Superman Through the Ages! Forum

You know it - you love it...KANDOR!

Im curious as to the offical reason the yellow rays of the sun didnt penetrate the bottle (nor did it have an artifical sun) and earth's lesser gravity not affect the denizens of the Bottle City and turn them Super while inside.

It's not like they were situated on a really big chunk of Krypton that would simulate the heavier gravity.

Thoughts?

Theories?

Conjecture?

Decidely Canonical derision? :wink:

According to the collector's edition Superman's Fortress of Solitude, tanks supply Kandor with an atmosphere exactly like Krypton's, and artificial gravity and an artificial red sun duplicate the heavy gravity and red solar conditions.

See pic.

http://superman.nu/a/Encyclopaedia/Fortress/images/bottle.GIF
(http://superman.nu/a/Encyclopaedia/Fortress/images/bottle.GIF)

According to stories involving Nor-Kan, some yellow sun rays do penetrate the bottle but the dominance of red solar energy inside the bottle negates their effect.  Nor-Kan devised a special ring that concentrated and amplified the few yellow sun rays inside the bottle to let the Kandorian wearing it to be super-powered.  The ring appeared in the first Nightwing & Flamebird storyline, IIRC.  Supergirl once used the ring inside the bottle in her own book.

It's like some red stars bathe Earth but the yellow sun overwhelms their influence in the outside world.

The first two choices are BOTH correct.

Thanks guys - that's what i thought.  You wouldnt believe the beaut of an arguement I had yesterday about this subject. :wink:

the "portion" of krypton that kandor was "on" was pretty big.  krypton's size was somewhere between 5xearth & jupiter.  that chunk of krypton went from the planet's surface to a portion of its core.  the "surface" area included more than just kandor.  it also included part of the scarlet jungle, among other things.   also kandor was the capital of a society thousands of years more advanced than 20th-21st century earth.  kandor as a city probably covered hundreds or thousands of square miles.

As far as light goes, didn't red sun energy always seem to take precedence over yellow sun energy?  If Superman were out in the sun on Earth but someone pointed a red sun ray at him, he lost his powers despite the ongoing presence of yellow sun energy.

I voted for "Freedom of Choice". They choose to live to closely to the original conditions of their native planet. It would have been simplicity itself for them to fournish their Bottled City with a miniature Yellow (or even WHITE) Sun, but they simply didn't WANT to.

If they wanted to be god-like, they would be.

Good point, Beyonder.  Your POV jibes with what the Pre Crisis Kandorians actually did when they were restored to full-size.  They chose a heavy gravity, red sun world.  They made the same choice in the imaginary tale of Superman-Red/Superman-Blue except the Supermen put the restored Krypton on a course that would take them back to their native Rao system.

It must be noted that Kandor was in Brainiac's possession for decades and they seemed not to have known how Earthly conditions would grant them super-powers, or at least it wasn't common knowledge.  Hence, their original bottle adaptations would logically be to duplicate the conditions on their native world.  Either that or Brainiac furnished the captured cities with the artificial gravity and suns which makes sense considering he also supplied them the atmosphere feed tanks.  After Superman rescued them, Beyonder's POV would hold sway as they chose to be normal folk, much as the Daxamites generally choose to be normal too instead of migrating to yellow sun systems.

Another aspect may be the Science Council of Kandor probably decided for the good of all, Kandorian and Terran, that a city of millions of super-people are a potential danger, so they'd deliberately keep the city in Kryptonian conditions to prevent either accidental or deliberate misuse of super-powers.

As a side note, it must be noted that in Waid's new Legion of Super-Heroes, we have three references to the Superman mythos.  In LSH #2, Dream Girl notices that the Naltorian cops have added Klurkor to their skill sets.  Klurkor is a Kryptonian martial art that the Pre Crisis Lois Lane learned in Kandor.  LSH #3 has Sun Boy telling Triplicate Girl a story about a Rokynite talking to a Naltorian.  Rokyn is the name of the world Kandor was/will be enlarged on.  Evidently, the BR Kandor -- which is now a Kryptonian city again -- will be enlarged sometime before the 31st century and it has had commerce with at least one world, Naltor, by the LSH's time.  Also, Sun Boy and Triplicate Girl were playing at the secret ID game and snipping hair is considered the technique for proving someone is Superman, so the legends of Superman/Clark/Lois may have been garbled by their time to include Lois trying to ferret out the secret ID that no one even suspected in the present day.

