THE STORY OF SUPERMAN'S HOME PLANET
by Dennis Power
and Dr. Peter
Coogan
Thyoph Krypton
Among the various debris of the asteroid belt are the remnants of two or three shattered planets that once circled our sun. One of these planets was named Zumor, a remnant of this planet landed on Barsoom and created the great escarpment upon which the remnants of the Zumorians live, a blue-skinned people with three eyes with a great precognitive ability.(1) Another Zumorian splinter slammed into the Earth, forming the Mutia escarpment.(2)
The other known planet that was destroyed in this cataclysm some 600,000 years in the past was Thyoph. Thyoph was a world close to Jupiter, so close in fact it could have been considered one of its moons. The giant red gas giant was so important to the Thyophians that they included it in most of the pictographs of their world. This unfortunately gave rise to the notion that Thyoph circled a red sun and made its location difficult to determine.
The people of Thyoph were of Earth-human descent, even though mankind evolved much later on Earth. One may perhaps wonder how Thyophians could have been descended from Earth humans when just human beings were beginning to appear on Earth. The answer lies in the distant future, millions of years after the last human being died and also at the beginning of the universe.
Mankind will eventually evolve into beings of pure thought/energy with the ability to shape energy and matter and to manipulate time and space as easily as an ordinary human being can hold and drink a glass of water. All time and space are as easily traversed by these beings as walking around the block is for us. They are akin to the beings known as the Q or the Organians; (3) in fact it is quite possible that they are the Q and the Organians. While they are very powerful, they are not all-powerful; while they are intelligent to a degree the common human being cannot fathom, they are not infallible. However, in their hubris they believed that they were omnipotent, omniscient, and infallible. They pursued a lassaire-faire approach to the universe at first, believing in their arrogance, as their ancestors on Earth had, that they were apart from nature rather than a part of nature. They failed to realize that with their great power came great responsibility.
They observed, with some measure of pride, that their all-too human ancestors achieved the ability to truly travel in time. These human beings, who were on the cusp of evolving into beings of thought/energy, at first colonized the distant past, leaving behind a few of their artifacts, such as the Guardian of Forever or the original Stargates. (4) They became known as the Ancients and are often confused with the non-corporeal beings of great power whose true name remained unknown, but whom we will henceforth refer to as the Omni. Eventually the Ancients achieved the capability to travel back to the beginnings of the universe. Yet even at the birth of the universe the principle that observation affects reality held true. The act of viewing the Creation was enough to alter reality, fracturing the timeline and forming divergent histories.
The Omni, those non-corporeal beings of great power and great hubris, attempted to undo the damage that the Ancients had unwittingly caused. Their efforts only increased the divergences in the timeline. They believed that once the timeline had fractured into its ultimate but incomprehensibly high number of variations, it would once again snap back and reform into one timeline. However, it could not be determined that the recreated single timeline would be the original one or even one in which human beings evolved into beings of thought/energy. So fearing for their existence, the non-corporeal Omni worked with a group of Ancients to preserve the original timeline, or at least as many close versions as they could maintain. To do this they manipulated history, but often their efforts led to as many divergences from the original history as they tried to preserve. The Ancients and their recruits who were actively involved in the various actions geared to preserving the timeline or at least the human race's eventual evolution into non-corporeal beings were called the Omni.
They also created several contingency plans.
One of the non-corporeal Omni, as legend has it the first to evolve from corporeal to non corporeal energy state, formed a barrier around the beginning of time to prevent access to it and any more fracturing; he also formed a barrier at the end of time so no longer could anyone travel to beginning of time by traversing the end of time. It is said that this Being also placed a barrier around the Milky Way galaxy to prevent extra-galactal interference and quarantine the galaxy. (5)
One of these contingency plans was to create null spaces outside of normal time and space. This technology eventually allowed the Ancients to create pocket universes, which began in part to result in universes unaffected by the temporal events happening in the regular universe.
Another secondary plan was to seed the universe with humanity before humanity even evolved and to scatter these seeds throughout time and space. The idea was that even if time unraveled, perhaps one the seeded human populations would create divergent timelines in which humanity evolved into beings of thought/energy but on a planet other than Earth.
At first they planted human beings on Earth-type planets with the idea that this would be best environment for human beings to thrive.
