Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Just thinking about the Dc world of atlantis because of supermanica and the geoff johns/action discussion in another thread.  it occurs to me that atlantis is a perfect metaphor for many aspects of superman history, including the destruction of krypton and theft of kandor --these traumatic events involving the wholsesale destruction/abduction/reduction of civilizations is a subtheme in superman comics.  previous to the discovery of kandor, superman's relations with various hidden worlds inmcluding atlantis is a substitute for family and the advance civilization of krypton, a balm to his loneliness.  it's almost as if the silver age writers were constantly searching for some way to comfort or distract superman.

I think there are some parallels, though Kandor and the Lori Lemaris Atlantis were introduced pretty close together.  Before that, I think that writers treated Atlantis like a lot of places and planets, more as one-time only plot devices.

A lonely Superman was hit pretty hard in the late 50s-60s.

Poseidon vs Rao?

Water vs Fire?

Mermaids?
http://mermaids.wizardio.com/images/Hardy_little_mermaid.jpg

fire wielding mermaids...


... fear them

If a middleman errs, I wig!

A mini gilded sewer firm!

Interesting that Superman's Krypton should be compared to Atlantis; I always thought it obvious that Krypton was another version of the Atlantis legend: a lost world swept away in a cataclysm; a good world, but one doomed by a fatal flaw.

One element of Superman's origin that is most interesting is the element of pride. Here was Krypton, an advanced technological society that had become conservative and arrogant, and was doomed because its leaders were too hidebound and intransigent.

I personally think Byrne, Wolfman and the rest made a mistake when they made Krypton that cold and unpleasant world with the Kryptonian divorced from their own physicalities.

I'm not sure making Krypton unsympathetic is a good idea, but if you WERE going to it, they should have gone 180 degrees and taken the Atlantean route, with Krypton near the end as a decadent, Oriental world: picture the palace of Jabba the Hutt times a million.

I'm talking a supertechnical society that made a slide into decadence, hedonism, sex, and violent entertainment, with Jor-El and Lara emerging untouched and rational from all this, atavistic and slightly alienated.

Of course, the history of Krypton would be full of noble scientists and pioneers and all that sort of thing...after all, what's the POINT of decadence if there was never anything better?

It is a funny characterization: a super-advanced society that ignores the advice if its greatest scientist (and his closest peers and family).  What exactly is the message that we are supposed to take from that, Jerry Siegel?

Julian, I guess it's obvious that Krypton was inspired by Atlantis and other lost worlds/cities.  I must have thought this before myself but I think that the use of Atlantis in the chronicles makes this even more exquisite.  Atlantis and more obviously the 30th Century are Krypton substitutes.  In the JLU cartoon Supergirl actually moves to the Legion's time to hook up with Brainy because she grew up on Argo City and feels trapped in the backward 21st century.

I think that Krypton was partially inspired by a much richer legend of Atlantis than the original Superman Atlantis was.