What was krypton like

Or at least a planet very much like it? Since the very earliest Superman comic strips, it has been depicted as a rocky planet similar to Earth, but much older. In the film Man of Steel , it was said to be about 8. There are three classes of stars which are red in colour: red dwarfs , red giants and red super giants. The radiation given off by Krypton's red sun was too weak for Kryptonians to process.

Yet, when Superman lands on Earth and into the light of our younger star, he is able to take the radiation from our yellow sun and metabolize it—the way a green plant converts light from the sun into energy through a process called Photosynthesis. This extra boost from the sun gives Superman the ability for flight, super strength and invincibility. Superman is invincible!

But, there is a BIG exception to that statement. This alien element is so well-known and engrained into pop-culture, that Microsoft Word recognizes it and can auto-correct to it for you! The element comes in many forms, but the most iconic is as a glowing, green rock.

It could be that Kryptonite affects Superman by interfering with his cells and their ability to metabolize solar radiation. Thus, it makes him weaker due to the inability of his cells to process the radiation necessary to give him his superpowers!

Writers want instant effects to keep the reader interested and intrigued! Green Kryptonite makes Superman weak and can even kill him.

In the meantime, though it had for now survived the war, Krypton was scarred deeply by it. The formerly lush garden world was burned and blasted, left mostly a lifeless desert. In direct contrast to the society that had existed prior to the Clone Wars, a sterile, emotionally dead civilization emerged.

The population became isolated from one another, living in widely separated technological citadels and shunning all personal contact. Procreation became a matter of selecting compatible genetic material which would then be placed within an artificial womb called a "birthing matrix. It was into this world that the young scientist Jor-El was born. By his adult years, the mysterious "Green Plague" was killing Kryptonians by the hundreds, and upon researching the matter, Jor-El discovered that the cause was growing radiation produced by Krypton's increasingly unstable core.

Due to this process, the planet itself was going to explode. Unable to convince his associates to abandon tradition and consider escape, Jor-El took the birthing matrix of his unborn son Kal-El , removed the Eradicator 's planetary binding, and attached a prototype interstellar propulsion system to the vessel.

Just as the planet began to shake apart, he launched the matrix towards Earth , where it would open and give birth to the infant upon landing The post- Crisis Superman therefore was technically "born" on Earth. A central theme of this version of the Superman mythos was that the character was to remain the last surviving remnant of Krypton. Thus, Silver Age elements such as Supergirl , Krypto , and Kandor had never existed in this version though post- Crisis versions of these elements were eventually reintroduced.

The supervillain Doomsday was revealed in the s as a being genetically engineered by Bertron, an alien scientist, on an ancient Krypton; this happened hundreds of thousands of years before the rise of Krypton's civilization this fact explains how Kryptonians obtained their advanced technology.

In the newer continuity, Superman also only became aware of his alien heritage sometime after his debut as a superhero , when a holographic program encoded into the craft which brought him to Earth uploaded the information into his brain. In a late s storyline, Superman traveled to the former site of Krypton to discover that the planet was slowly reforming from the vast sphere of debris remaining.

However, it would take millions of years before the planet would be solid again. This sphere of debris had been turned to Kryptonite by the planet's destruction, and the radiation causes Superman to have a hallucination concerning an alternate scenario in which the entire population of Krypton comes to Earth. In the s comic series Starman , Jack Knight became lost in time and space, landed on Krypton several years before its destruction, and met Jor-El as a young man.

The story boldly implies that it was this early meeting with a Terran that led Jor-El to study other worlds, and eventually choose Earth as the target for his son's spacecraft. In an early s storyline, an artificial version of the pre- Crisis Krypton was created in the Phantom Zone by Brainiac , 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. In the miniseries Superman: Birthright , a new retelling of Superman 's origin and early years, Mark Waid depicted a Krypton, officially stated as being located in the Andromeda Galaxy 6 million light years away, with elements of various versions of the planet, but closer to the pre- Crisis version.

It was later implied that the time-bending adventure in Superman v2, and Infinite Crisis 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.

Waid also made use of Superman 's "S"-shield in his version of Krypton. While in previous comic versions of the mythos, it was assumed the "S" simply stood for "Superman"; in Birthright , Waid presented the symbol as a Kryptonian symbol of hope borrowing and modifying a concept from Superman: The Movie. DC 's mandate for Superman being Krypton's only survivor changed as well.

Superboy's origins were retconned later revealing that he was the cloned son of Superman and Lex Luthor making him half kryptonian. The series reversed a lot of John Byrne 's decisions from The Man of Steel to reflect the more Silver Age -oriented version of Superman , similar to Smallville television series and Superman movies.

However, a current storyline co-written by Geoff Johns and Superman director Richard Donner presents yet another version of Krypton which reintroduces the General Zod and the Phantom Zone criminals into mainstream continuity.

With art by Adam Kubert , the design of Kryptonian society is distinct yet again from Birthright , incorporating elements of both pre- Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity and Donner's work on the first two Christopher Reeve films, in particular the notion of Krypton's Council threatening Jor-El with harsh punishment were he to make public his predictions of their planet's imminent doom.

Whether this further revision of continuity has an in-universe rationale is as yet unknown, but it may stem from continuity changes wrought by the reality-fracturing conclusion of Infinite Crisis. The first non-comics version of Krypton was presented in the debut storyline of the s Superman radio series. Krypton was very briefly depicted in the first Fleischer Studios-produced Superman cartoon in the early s as "a planet that burned like a green star in the distant heavens [and where] civilization was far advanced and it brought forth a race of Supermen whose mental and physical powers were developed to the absolute peak of human perfection", implying that all Kryptonians had Superman's abilities even on their own planet.

The planet is seen only from a distance. In Superman: The Animated Series , "The Last Son of Krypton", the first part of a three-part pilot episode, depicts Krypton as being basically similar to the pre- Crisis version it was scientifically advanced, Kal-El appeared to be about two-years-old as in the Silver Age comics, there are depictions of peculiar animals although with elements of the John Byrne version such as the appearance of the characters' wardrobe.

Krypton's climate is shown to have both temperate and Arctic conditions. According to commentary on the DVD collection for the show's first season, part of Krypton's appearance was influenced by the artistic style of American comic book artist Jack Kirby. This version depicted the villain Brainiac indirectly destroying Krypton through a massive sin of omission and even deception , as the care taking program for the planet.

Later episodes have dealt with this issue. With the release of the first feature-length Superman movie in , a vastly less idyllic image of Krypton, compared to the previous comics' versions, was presented. Whereas in the comics, Krypton was colorful and bright, in Superman: The Movie , the planet was envisioned as having stark white terrain of jagged frozen plateaus, stretching broadly under heavy, dark skies.

Kryptonians themselves were portrayed as being a coolly cerebral society, clad in stark white, and treading halls of jet black under crystalline arches. New Krypton was a more-developed culture — more appropriately, series of cultures — than those traditionally appearing in Superman stories, built of representatives of every version of the planet that had existed previously, explained away by depicting them as co-existing, inter-dependent guilds that follow different philosophies: the science guild, the creative guild, the artistic guild, and so on.

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