Being human beings themselves, the Ancients and the Preservers were not beyond having differences of opinion on the best way to achieve their goals. They formed factions. While some wished for humanity to evolve naturally into beings of thought/energy, others believed that they should accelerate matters if it were in their power to do so. Yet even here was a great difference of opinion as to how to about bring the accelerated evolution.
One faction called the Prometheans believed that humanity should be pushed along the path of evolution through beneficial intervention. One of these interventions was the placement of human beings on a planet covered with a substance designed to evolve them to the physical and mental nadir of the human form. They believed that having achieved physical perfection, humanity would then easily evolve into pure mental perfection. The planet covered with the beneficial substance was Thyoph. The Thyophians evolved to the peak of physical perfection as planned; however, after this they reached a plateau for countless millennia. The original stock of Thyophians were Phoenicians who fled from Tyre to escape the Seleucids who had invaded in 198 B.C. Rather than allowing them to perish in the desert, the Prometheans placed them in the distant past and on a different planet. Among these rescued people from Tyre were a particular family who claimed descent from a god, Aquat the archer. One branch of this family did not flee Tyre; it included the grandfather of Phra the Phoenician. (6)
In the chaos of being shifted to a new world, a man from the family who claimed descent from the archer god emerged as the leader of the small community, Girru'el. Girru was not a Phoenician name, per se, but rather an old Akkadian name derived from the god of fire and light, the patron of civilization. Girru was the messenger of the gods. The Phoenicians (Canaanites) were related to the Akkadians as they were to the Babylonians. The use of this name by the transplanted Phoenicians is like a modern day Greek naming their child Heracles, an archaic name from a religion no longer widely practiced. (7)
The el in Girru'el's name was an honorific, a title signifying "master" or "god."
"Etymologically, El is a common root in the languages of the ancient Middle East for names and terms related to a nation's high god. As such, the name El means God." As such, the name El means God. El is also a prefix or a suffix used in the conjunction with the names of other gods. For example El Shaddad is the God of the Mountain. Different cities had different concepts of not only which gods were ranked where in the pantheon, but also of which gods were included and what some of their basic attributes were. While El or Il, whose name means 'god', is commonly described as the creator of the earth, the Arameans ranked Hadad before him. Also, many city gods were named Baal, meaning 'lord'. Baal-Sidon, the city god of Sidon, was thus an entirely different deity from Baal-Hadad, the storm god.
The name El, in addition to being the common term for diving beings, was used as a suffix for names; examples are Daniel (Judge of God), Micha-El (He who is like God). In some cases it was applied to the names of demi-gods. So, as Girru established himself as a leader of people and as his ideas helped to create a new world, he was given the title of "master,"
When the Phoenicians were fleeing from the Seleucid invasion and had fled into the desert, they had invoked the God Resef to smite the invaders. Resef was the god of the plague and the god with the power of life and death and was often invoked in a time of crisis. As they lay dying from thirst and starvation in the desert, a red blotch descended from the sky and the Phoenicians all fell asleep. When they awoke the Universe had been remade and Resef had taken position in the sky to watch over them in the form of a giant reddish sun with red blotch. The red blotch, which looked like a plague spot, was Reshef's sign and eye. (8) The marvelous fertility of the remade world emblematized Reshef's power of fertility and his control over life and death. Because of his role in saving the Phoenicians, they adopted Reshef as their chief god.
To symbolize their new life in a new existence, the Phoenicians named the planet Kotharpth, "Gate of the Wise," after The Kotharot ("the skillful ones"), the seven wise goddesses of fertility and child bearing. The remade world came to be seen as a new body brought forth as a child is brought forth from the womb. Pth derives from the Semitic words pt h, "to open," and was often used as the word for gate or window. The window may have been referring to the device that transplanted them to their new home, a stargate or similar device.
The human beings on Kotharpth thrived. The mutagenic substance intermixed with the substance of the planet made each generation stronger, faster, and more durable. Their origins were forgotten over the millennia that followed as the people spread out, explored, and settled the vast reaches of their new world.
