Kryptonian on earth before Kale-El?
parmenides
Superman) about a Kryptonian who visited earth before Kal-El was sent
here. This would have been maybe in the 50's or early '60's. For some
reason the storyline had this Kryptonian wearing a Superman-like costume
but with green replacing the blue on "our" Superman's costume. Does this
ring a bell with anyone? The storyline also included an earth person who
remembered this earlier Kryptonian.
----- Amado Narvaez
Super-Menace
<parme...@cavtel.net> wrote:
"The Superman of Yesterday," which was the first story in Superman v1
103, February 1956. The visiting Kryptonian turns out to have been
Jor-El's father, who of course was Superman's grandfather. We never
see Grandpa El in the story, but his outfit is described by the witness
you mentioned as having been green and yellow.
Art by Wayne Boring.
Raymond Speer
The "unnamed grandfather who flew to Earth" does not jibe well with
later accounts of Jor-El and his brothers (Jor-El's twin, Nim-El S#146,
and Zor-El S#146).
If Pop had done the initial conception and proved its value by a round
trip from Krypton to Earth and back again, why is it that Jor-El starts
from scratch in his one man project to build a space ark? Wouldn't it be
easier to dig out Pop's notes from the Kryptonian version of an attic?
Not only did Pop's version work, it is big enough to take a grown man to
sanctuary and back if Krypton was threatened with doom! It definitely
sounds superior to the prototype that Jor-El threw together at the last
minute.
Also, Pop would have discovered that he had superhuman abilities on
Earth and why would he keep that a secret to anyone, much less his own
sons?
A fanwank is that there must have been bad blood between their dad and
Jor-El, Nim-El and Zor-El. The old man alienated his sons or vice versa
and no information on the discovery of Earth was passed to the next
generation. Or perhaps some gov't worker classfied that visit to Earth
so tightly that not even the Science Council was aware of the exploit.
Wasn't Kandor the capitol of Krypton? Maybe all references to the trip
were physically located in Kandor when Brainiac shrunk and stole the
city and so were not available to Jor-El during Krypton's final year.
Super-Menace
Speer <ray...@webtv.net> wrote:
Well ... this story was published toward the tail end of the Golden
Age, so all the Silver Age/Schwartz Era stuff about Kal-El's ancestors
hadn't yet been established. Also, all of these stories were told in
seven or eight pages, and they occasionally involved potentially huge
changes in Superman's backstory, current circumstances or his future.
However, by the end the status quo ante was always re-established. In
this case, the obvious consequences you correctly point out were simply
ignored, in service to this basic principle.
A Silver Age story would have had Superman fly back in time to meet the
mystery Superman of sixty years before. This earlier version of
Superman couldn't time-travel -- or, at least, he couldn't do so
reliably. (Consider "Rip Van Superman," the classic story that was
published just four issues later. It never occurs to Superman to
simply fly back through time and go home. This is because he couldn't
do that anymore than you or I could.)
Yes, Kandor was Krypton's capital. Kryptonopolis became the capital
after Kandor was stolen, and it remained so until Krypton exploded a
handful of years later. Kandor didn't exist during the Golden Age and,
in fact, the first story featuring Kandor is considered by many to be
the very first Silver Age Superman story ("The Super-Duel in Space,"
Action Comics 242, July 1958). That's also the first Brainiac story,
BTW.