Superman - The Last Son of Krypton

[CrypticMirror]

After all, imagine if you saw a baby in a stroller next to you starting to roll away. You could catch it. Are you seriously just going to let it roll down a hill? Or are you going to stop it? That's Superman in action. He doesn't want to dedicate his life to stopping babies in strollers from falling down hills, but he kinda has to.

I bet if we could somehow wrangle that as an experiment, using a very lifelike doll of course, we'd all end up pretty darn horrified by the number of people who would not, or who would stare at it slackjawed, or pretend to ignore it, or look around wildly to see if someone else was doing something first, or even if someone was watching them before acting. That is not even counting all them youths [hang on, I gotta go shout at a couple of clouds on my lawn] who would just whip out a cellphone and film it [I exclude us olds from that only on the grounds that we wouldn't be quick enough to realise our phones have a camera on it]. I'd put money on it being a significant minority, if not an actual narrow majority, of people who would completely abdicate action.

[Cheerilee]

The Krptonians had their DNA tied to the planet somehow so they couldn't leave because it would kill them. This was in response to some protesters who didn't agree with cloning and were going to leave the Krypton. They went with an alien spiritual leader that opposed cloning stating that you can't clone the soul. All the Kryptonians died when they left the planet. Jor-el extracted that element from Kal-els DNA.

The science around Kryptonians has always been weird. Like, they live like normal Humans on a planet made of kryptonite with a red sun, but they're living solar batteries, and if they move away from Krypton and soak up some yellow sun, then they become godlike (so yellow is better than red?), but... in spite of their new powers one pebble from their home planet can now literally kill them. How the heck does *that* work? Also, different colors of kryptonite do different things to Superman, and most of them are generally toxic.

IIRC, I heard an explanation once that said that the red sun was boosting Kryptonian immunity to the omnipresent kryptonite that was otherwise fatal to their species. But any time spent away from kryptonite or the red sun would result in a total breakdown of that immunity, and once you lost that immunity you couldn't get it back (the kryptonite would kill you long before you re-acquired the immunity). So if you ever leave Krypton, you can never come back. This discouraged exploration with anything other than mechanical probes.


This leads me into one of my only complaints about Superman (1978). Superman, like a dummy, tells Lois Lane (and by extension, the world) about his inability to see through lead. But he specifically *did not* tell Lois his birthday. Jor-El tells Kal-El that he's been dead for "many thousands of years". Then Lex Luthor reads the article and knows the "exact location" of Superman's home galaxy (Superman's ship crossed two galaxies), and that Krypton blew up in 1948, and says that it's "reasonable to assume" that some kryptonite landed on Earth, multiple galaxies away. And Lex knows exactly which meteorite did. Also, Lex somehow knows that kryptonite will kill Superman, because reasons, even though Superman doesn't even know that. My brain's just like... "Aaaugh! Science doesn't work that way!"

[Nobody700]

The Krptonians had their DNA tied to the planet somehow so they couldn't leave because it would kill them. This was in response to some protesters who didn't agree with cloning and were going to leave the Krypton. They went with an alien spiritual leader that opposed cloning stating that you can't clone the soul. All the Kryptonians died when they left the planet. Jor-el extracted that element from Kal-els DNA.

The science around Kryptonians has always been weird. Like, they live like normal Humans on a planet made of kryptonite with a red sun, but they're living solar batteries, and if they move away from Krypton and soak up some yellow sun, then they become godlike (so yellow is better than red?), but... in spite of their new powers one pebble from their home planet can now literally kill them. How the heck does *that* work? Also, different colors of kryptonite do different things to Superman, and most of them are generally toxic.

IIRC, I heard an explanation once that said that the red sun was boosting Kryptonian immunity to the omnipresent kryptonite that was otherwise fatal to their species. But any time spent away from kryptonite or the red sun would result in a total breakdown of that immunity, and once you lost that immunity you couldn't get it back (the kryptonite would kill you long before you re-acquired the immunity). So if you ever leave Krypton, you can never come back. This discouraged exploration with anything other than mechanical probes.


This leads me into one of my only complaints about Superman (1978). Superman, like a dummy, tells Lois Lane (and by extension, the world) about his inability to see through lead. But he specifically *did not* tell Lois his birthday. Jor-El tells Kal-El that he's been dead for "many thousands of years". Then Lex Luthor reads the article and knows the "exact location" of Superman's home galaxy (Superman's ship crossed two galaxies), and that Krypton blew up in 1948, and says that it's "reasonable to assume" that some kryptonite landed on Earth, multiple galaxies away. And Lex knows exactly which meteorite did. Also, Lex somehow knows that kryptonite will kill Superman, because reasons, even though Superman doesn't even know that. My brain's just like... "Aaaugh! Science doesn't work that way!"