Although the settlers originated in a unified culture, over time different nations and languages developed as they spread across the planet. As the original culture diverged, so did their religious beliefs and their myths about their origins. Kotharpth was originally named after the seven wise goddesses of childbirth because it was believed that they had delivered them to this new world. Yet as some societies moved from agrarian to technological orientations, this shift was reflected in their changing creation myths. Rather than the goddesses of childbirth, many of the technological societies attributed their origins to Kothar wa Khasis whose name means "Skillful-and-Wise." He was a smith, a craftsman, an engineer, an architect, and an inventor. He was also a soothsayer and magician, as the creator of sacred words and spells. He aided Ba`al in his battles by creating and magically naming the two magic weapons with which Ba`al defeated Yam, the ocean, taming the tides of the raging sea. Kothar also created beautiful furniture adorned with silver and gold as gifts for Athirat, the consort of Ba`al. And he built Ba`al's palace of silver, gold, lapis lazuli, and cedar. Significantly, he was The Opener of the Window through which Ba`al's rains can come and go, thus he could smoothly replace the role of the Kotharot in the creation story by playing the role of the Opener of the Window through which Reshef had transported the Thyophians to the new world.(9)
This divergence was furthered by the discovery of another group of people who had survived in the remade Universe, a group of people who had been descended from Egyptians who had fled a series of plagues in their homeland. This was hailed as another sign of Resef's grace by the people descended from Phoenicians. The people descended from Egyptians shared the belief that the gods had remade the universe and had saved them because they were chosen people but differed upon which god had done the saving. The Egyptians believed that Ra, the sun god had descended in his fiery chariot and taken them into the chariot and then had burned away the old universe.
As the two cultures merged so did their religious beliefs becoming something quite unique. This syncretic merge was furthered by the frequent identification of Kothar with Taautos, the deity who created writing. Taautos was also believed to be another name for the Egyptian anubis-headed god Thoth, the god of wisdom, inventor of writing, patron of scribes, and the divine mediator.. Thoth was the name given by the Greeks to the Egyptian god Djeheuty. As with most Egyptian deities there were many different stories regarding the parentage of Thoth. Many sources call him the son of Re, the Sun. (10)
Resef had become less known as the god of the plague or god of the Wasteland Re Shef but was known as the deliverer just as the Egyptians called Ra the Deliverer. The Egyptian word for savior is Shed (11)and so Rashep became conflated with Ra-Shed, Ra the Deliverer. And then the red worlds became seen as the Abode of Ra (Raho) and the red spot itself as Ra's chariot carrying him around his home. Since Ra had originated as a sun god when Rao became identified with the giant red planet near Thyoph, this furthered the confusion of scholars regarding the identification of the giant red planet as a giant red star
Eventually the large red planet was seen not merely as a home of the god but as a physical manifestation of Rao. Thoron is a composite deity name name Tho'Rao such as the Egyptian Ptah-Seker-Osiris. This was used by Raolians to denote that the planet upon which they lived was a manifestation of Tho (Thoth) and Rao. Rao became the God from which all over gods were manifest. The word El remained as a name for the One God. It also remained as an honorific for aristocrats just as the current English language uses Lord to mean both an aristocrat or God.
The cult which first syncretized the religions was small and was influenced by the descendants of Hebrews who had accompanied the Phoenicians out of Tyre and it evolved into a monotheistic belief in which Rao became the only true God. Although this cult was small at first the Raolians eventually became the primary form of religious worship on Thyoph
El also remained as the patronymic of those descended from Girru'el, the first king of Thyoph, the family of El, which thereby maintained the association of being favored by God. The El family seemed to be on the cusp of every new technological break through and every major social change. They were doctors, political leaders, and scientists of great renown. It was the El family who brought space travel to the citizens of Thyoph and who invented the stoning technology that made interstellar travel possible.(12). It is rumored that two space traveling off-worlders married into the El family, a princess from a galaxy far, far away and a man who claimed to travel time and space in a small oblong box that was larger inside than out.(13)
There was a short period in Thyoph's history when they encountered invaders from another world, a blue-skinned race of aliens. Al Schroeder has speculated that these blue skinned invaders were members of the far-flung Kree Empire. We believe he is correct in this insofar as tales of the Kree were actually inspired by the blue-skinned Zumorians, who inhabited a planet very near Thyoph in our same solar system. The Zumorians were quite probably the inspiration for the prescient blue-skinned Oans. An off shoot of the Zumorian race existed on ancient Mars as the Blue Giants, as chronicled by Michael Moorcock in his Michael Kane series.
The people of Thyoph rose in cycles of civilization and barbarism until finally it seemed that they had achieved a nearly utopian civilization. Of course this is when they became doomed.
