Review by Win Wiacek
For fans and comics creators alike, continuity can be a harsh mistress. These days, maintaining a faux-historical cloak of rational integrity for the made-up worlds we inhabit is paramount, and the worst casualty of the semi-regular sweeping changes, rationalisations and reboots is great stories that suddenly “never happened”. A most painful example of this is the wholesale loss of the entire charm-drenched mythology that had evolved around Superman’s birthworld in the wonder years between 1948 and 1985.
Throughout the 1970s, ‘The Fabulous World of Krypton’ was a back-up feature in Superman specifically revealing intriguing glimpses from the history of that lost world, but during Crisis on Infinite Earths and in its wake that was all unmade. Happily, however, these days a far wiser DC has opened the doors to all those lost moments with a more inviting and inclusive definition of continuity, so a “yay them” all around!
Eight “Untold Tales of Superman’s Native Planet” further explore that defunct wonderland, accompanied by two different miniseries both titled World of Krypton. These collectively span 1971-1988 and the tales alternate between glimpses of historical or mythological moments in the development of the Kryptonians and tales of the House of El. An astoundingly concise and tension-soaked drama in seven pages introduces Superman’s father Jor-El, traces his scholastic graduation and early triumphs in anti-gravity physics and rocketry and reveals how he met his bride-to-be, trainee astronaut Lara Lor-Van. The story also reveals how she stows away on a test rocket, crashes on the (luckily) habitable moon Wegthor and survives until her infatuated suitor finds a way to rescue her.
The remaining tales in this section concentrate on non-Jor-El episodes, presumably in lieu of what follows, and these delights are largely written by regular 1970s Superman scribes Cary Bates and Elliot S! Maggin. They feature some surprising artists including Dave Cockrum, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Gray Morrow and Marshall Rogers.
The second section reprints a pioneering miniseries that referenced many of those along with key Krypton-focussed yarns of the Superman franchise. By scripter Paul Kupperberg and artist Howard Chaykin (assisted and ghost-pencilled by Alan Kupperberg), it remains a grand old slice of comics fun and forms the spine of the new composite compilation. This epochal saga from simpler and more wondrous times is still a sheer delight for any fan tired of unremitting angst and non-stop crises.
The final section is John Byrne, Mike Mignola (sample art) and eventually Carlos Garzon’s dark reworking of the Krypton myth, depicting a radically different planet which came with the reordering of reality. It follows from Byrne’s repurposing Superman into a harsher, more uncompromising hero who might be alien in physicality but completely human in terms of feelings and attitudes. As this version became a sensational success, his creators felt compelled to revisit his bleakly dystopian birthworld, now conceived of as a far darker and more forbidding place.
Recapping the intervening millennia of history and stagnation, the Last Son of Krypton reveals how his own birth-father uncovered a shocking secret, rebelled against his moribund, morbid and repressed culture, and found brief comfort with perhaps the last kindred spirit on his world. Kal-El then tells of how they ensured his survival at the cost of their own.
Celebrating the many and varied Worlds of Krypton, this is a magnificent tribute to the imagination of many creators and the power of modern mythology: the ever-changing evolution of a world we all wanted to live on back in the heady Days of Yore(-El).