No.  The red sun projectors evidently overwhelmed the amount of ambient yellow stuff in much the same way you can put a bright spotlight on an object in the daytime and still see it.

DC has actually stated in a lettercol that the predominance of the nearer yellow sun takes precedence over the miniscule red starlight bathing the Earth, else Kal would be unpowered even on Earth esp. at night which clearly wasn't the case.  This is not a fan speculation but backed by DC's actual statements on this matter.

In actual stories, Kandor has been likened to having a population matching NYC's which has grown and changed over the years.  The last stated population for Kandor was 7 million on the cover of the first issue of the Krypton No More storyarc in Superman.  A Nightwing & Flamebird story claims Kandor is about the size of Manhatten.

That having been said, I agree more with Ilozymandias that Kandor must have been much larger and more populous with a population probably in the hundreds of millions in the same way that our current mega cities have millions compared with the thousands of ancient times (ancient Troy was only a few square miles compared with NYC's 301 square miles).

Krypton dwarfed Jupiter in some accounts.  My real world calculations suggest it was this side of a brown dwarf star and is about 1/4 the diameter of our own sun.  It's not possible to make a 33 - 35 G planet (as evidenced in BR #1) with anything less than that, IMHO.

kryptonians (& daxamites) seem to adapt to any "gravity" when under a red sun.  

   
    i also read those stories that tried tried to show kandor as having the size & population of a modern american city.  possible failure of imagination on the part of the writers.  if krypton's diameter was 1/4 that of our sun,  imagine the surface area.  their total population was probably in the hundreds of billions, at the very least.  no wonder that they waited so long to start exploring space.  they had plenty to do exploring their own planet.  compared to a planet that size, earth would be a small moon.


    why would most kryptonians (& daxamites) avoid god-like power by choosing to live under a red sun?  superman's full power was never shown, but he was able to move, reignite, destroy, or create stars.  one rash act could kill billions of beings.  how many of us would want the responsiblilty of controlling that kind of power?

Perhaps that Argo City religious fanatic Jer-Em wasn't so out of the mainstream after all.  Kryptonians who once transformed their hostile planet to a virtual utopia through sheer hard work might be skeptical of superpowers.  After all, if their sun is named Rao, that means Kryptonians who turn away from their God were then rewarded for abandoning their Deity.  So obviously superpowers were the work of the Kryptonian "Devil"!

Obviously Kandorians considered the special circumstances of Superman gaining his abilities, and perhaps his evident goodness in spite of such "evil" powers provoked even greater admiration.  But for the average Kandorian, unless superpowers were used for specific purposes (such as the Superman Emergency Squad), these were seen as merely another temptation from the Outside World that all devout Kryptonians should disavow, somewhat like how the Amish view high technology.

Interesting take. It could also explain why Kal-El allways seemed most comfortable when he didn't have to use his powers. (Except when villains stripped him from it during a story, of course.)

I just a thought triggered by that 'Earth would be a moon compared with Krypton' remark.

In Jor-El's Golden Folly, Jor and Lara voyage to one of Krypton's moons, Wegthor, which has sufficient gravitation to have a breathable atmosphere.  That reference would support the idea that Earth would be moon-sized relative to Krypton as moon-sized in our reference frame couldn't possibly hold a breathable atmosphere.

http://superman.nu/tales2/goldenfolly/?page=5

In Kandor's first appearance (Action 241), it was shown having its own sun, originally running on tracks over the city (see this page (http://superman.nu/tales2/superduel/?page=11)).

That picture also gives you a sense of scale of the land in the bottle, as the city skyline is way in the distance.

Good post, ProfPotter.  Until you pointed it out, I didn't notice how the landscape surrounding Kandor was so vast.  I also forgot that the first Kandor story had them create their own sun.  That would jibe with my speculation earlier on this thread that they would create an artificial sun like their real one, Rao. (BTW, the definition of a city is a large community that doesn't produce most of its own food.  We know Kandor seemed to need outside air supplied.  It wouldn't be technically a city if they produced their own food, so Kandor must have involved not only the city proper but a fair-sized chunk of surrounding area -- which is exactly what your link shows us.)

