Thoughts & speculations about Krypton.

[llozymandias]

If the Sun-thrivers story is accurate, they gathered the material to create Krypton from stars throughout the universe.  What if super-matter is scattered in small (almost undetectible) amounts throughout the universe?  Imagine that it is the true source of the different kinds of "solar" energy that affect Kal's powers.  


   If krypton were actually a giant planet somewhere between 5xearth & jupiter,  then the surface area should be super-vast.  When Kal's ancestor sailed to the other side of krypton, the jouney should have taken decades.  Or even over a century or two.  The crews of the ships should have died enroute.  Unless kryptonian seawater is drinkable.  Most maps (from the silver-age) show two continents  each of them on opposite sides of the planet.  With a couple of islands ( Vathlo & Bokos) inbetween.  Different stories & writers gave different ages to kryptonian civilization.  Some depicted it as ongoing for millions of earth years.  Other had it at 10,000 kryptonian years.  If 18 kryptonian years equal 25 earth years, then 10,000 kryptonian years should at most equal 15,000 earth years.  If the kryptonians were descended from space colonists they should have had advanced science & technology (including space travel) throughout their entire history.  Ok lets assume that the "colonists lost their advanced knowledge, & their descendants regained that knowledge over time.  They should have spread out over vaster regions of the planet's suface.  They should have formed many civilizations & cultures.  As well as many religions & mythologies.  If those colonists were humans from an earth-size planet, their colonization of krypton had to be deliberate.  The colonists specially altered/engineered to survive super-gravity.  Otherwise if they simply crash landed on krypton, they would have died very soon.  Unless they had working anti-gravity gear.  They would have died of suffocation.  If they evolved on krypton as an example of parallel/convergant evolution, in the course of their history they should have had hundreds or thousands of civilizations, societies, & cultures.  They shouldn't have been as homogenized as the comics implied.

[Uncle Mxy]

What about Daxam?

What about the Volkir whose organic wastes allegedly colonized Krypton in DC COMICS PRESENTS #1-2?

[Captain Kal]

According to TOLSH #325, Daxam is the parent world that colonized Krypton.

It is possible according to Stephen H. Dole's "Habitable Planets for Man" to adapt to a gravity 2.5 x your native one.  It would be extremely difficult but it is achievable.  This is based on high-G centrifuge experiments where chickens could survive sustained accelerations of 3 Gs but lost weight over 2.5 Gs.

Given that, I've supposed that Daxam had a high-G but 2.5 x less (or 0.4 of) Krypton's.  Using 100% efficient conversion of food energy, Daxamites would be capable of living on a 14 G world.  That 2.5 x factor kicks Krypton up to 35 Gs which is my longstanding figure and now enshrined in Birthright canon.

[Captain Kal]

Re: Volkir organic waste:

Krypton clearly had native life on it before human colonization.  That native life was due to the Volkir organic waste.  Without that, the colonists would have the added task of terraforming Krypton which they clearly didn't have to do.

Again, TOLSH #325 gives Daxam as the parent world of Krypton's humans.

[llozymandias]

It's also possible that krypton's humanoids evolved on krypton, that they are native to the planet.  And sometimes it was implied that daxam was an ancient colony of krypton.  Imagine an ancient kryptonian space program.  Daxam was either krypton's first colony  or the first contact they made with non-kryptonians.  A group of kryptonian "astronauts" (several families) leave their star system on a colonization mission.  They discover the power they have under a yellow star.  A child playing with his/her telescopic & heat vision powers, unintentionally destroys several inhabitted star systems.  On both krypton & daxam suppress all knowledge of these events & the latent powers they have.  On krypton that knowledge is limitted to the priests of Rao.  Any research that threatens to repeat those events is outlawed.  Technological progress on both planets is covertly slowed down.

[DakotaSmith]

Any research that threatens to repeat those events is outlawed.  Technological progress on both planets is covertly slowed down.

Wow!  I have to say, this is the smartest rationalization about why Kryptonians didn't allow space travel that I've ever seen.  They went to another solar system once, and they knew what would happen if they left the red sun.  It would also make Jor-El's sending Kal-El to Earth all the more interesting if he was privy to the secret knowledge and also knew he was creating a super-being in sending his son there.

Which begs the question as to Jor-El's intent:  was he attempting to create a super-being simply to give an infant the best chance of survival?  To create a force for good?  Or perhaps even to create a galactic dictator?

Dakota Smith

[Captain Kal]

Cool ideas, Ilozymandias.

I'd have no objections to that being published.

Pre Crisis canon contradicts that somewhat but we're a few reboots away from that so I guess the way is clear.

The incredible coincidences of lead vulnerability for the Daxamite race living on a world suspiciously lacking in lead who become nigh-omnipotent outside their environmental conditions does suggest strongly someone engineered that race and situation.  To a lesser degree, this applies to Krypton, too.  That green kryptonite vulnerability does look suspiciously like it's related to a certain Green Power our favourite Oans like to play with.  That's why I've suggested in the past that an Oan offshoot had something to do with Daxam and Krypton.  Those coincidences are just a bit much to swallow even in the fictional DCUniverse.

[Captain Kal]

Ilozymandias' explanation, while not in canon, works better, IMHO than the official Pre Crisis one.

A space-being named Zazura had a nasty habit of killing (eating?) the astronauts of the early Kryptonian space program.  Her one weakness was a red crystal which the Kryptonians seeded in their upper atmosphere (hence dyeing the sky red) to keep her from descending to the planet itself and they aborted their space program out of fear of her attacks.

Well, that's DC's official story on this matter.

The Post Crisis explanation involved the Eradicator genetically bonding Kryptonians to the planet so they'd die if they tried to leave it.