On their home planet the Thyophians had super strength, enabling them to lift tons and jump great distances, and they had enhanced senses. They created a civilization of super-science. Yet not even their super-science could have prevented the fragment of a star from wreaking havoc as it made its way through the solar system. It was not mere chance, however, that brought this star fragment towards Thyoph. It was a cold deliberate plan. An offshoot of the Prometheans was the Adversarialists. They believed that the highest evolutionary progress is achieved not through a beneficial environment but through catastrophes and near extinctions that test and force a species to evolve (14). Working in concert with one or two of the thought/energy beings who did not agree with the efforts of the others to preserve the timeline, a fragment of a sundered star was sent to destroy Thyoph in the hope that it would force the Thyophians to evolve, or would, if they did not evolve, wipe the slate clean and get rid of the failed experiment.(15)
When it became known that the stellar fragment was heading towards Thyoph, reactions were mixed, as would be the case with any population of sentient beings. Unfortunately a large segment of the population was swayed by two religious clerics from different sects of Rao. One was a fundamentalist (or self proclaimed fundamentalist), a Raolian who convinced many people that this was a test by Rao. The Great God would not allow harm to come to his chosen people, if only they had faith. The burning doom would be swept aside by the hand of Rao in the nick of time, if people only had faith. The other came from the mystical Raolian Gate of Heaven cult, (16) which believed that the burning ball of fire heading towards Thyoph was Rao's Gate of Heaven. The Thyophians had reached their spiritual and physical nadir, so Rao was coming to collect them. Rao's chariot would burn the physical essence of Thyoph to cinders and carry the free spirits to Heaven. Since these religious adherents were the majority of the planet and they believed that taking measures to avoid this coming fate showed a lack of faith, they did everything they could to prevent anyone from leaving Thyoph.
A scientist named Gir El believed that the only way to save Thyophian society was to leave the planet. Many people concurred with his belief in this. However, as with those who believed that they had to stay on Thyoph, there was a great dispute as to the method they should use to leave it.
Gir El believed that the stellar fragment would miss the third planet and possibly the fourth planet, which were the only other habitable planets in the solar system. He also believed that a warp engine he was creating would allow the Thyophians to leave the solar system for a short time and return after the solar fragment had passed. Gir-el believed it was necessary to leave the solar system because the star fragment would be passing by the habitable planets of the third and fourth planets first and if the ship flew towards these planets there was a good chance that the ship would be caught in the gravity of the stellar fragment. He thought it would be best to fly out of the solar system ahead of the stellar fragment and then circle back at warp speed.
His most vehement opponent in this venture was his own brother, Zir-El. He believed that the solar system was doomed. His calculations showed the stellar fragment destroying the tenth and fifth planets, severely damaging the fourth planet, and causing great havoc on the third planet. He believed they should abandon the solar system forever. Zir-El wished to build a space ark and fill it with as much of the Thyophian flora, fauna, and human beings as possible. His idea was to load the space ark with twenty children for every adult. This would allow more children to be transported from the planet than adults. On a practical note this meant more of the population could be saved since children would take up less space. However Children without supervision would have been suicidal for the culture. This was also a good ratio in terms of a breeding population. They could land on the planet and take several years to get established. The children would then be old to start families and the colony would be going well. Zir-El believed that if the exodus population had been mainly comprised of adults they would have had to start having families immediately since they would be focused on building a new settlement.
Zir-el believed that a ship with a sub-light drive in which the entire interior had been preserved with stoning technology would be better suited to get as many people away from Thyoph in the time they had left in which to build a ship. Zir-El believed that this was no time to tinker with new technology such as the warp drive.