An interesting aspect that Byrne got right was his ancient Kandor had a population of 40 million when it was destroyed 100,000 years ago.  Even ancient Kandor was larger than our modern NYC (pop.: 8 million).  That would suggest that a modern Kandor might have a population at least in the hundreds of millions in much the same way as 31st century Metropolis spans the entire Eastern seaboard.  IMHO, one reason Superboy enjoyed visiting the Legion so much was visiting that era was an ersatz way of being on Krypton again as Metropolis and the tech approximated a Kryptonian city.



That was made-up by the authors of the DC Who's Who and isn't really canon material.

Action Comics #500 had Luthor weaken Superman with an artificial red sun projector so he still had his gravity-based powers instead of becoming instantly a normal man.  It wasn't until Luthor trapped Superman in a cell that duplicated Krypton's high-G that Superman's powers were fully nullified.

The actual books always outweigh the so-called 'official' DC Who's Who.

Any supplied air molecules of oxygen, etc. must have been miniaturized as well, so that their teeny tiny capillaries could distribute it to their teeny tiny cells... :o

Where in the comics was Krypton's sun called Rao?  In the pre-crisis stories Rao was Krypton's name for GOD.  


      There were many stories where Superman lost ALL his powers under the influence of red-sun (or green-sun) rays.



      I don't think most kryptonians (& daxamites) see their super-powers as evil.  They most likely see the responsibility of such power as terrifying.  Even a toddler would be able to make a star go nova (or super-nova).  no wonder that the silver-age Superman was stoic.  He had to keep his powers & emotions in check at all times.

Ask and ye shall receive. :)

RAO - In the mythology of ancient Krypton, the sun-god, who was deemed the chief of all gods.  So great was the respect for the red sun of Krypton that any soldier of Erok's time automatically became an officer if he had red hair.  When Jaf-El preached the worship of the One god, he gave Him the name of Rao, though no longer identifying Him specifically with the sun.  Note that in the wedding ceremony, the phrase used was "Rao, who kindled the sun," showing Him to be the sun's creator, but not the sun itself.

Link to definition above scanned from The Krypton Chronicles:
http://superman.nu/tales2/chronicles/3/?page=26

Link showing Rao described as the sun god:
http://superman.nu/tales2/chronicles/3/?page=23

In the time of Erok, who established the House of El, Rao was the sun.

While it's true that Superman tended to lose his powers under red suns and even blocking the yellow sun, it's inaccurate to say that it robbed him of all his powers in all cases.  A Superboy story has his solar powers nullified by a yellow costume reflecting yellow sun rays but he retained his gravity-powers.  A Metal Men team-up has his sun powers negated by I.Q.'s disrupting the sun so only his muscular powers -- not sun dependent -- remained (a DCCP story incl. Chemo).

When the Parasite stole Superman's holding back reflex so Kal's powers were escalating out of control, he reduced his powers to normal levels by coating his body with a chemical sunscreen that blocked out yellow sun rays and only allowed the red ones to reach his skin.  He clearly had full command of all his powers in this case under artificial red solar conditions of his own making.  It was only when the Parasite drained those remaining powers that Superman became totally powerless. (Ref: Superman #321 (March, 1978) "Too Strong to Survive" & Superman #322 (April 1978) "Laser War over Metropolis".)

The reverse was also true.  High-gravity cables duplicating Krypton's gravity cut his powers by half when the Earth-2 Luthor used them on him in a team-up book with the Golden Age Superman (who's really the Earth-2 Superman as distinguished from the real GA Superman).

BTW, here's a quote that jibes with what you just said re: power, Ilozymandias.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?  Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.  Your playing small does not serve the world.  There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.  We are all meant to shine, as children do.  We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.  It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
-- Marianne Williamson, A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles (New York: Harper Collins, 1992).

If that's so for us ordinary mortals, imagine how terrifying it would be for the Kryptonians and Daxamites to face the potential for virtual godhood?

When one is ordinary, then our responsibility for our own success or failure and to the universe is much more limited.  Give us the power of the gods of fable, and we lose that cop-out.

Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism says we are condemned to have free will.  Because we have it, we are forced to define who we are and what we become.  How much greater is that burden if given the added freedom of god-like power?

That quote is perfectly apt.  


