"Mike Combs" wrote in message
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"Bill Steele" wrote in message
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*My* nitpick is that if Krypton posesses the knowledge of many galaxies
it means interstellar travel is commonplace to them. Jor-El even says
"Neither I nor my wife will leave Krypton." So there had to be zillions
of Kryptonians all over the universe, so Kal-El isn't exactly the "last
son of Krypton." And you'd think Earth would be a real popular vacation
spot.

The way they explained it in the comic books was the Krypton easily had
the technology for space travel, but it was legally suppressed. Seems
there had been a problem in the past with some would-be despots exiling
political rivals into space. So what Jor-El was doing was highly illegal.


Post Crisis Krypton is 50 light years away from Earth, and the reason
Kryptonians didn't leave the planet is that in earlier times they were
afraid of contamination by foreign ideas and created a device to ensure they
would remain 'pure'- the Eradicator. The Eradicator modified all
Kryptonians genetically and the planet itself. Any alien who came to
Krypton would die. Any Kryptonian who left Krypton would die. One of the
things Jor-El discovered in his research was what the Eradicator had done
and how to treat himself so his son wouldn't inherit that trait.

And, 'cause I'm a geek... (and 'cause 'Man of Steel' limited series and
'World of Kypton' limited series are my bibles... The Eradicator stuff came
later in the regular comics)


Once upon a time Krypton was verdant and vastly technologically advanced.
They maintained their bodes by using clones (kept in suspended animation-
meat, not people) for replacement. A kryptonian mother had some /ideas/
about a proper wife for her son, and had one of her clones brought out of
suspended animation and allowed to develop a mind and a personality and was
presented as an ordinary Kryptonian girl. Until that was done (in secret)
no Kryptonian had even the idea that it was remotely possible under any
circumstances for the spare parts repositories to actually become people.

This was discovered and publicized and the **** hit the fan. Most
Kryptonians considered it a unique case and wanted to maintain the statues
quo. A small group called 'Black Zero' considered all of Kryptonian society
to be cannibalistic and that all Krypton should be punished for its
horrendous sins. A civil war started. 1000 years later it finally ended.
By that time Krypton was a barren desert. The last battle of the war was
fought againt the very man who had started it (the son, who had been thought
to have died in the first battle) and who had been building a weapon that
would destroy the planet. He was killed, and the weapon destroyed.

By this time more than just the planet had been sterilized- the Kryptonians
themselves now had sterile souls. They lived their lives in their life
support suits that kept them healthy and was a barrier to the world, and
lived in vast towers that kept them seperate from each other. They didn't
even need to meet to reproduce- cell samples were taken and grown in
artifical wombs. They had the power to make Krypton green again, but they
didn't bother because they didn't care.

Jor-El was very much a throwback. He was emotional and vibrant and curious,
and he was the only Kryptonian like that. His curiosity led him to
investigate and discover many things that had been forgotten in the archives
(the civil war, the weapon destroyed at the end, and the Eradicator, among
other things). Hos emotionalism also led him to fall in love with the woman
who was chosen to be the mother of his child. Unfortunately part of the
reason he discovered these things was in the course of investigating a
mysterious radiation sickness that was killing millions. The weapon hadn't
been destroyed. It may not even have been damaged. It's function was to
transmute Krypton's core into a radioactive element that when built to
critical mass would annhilate the planet. He had his son's birthing matrix
attached to an experimental rocket model he'd built and sent to a planet he
thought would be best for him. There wasn't time for anything else once he
discovered what was happening and any other Kryptonian leaving the planet
would have been killed by the Eradicator effect anyway.

The Eradicator itself had been removed from the planet hundreds of thousands
of years before. (not by a Kryptonian obviously, but by the alien missionary
who had been the initial target of the Eradicator, and whose preaching had
been the motivation for its creation. Ironically the Eradicator didn't
work on him) Eventually Superman gains possession of the Eradicator and
brings it to Earth, when in it's attempts to preserve Krypton by recreating
the lost planet on Earth it is what actually creates Superman's Fortress of
Solitude. (of course it has to be slapped down when it tries to turn humans
into Kryptonians and Earth into another Krypton.

All the Kryptonian technology Superman has traces its origin to the
Eradicator. It created the Fortress, it brought the artifacts from Krypton
through the Phantom Zone to the Fortress to begin with, and it created the
robots that maintain the Fortress.

You'll notice there's a /slight/ problem regarding the other Kryptonians who
are a hallowed part of the mythos- they can't exist.

Yeah...
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When Superman 'died' the government tried to clone him. The early cloning
technology had created the Bizarros, but the new stuff (predicated on
modifying human DNA to resemble Kryptonian DNA since Kryptonian DNA couldn't
be cloned directly) created 'Superboy'.

Foolishly, the writers have not used this concept to explain and justify the
existance of other 'Kryptonians'. It could be used for a Supergirl, Beppo
the super-monkey, and even Streaky the super-cat. *Anything*.

Oh well...