Since working on a method to escaped the doomed planet had been virtual outlawed, Gir El and Zir El worked in secret. Because of their opposing ideologies they also worked separately. Zir El was correct in his belief that Gir El's warp engines would not be ready by the time the stellar fragment entered the solar system. Several people who believed that Gir El was correct that the third and fourth planets would remain untouched used an older impulse-style engine to travel to the third planet, following a wide arc to avoid the oncoming stellar fragment. This colony of Thyophians, lead by a cousin of Gir El named Zat El, did not have any lasting impact on Earth's history despite their great strength and abilities. Their ship crashed and they were left in the most primitive of states. However, they were accidentally visited by the Legion of Super Heroes at one time ("The War Between Krypton and Earth," Adventure Comics 333) (17)
Gir-El was indeed incorrect and the stellar fragment did cause a great deal of damage to the third and fourth planets. The Thyophian refugees found conditions in which they were hard pressed to survive, despite their seeming advantages. They survived as a small population, but each succeeding generation was more earth-normal than the preceding one. By the time that the human population had spread out across the globe, the Thyophian refugees' super strength was a thing of the past. (18)
Gir El failed to finish his larger warp engine by the time that the stellar fragment neared Thyoph. His wife and he decided to load their infant son into a small rocket that had been used to test the warp engine. The infant's full name was Melkal't El, a derivation of Melkart, the Phoenician Hercules. His parents called him by the nickname of Kal. Kal's ship was programmed to warp out of the solar system and then return, flying to the third planet. The onboard computer was programmed to locate the Thyophians who had preceded Kal.
Gir-El launched his ship just as Thyoph was experiencing severe seismic disruptions. The ship entered space and was battered by an incredible amount of debris broken off from various planetary bodies that the stellar fragment had either passed too closely to or hit. The autopilot avoided the great masses of debris, but in so doing caused the small ship to get too close to the gravity well of the stellar fragment. Avoiding the fragment's gravity caused the ship to accelerate towards the sun out of control. Entering the sun's gravity well, the small ship slammed into warp drive. The engines nearly had a core failure as they used full power to break away from the sun's gravity well. The small ship left the sun's gravity well, the solar system, and finally the space-time continuum. It traveled both temporally and physically. The small ship was still under great velocity when it swung around and re-entered the solar system. As programmed, it flew towards the third planet, decelerating but still traveling through time as well as space. The engines ran out of fuel as it entered the third planet's atmosphere. The heat shielding kept the infant inside from being cooked alive but just barely. The skin of the ship melted in entry. The ship slammed into the fields outside of Indian Springs, Colorado. Had the infant been a mere Earth human, he would have been baked and pulverized; being a Thyophian, Kal was barely singed.
The infant crawled out of the burning wreckage and was found by passing motorists, Abednego Danner and his wife Matilda. Professor Danner immediately ascertained what had happened and was somewhat perturbed that the ship had been destroyed by its entry into the earth's atmosphere and crash landing. A few shards of cindered metal were all that was left. He believed that the ship had broken up in the atmosphere and more of it would eventually be found. Abednego Danner and his wife adopted the child and raised him as their own, naming him Hugo after their first child who had died at birth. (19)
Zir-El's space ark was basically a small Thyophian town, primarily composed of children with a few adults. "Town" here is meant literally--whole buildings, animals, plants, and people were stoned and sealed up in a minimally equipped space ship with a navigational computer and a propulsion system. Since every living thing was stoned, there was no need for life support or other systems. The computer was set on a course for the nearest star that could support human life; when it neared a planet habitable for human beings, it would de-stone the adults who would then land the ship and de-stone the children, plants, and animals, transplanting an entire Thyophian town onto another world. (20)
The debris that struck Kal-El's ship also hit the space ark. The guidance computer and the navigational computer were severely damaged and stopped working several million miles outside of the solar system. The ark went careening through space and time as a derelict vessel for millions of years. As the ark tumbled through space, the Preservers and Ancients continued their seeding of the stars with human populations.
Other races also seeded the stars, but for more nefarious purposes. One such race was the Gouald, who co-opted an ancient interstellar method of transportation known as the stargates. They placed human populations on various planets to rule and to use as hosts, since they were parasites living inside human bodies. These may be the same beings Al Schroeder calls the Marsvaders, although they may be a different species entirely.(21)
Two of the other races placed on planets by space-seeding races, the Eridaneans and Capelleans, were of Earth-human origin like the Thyophians. However, their genetic drift from the human norm did not result in the super strength of the Thyophians. The Eridaneans were either shifted from Earth through the machinations of the Goulad using stargates that malfunctioned and also sent them back in time, or else they were seeded by the Preservers. Since they had no direct encounters with the Goulad as far as we know, the latter theory seems more tenable.
The Eridaneans and Capelleans both achieved extended life spans on their own and also interstellar travel due to hyperdrive ships. Thrilled at first to find other human beings in the galaxy, they soon discovered that they clashed on ideological grounds and became bitter enemies. On the border between their two respective interstellar civilizations was a planet that was rich in the power crystals used to power their hyperdrive vessels. A bitter war was fought over the planet until it was decided by truce to share the planet.
