Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Reading over the online comics and few of my own collection I realized just how bad a kludge the writers had made of Krypton's history.  For example in Superman #141 (1960) (http://superman.nu/returntokrypton/srtk/?page=1) were are told that Krypton has no space program in the time Kal-El parents are married and yet in an earlier story Jimmy Olsen had used a magical stick to send Superman back in time so Kal-El can meet his parents. But Olsen messed up and had it so Kal-EL would mate his parents. Kal-El has to save his parents who charged with some crime are exiled from Krypton in a space ship.

This causes all kinds of logic problems with Jor-EL sending everything but the kitchen sink to test his rockets; if Krypton had a space program advanced enough tp exile people than what the blazes was Jor-El testing? Elements in the Superman #141 story also contradict the Super-teacher stories.  Then you have Sun of Superman (http://superman.nu/tales2/sun/) which conflicts with Action #574 in that the later story had a second planet orbiting Krypton's sun.

The story of Krypton's Second Doom from this stand point is just insane - we are asked that a planet that had little if any space travel could in a minimal amount of time build an artifical sun and a duplicate of Krypton so perfect that it fools Superman.

Did anybody actually set donw and straighen this mess out or was it largely ignored aside from the few times DC put out a digest with the older stories that made fans go 'Huh?'

The easiest way to explain this was that Krypton did have a LIMITED space program.

Put weather control  satleites in orbit and colonize the moon of Weightor(added benifit of having a place to exile criminals).    Those rockets were designed to stay close to Krypton and used some form of energy collection panel(Solar Sailer from Tron comes to mind)

Now then, what Jor-El was probably testing was a new engine that could make the trip to Earth which means an FTL drive and a self-contained power source.

It still leaves the major problem of the Krypton's second doom which would by its very nature require and extensive space program for the simple reason that an artifical sun and planet would have tore the real Krypton to shreads from tital forces.

Also this does not address the main issue of my post - that Krypton's history rather than its space program was all messed up.

The discrepencies are due to the fact that Krypton and Daxam are often confused for one another.

Mind explaining that one in a little more detail?

Baby Kal El was the first Kryptonian off planet, (except perhaps for Krypto.)  Meanwhile Daxam had an extensive space program; the mere boy who became Monel had a craft.  Kinda like an earth teen with a car.

Certain stories such as "Jor El's golden folly" and so forth actually occured on Daxam earlier in it's history.  The stories are real but the names are changed because terrestrial authors, believing the stories to be about Krypton, used the few Kryptonian names that they knew.

I suspect that Ton was a Daxamite, but I have no solid evidence.  Just a hunch.

Where did you get this information or are you just assuming?

Krypton's history was constantly in a state of flux back then. However, there were some things that were always constant (the Phantom Zone, Brainiac shrinking Kandor, ect). I consider Krypton's continuously changing history to just be a series of soft retcons. It wasn't really all that hard to understand, either.

I believe Laurel is using Al Schroeder III's approach of reclassifying various stories as canon or not and interpreting those that don't fit in properly.  IOW, it's basically made-up interpretations with no actual canon book support.

No actual books state Krypton stories really took place on Daxam or vice versa.  It's not even in a lettercol response.

*sob*  you hurt my feelings!!!!!!

but really, it's what my history book from my Legion classes say. :yup:

Sorry, Laurel -- perhaps the facts got muddled during the last 1,000 years.  Maybe you should read Professor Kristen Wells' books from the 29th Century -- she seems to be a reliable source on Superman lore, though it appears Kristen spent more time MAKING history than actually recording it back in the 20th Century.   :wink:

Good luck at the Academy, but beware of snipers with kryptonite bullets and Manhunter impersonators!   :shock:

Except some of the tests Jor-El did make no sence in this regard. For example Krypto's rocket is knock out of orbit but if Krypto was only in orbit then what pray tell was Jor-El testing? And this was in Action #500 (1979) while DC was putting out digests with older stories like the one about Jimmy and the magic stick.

Krypton's space program ended after Jax-Ur destroyed Weg-Thor.  that was when the science council made all space travel illegal.  Jor-El had to operate in secret.  As a member of the science council, he had little spare time.  He was lucky to be able to create the two prototype rockets (Kal's, 7 Krypto's) that he did create.

An engine that doesn't require solar collectors or anti-grav.  A fusion reactor powered rocket maybe.  He would want to reclaim the rocket and get readings on the engine, wouldn't he?

But according to other sources Jor-El woudl already have access to such knowledge.  The sister planet who was to visit them in a year and so on. Things just didn't make sense.

You have to remember the planet was destroyed, so the history we get is best piece meal type. We know some space travel happened and at one point they even placed criminals in low orbit to serve sentences, then space travel was banned, and the Jor-el is working on it again. So somethings had to change from point A to point B to point C. but since all recors were lost it can only be pieced together as information turned up. all history is like that, not every bit survives thru the ages, example we know C Clombus discovered the new world (altho the people living there didn't know they were lost) but we don't know who made his hat, Minor point but an example. So it just makes sense to accpet something changed and the record of those changes is lost to explosion.

This does not work either as an explination either because Superman had visited Krypton's past personally either as a phantom or phyically where he could try (and fail) to change history.  Yet each time he did so the events he peronally saw did not match the last one he had seen. Also if this was not bad enough Superman had other methods (http://superman.nu/tales2/chronicles/3/?page=1) to actaully see historical events as they really happened rather as history said they happened.