     One thing i have always wondered about; regarding Kandor's enlargement.   What happened to everything in the bottle that was not Kandor?  The scarlet jungle,  caves, & other things that surrounded the city.  As well as everything under the city.  The chunk of Krypton extended from the planet's suface to a portion of its core.  Where did it go?  


     When phantom zone prisoners were released in Kandor, they were the same size as the Kandorians.  Also when Kandorians were put in the phantom zone they were restored to "normal" size.  Kandor could possibly have been enlarged that way.

Ha! That is a great idea!  Phantom Zone as size-altering loophole!  Great!  Superman is not as smart as we thought, obviously (or Batman or Supergirl).

or the writers  :wink:

We've never seen more than a group of people sent to or from the Phantom Zone at a time.  The time the Phantom Zone criminals escaped in that miniseries, they needed Green Lantern's power battery to power a Phantom Zone projector capable of sending the Earth into the zone.  Even so, it didn't do so instantaneously but was going to take 24 hours to complete the task, IIRC.

That suggests to me that the power requirements for restoring Kandor via the zone were prohibitively high.  Zone enlargement/reduction is viable for individuals or small groups of people but they lacked the power for restoring what would amount to a continent's worth of mass via this method.

While Superman himself is an incredible power source, perhaps the power requirements for zone enlargement increased exponentially as the mass involved increased.  100 kg took x amount of power, 200 kg took x**2 power, 300 kg took x**3 power ... so that by the time Kandor itself was involved, it would take much more power than in the universe.

The truth is the writers forgot about those aspects and wrote as if only Kandor city proper was in the bottle to be enlarged.

But I suspect one of two things happened in the DCU fictional world to explain this.

1) Those aspects were also enlarged and displaced things on Rokyn.

2) The enlarging ray was concentrated on Kandor city proper so those other aspects were mostly unaffected, remained miniaturized, then were destroyed by the enlarging city around them.

I like to think the first option occurred re: displacement.  One piece of evidence to support this is in The Krypton Chronicles when they found the supposedly destroyed city not only restored but better than ever.  Whole sections of the city were unaffected by the defect in the enlarging ray that were not noticed in the enlargement story, probably due to the vast size of affected mass.  If Kandor city itself wasn't completely seen in the enlargement story, then we can suppose the other aspects were similarly too far away to be seen on enlargement.

http://superman.nu/tales2/chronicles/1/?page=7

http://superman.nu/tales2/chronicles/1/?page=8

I also prefer the first option.  It would also explain the real reason why the kandorians refused to let Kal-El enlarge them on earth.  They knew that enlarging that much indestructible mass would destroy earth in the process.  Kal didn't think of that.  He was too intent on the task of restoring Kandor to think of all possible consequences.

There's a full 20 or so of unnamed zone baddies (ala Mala and his ilk) causing mayhem in "The Town Of Supermen".  They challenge Supes to a quick draw and he re-zones them.

Some fine discussions on enlargement here...as opposed to our daily spam. :wink:

Mala and his brothers were exiled from Kyrpton before the discovery of the Phantom Zone.  Speaking of which, I need to finish their entries.

However, I never read the follow up story, so someone else needs to finish the entries with info from that issues after I finish filling in info from the 1st story.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Klar Ken T5477, but didn't Superman kind of cheat in that story?  IIRC, he used his heat vision to deactivate their zone guns so his was the only working one.

Back somewhat on-topic: If Kandor was so vast as to be like a continent on Earth (and Godfall describes Kandor as a nation), perhaps the same applied to Argo City?  The original Supergirl origin supposed a bubble of air just happened to cling to that city.  If that chunk was massing comparable to Kandor's real estate, maybe the asteroid gravity alone would explain that air bubble.  The later retcon of the dome is interesting but unnecessary in hindsight.

The "Krypton-portion" that Argo City rested on was composed of anti-kryptonite.  the ground in the city was covered by lead to protect the citizens.  Maybe there was only enough lead to shield the city proper,  & the dome was there to keep them from leaving the city.  Or the dome was part of an experiment that enabled the city to survive Krypton's destruction.

Originally in Action Comics #252, Argo City was blasted into space with a surrounding “air bubble” but no dome.  This was changed in later retellings of Supergirl’s origin.  However, I always thought the visual depiction of the Argo City asteroid surface barely extending beyond the dome to be unconvincing (and let’s not even consider how the inhabitants survived the blast acceleration).

