protected their city from the Kryptonite radiation of their asteroid. However, the protective shield was destroyed in a meteor storm, exposing the inhabitants to the deadly radiation. One sole survivor of Argo City, Kara Zor-El, was sent to Earth by her scientist father to live with her cousin Kal-El, who had become known as Superman. Kara adjusted to her new life on Earth and became known as Supergirl.
In his first encounter with Brainiac, Superman discovered the city of Kandor preserved in a bottle. He rescued it and took it to Earth with him, vowing to someday discover a way to return the city to normal size. In the early 1980s Kandor was enlarged, and its inhabitants left Earth to settle on a new planet which was named New Krypton.
The race of Krypton was believed by some to be linked to the alien world of Daxam, a planet whose inhabitants also had powers and abilities similar to Superman's when they were exposed to the radiation of a yellow sun. However, the Daxamites, as they were known, were highly susceptible to lead poisoning, which affected them in a manner similar to Kryptonite when they came into contact with lead. One Daxamite, Mon-El, was a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 30th century of the DC Universe. While suspected, a direct link between the inhabitants of Daxam and Krypton was never proved.
Man of Steel Krypton
Much of the history of Krypton was rewritten beginning with The Man of Steel miniseries in 1986 by John Byrne, following the Crisis on Infinite Earths-driven rewriting of the DC Universe as a whole. This rebooted version of Krypton's history is summarized as follows:
Krypton was approximately the size of Earth though it orbited a red sun which may be a red giant star. Located fifty light-years from Earth, Krypton's planetary government maintained an isolationist stance forbidding space travel until its destruction.
Over 100,000 years ago Krypton had already developed scientific advancements far beyond those of present-day Earth. Kryptonians had conquered disease, learned to retard the aging process and perfected cloning, making their population virtually immortal. They kept vast banks of non-sentient clones of themselves to replace body parts in the case of injury or accidents. However, political strife resulting from the debate as to whether clones should have rights (sparked by the presence of an alien missionary) led to what became known as the Clone Wars, during which several superweapons were developed and used, among them the devices which became known as the Eradicator and the Destroyer. Although the Eradicator's effects (altering the DNA of all Kryptonian lifeforms so that they would instantly die upon leaving the planet) were felt immediately, the Destroyer's effects were possibly more significant: by the time the Kryptonian government conceded defeat and abolished the clone banks, a terrorist faction known as Black Zero had detonated the Destroyer at the planet's core. This was the eventual cause of the planet's destruction, hundreds of millenia later.
In direct contrast to the idyllic and sensual society that had existed prior to the Clone Wars, a sterile and spiritually dead civilization emerged. The population became isolated from one another with personal contact shunned. Procreation became a matter of selecting compatible genetic material which would then be placed within an artificial womb called a "birthing matrix". Any attempt to contact other worlds was forbidden. It was into this world that the young scientist Jor-El was born. He discovered that the planet's core was unstable, transforming into a dangerously radioactive substance which killed Kryptonians and was called the "Green Plague." Due to this transformation the planet itself was going to explode. Jor-El tampered with the birthing matrix of his unborn son Kal-El, removing the Eradicator's planetary binding and attaching a prototype interstellar propulsion system, with which he sent him from Krypton to Earth, from which Kal-El would then be decanted, after having been birthed on arrival.
Although a few fragments of Kryptonian technology survived the destruction of the planet, no other members of the Kryptonian race were known to have survived the planet's destruction in this version of Krypton's history. The supervillain Doomsday is known to be of Kryptonian origin, though he was apparently created hundreds of thousands of years before the rise of Krypton's civilization.
It was also soon established that Krypton still existed as a gaseous planet similar to Saturn, which formed because the remaining material was still of a mass sufficient to exert a gravitational force, thus aggregating to form a "planet".
An artificial variant of the pre-Crisis Krypton was created in the Phantom Zone by Brainiac 13, a descendant of the original Brainiac who had traveled back in time to the present. It was stated to have been based on Jor-El's favorite Kryptonian historical period.
Birthright Krypton
In the 2004 comic miniseries Superman: Birthright, a new retelling of Superman's origin and early years, Mark Waid depicted a Krypton with elements of the pre- and post-Crisis versions of Krypton, but closer to the pre-Crisis version. It was later implied that the time-bending adventure in Superman (volume 2) #200 had rewritten history so this was now the "official" version, and later stories have held to Birthright as being the official current version of Superman's origin.
See Also
External Links
- Supermanica: Krypton (http://supermanica.info/wiki/index.php/Krypton) Supermanica entry on the Pre-Crisis Kryptonpt:Krypton