When John Byrne rebooted Superman, one of the criticisms that stuck around for a while was how he turned Krypton into sort of a techno-dystopia. Readers who grew up on the “Buck Rogers” Krypton of the Silver Age disliked this presentation of Krypton as an emotionally sterile planet, where its inhabitants were as emotionless as Vulcans and their devotion to science above all else was so fanatical that there was no room in society for joy or art.
I’ve heard this described as “a Krypton that deserved to die.” While that point of view is a bit extreme, it’s fair to say that some fans – and even creators – struggle with a Krypton that is presented with significant flaws. Last year’s SUPERMAN movie, featuring a Jor-El who sends his son to Earth to conquer and rule, reignited these debates all over again.
For me, Byrne’s Krypton has resonance BECAUSE it is flawed. And given the constraints of the story, it has to be.
If you are committed to the idea of Superman as a sole survivor of Krypton, and if you want that image of the brilliant scientist launching his only son to Earth in a craft he built himself, you are pretty much forced to depict Krypton as a failed state.
That scenario presents a paradox – a planet where space travel is so achievable that one lone scientist can build and launch an interstellar craft without needing the backing of any government… and also simultaneously, literally no one else on the planet escapes in time.
Jor-El has to be so brilliant he forecasts Krypton’s impending doom with enough time to save his son, but also that same theory must be dismissed as the ravings of a crackpot by the ruling class. Otherwise the societal leaders and perhaps even the people themselves would be crafting many lifeboats to get off-world in time. Unless you go with the idea that Jor-El figures it out but keeps the information to himself – and I can’t see that working because then Jor-El is practically culpable in the destruction of the Kryptonian race.
Thus, we arrive at the familiar scenario for Jor-El telling the ruling council of Krypton that they face impending doom. Jor-El never is presented as a crackpot up to this point. Most often, he’s acknowledged as one of the most brilliant minds on Krypton… yet when he says, “We’re all gonna die!” their response is, “Nah, you’re wrong.” In some versions like the Donner film, he’s barred from disseminating this information.
You can draw plenty of real world analogies here – to climate change and the refusal of conservatives to acknowledge it, to COVID and the conservative determination to do nothing about it except foster misinformation about the pandemic while simultaneously neglecting to mitigate it or track it. In every version of the mythos, you must grapple with a ruling class that has failed its people.
An argument I heard against the Byrne Krypton is that there’s no tragedy in the destruction of the planet if their society is already so cold. To me, that IS the tragedy. That for all their intelligence, all they have achieved, everything accomplished over millennia, it does nothing to escape their fate.
A planet exploding is sad because of a catastrophic loss of life. An entire advanced civilization dying needlessly because they picked terrible, ignorant people to lead them – what is that if not tragic?
Now, in Byrne’s first issue we’re given the distinct impression he has only just figured out that Krypton is set to explode. He speaks of it to Lara as if it were a recent discovery, albeit one with enough lead time that he’s able to retrofit a stardrive to their child’s matrix. So there’s a chance in this version that Jor-El didn’t even have time to be called a crackpot by the Council.
But in every version before 1986, Jor-El being disbelieved is part of the mythos. Krypton can’t really be a utopia if they choose such shitty leaders, so whatever you think Byrne’s version changes, he can’t ruin Krypton simply because the constraints of the mythos are reliant on Krypton’s failure as a society. Whether you assume the ruling council is elected or in charge as the result of some kind of caste system, you have to accept that everyone on Krypton is dead because of their devotion to a system that fails them.
Later in the Post-Crisis era, it will be revealed that Kryptonians were genetically bound to their planet due to their creation of The Eradicator 200,000 years ago. This means that any attempt at evacuation would have failed anyway. It adds another layer of tragedy – they have the technology to leave, but because of their own work in genetic engineering, they can’t.
That feels both sad and tragic to me.
At worst, Byrne replaces one tragic paradigm with another. And he writes the story in a way where Krypton’s faults aren’t glossed over. I think the people who argue Byrne ruined Krypton want to believe it’s something that it’s not. They want Krypton to be this perfect place, an ideal to reach for.
But is it not more poignant for Superman to dedicate himself to being Earth’s champion because he’s seen how easy it is for an advanced society to be swallowed up by its own mistakes/ For all of its demerits, SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE gave Superman a pretty compelling inner conflict about how involved he should get as he sees Earth barreling towards the same fate as Krypton. And in many continuities, the death of Krypton is sometimes best used as Superman’s own personal “Never again.”
In the movie, it leads him to this declaration before the entire United Nations:
“For many years now, I’ve lived among you as a visitor. I’ve seen the beauty of your many cultures. I’ve felt great joy in your magnificent accomplishments. And I have also seen the folly of your wars. As of today, I’m not a visitor anymore, because the Earth is my home too. We can’t live in fear, and I can’t stand by and watch as we stumble into madness of possible nuclear destruction.”
Throughout the Post-Crisis era, we’ll see one of Superman’s hot buttons is genetic engineering. He’s extremely mistrustful of cloning when it comes up, as he’s aware that wars were fought on Krypton as a result of their abuse of cloning technology. Krypton is more interesting for its failings because it gives Superman something to crusade against here on Earth.
STAR TREK had a particular format of episode where the Enterprise would visit a planet and at some point in the episode, a deep societal flaw would be revealed. Usually these would conveniently parallel some topical issue in our own era, and the show would use the Enterprise crew’s reaction to this failing – racism, sexism, terrorism, fascism – as a way of exploring modern calamities in a better future. Those planets held a mirror up to 20th century Earth.
That’s a function Krypton can easily serve within the mythos. It can be a wonderous place of science, but it’s not perfect. And we can study those things that they couldn’t solve, not even with their great intellects, and learn from them.
You can still shed tears for the demise of a flawed Krypton. Weep for the mistakes they never got to fix, the tiny elements that sealed their fate. If the passion hadn’t drained out of the super-logical Kryptonians of this era, they might have had more drive to get to the bottom of the mysterious tremors. But in devoting themselves to logic over all else, they came up short where a “Fight or Flight” crossroads would have existed.
Sending Superman to a more primitive Earth will always offer the promise that he can put humanity on the right path before it starts down the road that doomed Krypton.
Tragedy can take many forms. A flawless Krypton never would have had to send Superman away.
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