The problem was that the planet was composed of a high degree of crystal; the power crystals in fact grew here. Mining had to be done carefully, without destroying the newly forming crystals. Therefore human beings had to do the mining. The problem, though, was the planet itself, because the combination of high gravity, thin air, and destructive solar radiation caused a 90% fatality rate among the miners. The planet was named Kryp'Tn, the Crystal World.(22)
The Capelleans and Eridaneans decided to work together to find a method to allow human beings to mine the planet safely. Marra, a Capellean scientist who had made the major breakthrough in the Capellean longevity serum, took on the challenge. He claimed he could design a human body from scratch that would not only survive on Kryp'Tn but thrive. That is, if the sanctions against such genetic research were lifted.
In fifty years, Marra produced the first generation of Kryptonians, a result of gene therapy and a hybrid of Capellean and Eridanean DNA attained through cloning.(23)
The Kryptonians were given enhanced skin, musculature, and bone density to withstand the high gravity and harsh atmospheric conditions of Kryp'Tn. Because a giant red sun gives off solar radiation in proportions not conducive for mammalian life, the colonists' cellular structure was constructed to contain solar filters and solar batteries. The filters strain out the destructive radiation and the batteries store up the positive radiation, reducing but not eliminating their need to eat.
Because light is at a premium on their world, the Kryp'Tn colonists were also given ocular enhancements in the form of multiple lenses, giving them vision of great depth, distance, and detail. As a by-product of the ocular enhancements and as a means of bleeding off excessive stored energy, they were given the ability to focus and project light beams from their eyes. At first this was an ability that could not be used very often and was used only in cases of extreme emergency, such as in cave-ins where there was no light source. However, as the generations passed the ability grew stronger and easier to use; the light beams evolved into heat beams akin to biological laser beams.
Finally the Kryptonian colonists were given an inherent affinity for the fuel crystals. In this way, they could locate and distinguish the necessary crystals faster and more efficiently.
It was not discovered until the 30th century A.D. (Terran calendar) that Marra did not in fact not create the Kryptonian genome from scratch. (24) He had come into possession of a fortuitous piece of space debris, the ship containing the stoned Thyophians.
The Thyophian ship at first seemed a bizarre thing to Marra. It was a battered and many holed piece of space junk filled with statues of men, women, children, strange animals, plants, and even buildings and various smaller implements. The stone from which the statues were carved, however, was very intriguing since it seemed to resist all efforts to cut or chip or otherwise mar the surface of the stone. He believed and had reason to believe that the statues contained information that would be beneficial to him. All he had to do was to figure out how to access this information. He applied many forms of energy to the stone statues in his attempts to probe them. He succeeded in destroying two, a small fork-shaped object and a statue of a small rodent.
Marra finally succeeded in de-stoning a plant resembling a rose. He intuitively realized that these were not statues at all but a wealth of biological material for him to study and experiment upon. While most people would not have looked upon the survivors of a lost and ancient civilization previously unknown to mankind as a collection of laboratory specimens, Marra was not like other men. He was a focused, scientific sociopath who believed that his research and the goals that he needed to achieve were more important than the lives of these surviving space travelers. He viewed most people only as means to an end. Marra had been approached by a secret society when his first illicit experimentations were discovered during his adolescence. The secret society was The Nine, which had been begun by a member of the Adversarialists when the Capelleans had achieved interstellar travel. Although the secret society of the Nine alluded to having ties to the Capellean Hierarchy, the Council of Nine, this does not seem to be the case, except in the case of one or two councilors. The agenda on Cappella was, as it was on every other planet that they had infiltrated, to help mankind evolve to their greatest state of being through calamity, disaster, and social chaos. (25)
By the time that Capella had achieved space travel, however, it had unified into a stable, nearly utopian planetary government. The Nine therefore found it hard to promulgate social chaos on Capella itself. However, the meeting of the Capellans and the Eridaneans proved to be fertile ground. It was through the efforts of the Nine that the relations between the Eridaneans and the Capelleans alternated between war and peace, with each conflict becoming progressively more disastrous for each side.