Umm... Superman is weak to Kryptonite because it's radioactive. Krypton itself doesn't harm him, it's just a special kind of radiation that horribly harms his people. Hell, Superman is still harmed from radioactivity, it's just he's more immune to non kryptonite radiation.

[TrueMetis]

I rather enjoyed this series for it's portrayal of who Clark is. Unlike fools who believe Bill from Kill Bill, Superman is the costume, if not the job, Clark Kent is who he is. Hence why the best interpretations of Superman have always been that he's just being Superman because, well, he has the power to save the day, and it would eat his conscience if he did nothing.

After all, imagine if you saw a baby in a stroller next to you starting to roll away. You could catch it. Are you seriously just going to let it roll down a hill? Or are you going to stop it? That's Superman in action. He doesn't want to dedicate his life to stopping babies in strollers from falling down hills, but he kinda has to.

What hurts about this is that, in the DCAU, he kind of gives up on being Clark Kent. He eventually just becomes Superman, leader of the Justice League, and gives up on his human life. He even goes on a date with Lois AS Superman. His worst fears did come true, and he could do nothing to stop them without letting others suffer. Needs of the medium, because it's a Justice League superhero show, but Clark Kent kind of ceased to be, and he fully became Superman.

Wasn't the "date with Lois as Superman" something Lord Superman did? Not our Superman? JLU definitely focused on the costumes more, but I don't think we can actually conclude anyone but probably Batman started spending less time in civies. Indeed we see Diana for a bit on a day off in one episode (before it gets interrupted) and fairly often see various people dealing with situations that prior to the existence of the Justice League Superman totally would have been involved.

Indeed I think the Christmas special, where Clark brings J'onn to meet his family, shows pretty clearly Clark still goes around as Clark. Everyone else less so IE Flash spends Christmas as Flash hanging out with orphans, but I think that's because while Clark is Clark and Superman's just a costume he puts on, and Batman's the reverse were he thinks of himself as Batman first and Bruce is a costume he wears, everyone else is just both.

Probably because for pretty much all of them their civilian identity and hero identity are both involved in law enforcement and fighting. IE Flash is also a forensic investigator, Jon Stewart used to be a Marine and Green Lanterns are ultimately space cops anyway, Hawkgirl used to be a soldier too, and Wonderwoman was raised as a warrior.

[FaxModem1]

I rather enjoyed this series for it's portrayal of who Clark is. Unlike fools who believe Bill from Kill Bill, Superman is the costume, if not the job, Clark Kent is who he is. Hence why the best interpretations of Superman have always been that he's just being Superman because, well, he has the power to save the day, and it would eat his conscience if he did nothing.

After all, imagine if you saw a baby in a stroller next to you starting to roll away. You could catch it. Are you seriously just going to let it roll down a hill? Or are you going to stop it? That's Superman in action. He doesn't want to dedicate his life to stopping babies in strollers from falling down hills, but he kinda has to.

What hurts about this is that, in the DCAU, he kind of gives up on being Clark Kent. He eventually just becomes Superman, leader of the Justice League, and gives up on his human life. He even goes on a date with Lois AS Superman. His worst fears did come true, and he could do nothing to stop them without letting others suffer. Needs of the medium, because it's a Justice League superhero show, but Clark Kent kind of ceased to be, and he fully became Superman.

Wasn't the "date with Lois as Superman" something Lord Superman did? Not our Superman? JLU definitely focused on the costumes more, but I don't think we can actually conclude anyone but probably Batman started spending less time in civies. Indeed we see Diana for a bit on a day off in one episode (before it gets interrupted) and fairly often see various people dealing with situations that prior to the existence of the Justice League Superman totally would have been involved.

Indeed I think the Christmas special, where Clark brings J'onn to meet his family, shows pretty clearly Clark still goes around as Clark. Everyone else less so IE Flash spends Christmas as Flash hanging out with orphans, but I think that's because while Clark is Clark and Superman's just a costume he puts on, and Batman's the reverse were he thinks of himself as Batman first and Bruce is a costume he wears, everyone else is just both.

Probably because for pretty much all of them their civilian identity and hero identity are both involved in law enforcement and fighting. IE Flash is also a forensic investigator, Jon Stewart used to be a Marine and Green Lanterns are ultimately space cops anyway, Hawkgirl used to be a soldier too, and Wonderwoman was raised as a warrior.

No, look at JLU's Question Authority. Superman had a nice picnic, including champagne, I mean apple cider, set up on the top of the bridge for his conversation with Lois.

You can even see it in Chuck's review of the episode. The focus is on the chat of the Justice League relations, but the visual framing is that Supes just kind of gave up on romancing Lois as Clark, and is doing so as Superman.

[clearspira]

With DCAU they pretty much made best version of Superman just like they had done to Batman. For being considred to be "just for kids" DCAU shows had far better writing than any big budget live action movie based on those characters.

Shorn of the need to be seen as "adult" the movies had, the animated team produced something genuinely mature.