However, the first story arc of Superman/Batman implied that the new Kara Zor-El’s home was located on a chunk about the size of Australia.  This huge size would make it more feasible for a city to survive intact, shielded from the explosion.  Maybe the incredible mass would even dampen some of the acceleration, resulting in fewer G-forces.  Finally, such a large chunk of heavy Krypton would conceivably retain at least a trace atmosphere, though such an “air bubble” might soon dissipate in the vacuum of space.

What if the original Kara Zor-El’s home asteroid “lifted off” in the same manner, but was later “trimmed down”?  We know in the final issue of DC Comics Presents that the Argo City Asteroid was only the size of Metropolis’ Central Park, which seems absurdly small – but what if that was the largest area that could be enclosed by a dome?  Perhaps there was a pre-existing domed site within Argo City, or one was hastily constructed post-explosion to contain the dwindling atmosphere.  

It would have been expedient to concentrate the survivors in one place, and abandon the remainder of the surface.  Then the rest of the asteroid was reshaped, either by remote-controlled explosives or reprogrammed excavation robots.  Why?  There are a few good reasons.  

Probably the fractured crust was already beginning to break up into smaller fragments.  Shedding all this unstable material would be deemed wise, since nobody wants any debris coming loose from the “leading edge” and striking the dome.

Perhaps Zor-El’s propulsive system would work more efficiently by pushing less mass, and the irregular contours made the asteroid difficult to maneuver.  “Streamlining” this rock would make it easier to position the thrusters, since the center of mass would be calculated faster.

Most important was the danger of X-Kryptonite.  Even the lead lining of Argo City would have been overwhelmed by a continent of this lethal material, and you also had to worry about radiation from outlying areas seeping through the dome.  Thus, removing everything just beyond the dome and leaving only enough below the city to maintain structural stability was essential.  Alas, even this amount was eventually deadly for Argo City.   :cry:

That last issue of DC Comics Presents was one of the worst Superman stories ever written.  Too often the writers (& artists) depicted Krypton as slightly more advanced than earth.  Also many of them seemed to have forgotten that Krypton was much larger than earth.  Plus the kryptonite in Argo City was anti-kryptonite.  Anti-kryptonite only affects non-powered kryptonians.  X-kryptonite gave temporary (kryptonian) powers to non-kryptonians.

Quoted from Supermanica entry:
"Later texts, such as the Supergirl story in Action Comics #316, assert that the city was covered by an airtight plastic "weather dome" at the time of the disaster to accommodate the "atmospheric experiments" being conducted there by the scientist Zor-El."

I've read that story and IIRC it showed Zor-El and Allura surviving via delayed projector reaction by being transported to the Survival Zone.

The purpose of Argo City's dome wasn't to survive Krypton's pending explosion but for Zor-El's atmospheric experiments.  He probably was developing weather control technology.  IOW, Argo City was lucky the dome was there since its purpose was not to survive the planetary catastrophe.

Also, minor correction: Argo City was destroyed by anti-kryptonite radiation (which only affects non-super Kryptonians).  X-kryptonite gives super-powers to Terrans like it did to Streaky the Super-Cat.

OOPS!  Sorry for the Super-Gaffe, folks!  Yes, I really DO know the difference between X-Kryptonite and Anti-Kryptonite -- my mind must have been affected by someone in the Phantom Zone using Jewel Kryptonite!   :wink:

Yes, the dome over Argo City was never designed for the vacuum of space.  This might imply that at least a trace atmosphere still clung around the asteroid, relieving some of the internal air pressure on the dome.  Otherwise, when the meteors pierced the dome and lead sheeting, Argo City residents would have been blown into space by sudden decompression rather than dying a slow death by ANTI-Kryptonite poisoning.  (See, I got it right this time.)   :wink:

Ah, very perceptive, Dto.

You're right.  Without that atmosphere outside the dome, explosive decompression would've been the result of those meteor piercings.  The dome was self-sealing but it couldn't have possibly have kept all the air in with a meteor storm like that.

I guess that brings us back to our speculation on this thread that Argo City's asteroid had enough gravity to keep its own atmosphere, which you've just proven via canon.

Yes, dto that was a very good point.