Then Dini ruined it all with that Killing Joke adaptation.

Indeed.

That Killing Joke adaption left bad taste to my mouth with how bad it was. I get that they needed to add lenght to it but that first half was so bad.

Agreed. I don't see why they had to have Batman and Batgirl have sex. The age and power difference there is rather problematic.

[clearspira]

One thing that's always confused me is that the kryptonians seemed to know that going to a yellow sun would turn them into some sort of race of supermen yet didn't leave previously. They're portrayed as one of the most advanced civilizations in history so they obviously had the technology. As advanced as they were they should have spread out into the galaxy and the destruction of krypton although tragic would have been a minor setback.

Its a bit like the galaxy spanning tkon empire in tng which had the ability to move stars yet somehow died because their primary star went supernova. Sure it would have been a bad thing but it's a bit like saying the us would lose 100% of it's population if DC was nuked.

As mentioned, they're a society that wasn't as forward looking as they could be, same as ours.

It's also worth mentioning that Jor El's rocket seems to be the apex of Kryptonian technology, as in that they don't seem to have giant transports ready to take colonists somewhere. They could, just as we could, transport colonists to another world, but they don't.

We know from Supergirl in the DCAU that they did establish another colony in the system, but they all died out as well, with only Kara surviving due to cryostasis.

In other versions of Krypton(which there have been many), the writers of DC made it to where Krypton was a world so culturally dead that it wasn't that big a tragedy that the world was destroyed, due to them barely seeming alive, as they had turned insular, only reproducing via cloning, abandoning attempts at empire building, etc. One thing that this episode did, and that the creators of Superman the Animated Series wanted to ensure, was that Krypton WAS a world worth mourning. It doesn't define Superman, but it is a part of him.

Personally, I like this version over the one that's seen in a lot of Superman comics, films, and adaptations, in which they're a very scientifically advanced people, culturally more advanced than us in a few ways, but they're still people, and the universe is poorer for it's loss. I also like the look of being a scifi culture as opposed to "CRYSTALS. CRYSTALS EVERYWHERE, the KRYPTONIANS BUILT EVERYTHING WITH CRYSTALS AND NOTHING BUT CRYSTALS" that seemed to permeate Superman pop culture since the 1970s movie.

Crystals are a bugbear of mine in sci fi. Shorthand for "we are super advanced" but it is just kind of lazy and unoriginal.
I also cannot see how these fragile things will ever replace the humble usb stick.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I also cannot see how these fragile things will ever replace the humble usb stick.

Better encryption probably.

[Aezetyr]

On another note, did anyone else think Luthor's giant robot looked like ED-209 from RoboCop?

[Thebestoftherest]

One thing that's always confused me is that the kryptonians seemed to know that going to a yellow sun would turn them into some sort of race of supermen yet didn't leave previously. They're portrayed as one of the most advanced civilizations in history so they obviously had the technology. As advanced as they were they should have spread out into the galaxy and the destruction of krypton although tragic would have been a minor setback.

Its a bit like the galaxy spanning tkon empire in tng which had the ability to move stars yet somehow died because their primary star went supernova. Sure it would have been a bad thing but it's a bit like saying the us would lose 100% of it's population if DC was nuked.

As mentioned, they're a society that wasn't as forward looking as they could be, same as ours.

It's also worth mentioning that Jor El's rocket seems to be the apex of Kryptonian technology, as in that they don't seem to have giant transports ready to take colonists somewhere. They could, just as we could, transport colonists to another world, but they don't.

We know from Supergirl in the DCAU that they did establish another colony in the system, but they all died out as well, with only Kara surviving due to cryostasis.

In other versions of Krypton(which there have been many), the writers of DC made it to where Krypton was a world so culturally dead that it wasn't that big a tragedy that the world was destroyed, due to them barely seeming alive, as they had turned insular, only reproducing via cloning, abandoning attempts at empire building, etc. One thing that this episode did, and that the creators of Superman the Animated Series wanted to ensure, was that Krypton WAS a world worth mourning. It doesn't define Superman, but it is a part of him.

Personally, I like this version over the one that's seen in a lot of Superman comics, films, and adaptations, in which they're a very scientifically advanced people, culturally more advanced than us in a few ways, but they're still people, and the universe is poorer for it's loss. I also like the look of being a scifi culture as opposed to "CRYSTALS. CRYSTALS EVERYWHERE, the KRYPTONIANS BUILT EVERYTHING WITH CRYSTALS AND NOTHING BUT CRYSTALS" that seemed to permeate Superman pop culture since the 1970s movie.

Crystals are a bugbear of mine in sci fi. Shorthand for "we are super advanced" but it is just kind of lazy and unoriginal.
I also cannot see how these fragile things will ever replace the humble usb stick.

Better than mab of steel, all our technology has so many parts it just ugly.