Marra was recruited by the Nine because of his brilliant scientific mind and because it was believed that his innovations could create societal chaos. Also his recruitment was a way to channel his psychotic and sociopathic impulses towards the betterment of society. It was believed that his Kryptonian project could introduce a greatly chaotic element through the introduction of a superhuman race, which could turn against the Capelleans and Eridaneans and lead to a galactic war. To this end he was guided to find the wrecked ship and see if he could unlock its secrets. The Nine had every confidence that he would. He transported the entire ship to an uninhabited planet on the outskirts of the Capellean Confederation and began his experiments.
Once Marra had successfully de-stoned a plant, he recreated the same energy influx and de-stoned a cat.(26)He compared the DNA of the de-stoned cat to that of a cat from Capella. They were virtually identical.(27). Marra realized he could work with the cellular structure of the people he had found. Marra chose a young female of child-bearing years to de-stone first. The de-stoning process unfroze the person in the state they were in when they were stoned. A sleeping person would still be sleeping, however, a conscious person would be conscious.(28) Marra placed the female statue in a small chamber and de-stoned her. He flooded the room with an anesthetic gas. However, the female did not succumb and began smashing at the door, bending the metal in an effort to escape. He increased the dosage of the gas far beyond what would normally kill a human being. It was only then that she had succumbed. The door was nearly bent out and dislodged from its steel frame even though it had been gauged to withstand a nuclear blast.
He quickly strapped her onto a table and attempted to sedate her. However, he found that his hypodermics would not pierce her skin. Not having time to experiment before she recovered, he regrettably ran a tube down her throat and filled her with the most toxic substance he had on hand. Performing an autopsy proved to be a challenge as he needed to use high intensity lasers designed to cut dense metals. He discovered that this race of people had the tissue densities that would be needed for the Kryptonian genome.
Since the adults would prove to be too dangerous, Marra separated the stoned adults from the rest of the material on the battered ship. He thought about destroying these stoned adults but could not bring himself to destroy such a valuable resource. He dropped most of them into the ocean. Two or three he kept as decorative statues. Over the next ten years Marra de-stonedmany of the children, harvesting them for their genetic material before disposing of them. He subjected the de-stonedchildren to the environment of Kryp'Tn recreated in his laboratory. Each fatality brought him closer to his solution. Using recombinant DNA and clones, he tweaked the DNA of these space travelers so that they would be naturally suitable to thrive on Kryp'Tn. When he was certain he was successful, he made a test batch of first-generation Kryptonians to be raised under the artificial conditions of Kryp'Tn. Seeing the children grow up, he realized that should the Kryptonians ever leave their planet, they would be uncontrollable and if hostile could come to dominate the Capellean and Eridanean worlds. While Marra did not care about that too much, he felt unease at that the magnitude of such uncontrolled power, especially if it ever became directed at him. Poisoning this batch and starting from scratch, he discovered a rather elegant way to control the Kryptonians. Since Marra had configured their cells to soak up and store solar radiation as a partial solution of their great energy requirements, he also made their immune system partially dependent on solar radiation. His final step was to make the Kryptonians allergic to one of the most common metals in the universe, a metal that Kryp'Tn lacked, lead. The accumulation of lead in their systems would affect the solar-radiation gathering mechanisms, which would affect their nutritional system and their immune systems. Unless the lead was flushed from their systems, it would build up in their brains and cause various dysfunctions. Consequently, their immune systems would shut down, allowing them to be killed by the mildest of infections, and they would slowly starve to death. After he had successfully tested this new control on two subjects, Marra created another batch of clones to be raised under artificial Kryptonian conditions.
As a double blind, he also made a duplicate batch to be raised on the planet on which he was based. This planet, although harsh by Capellean and Earth standards, was quite suitable for human settlement. These children grew up exhibiting the same powers as the Kryptonians. He let them thrive on this planet as a back-up for the Kryptonian genome in case unforeseen conditions on Kryp'Tn arose. Marra de-stoned the plants and animals in the space ark but hid the ship, He left behind several teaching machines, which taught the adolescents various skills that they would need to survive. He then basically left them to their own graces.
These adolescents named themselves The Abandoned Ones, or in Capellean, Daxam.(29)
Marra took the batch of genetically altered clones who had been raised under Kryptonian conditions to Kryp'Tn. He had raised them with knowledge of both Eridanean and Capellean languages, customs, and cultures. Marra announced that he had successfully created a human being that could thrive on Kryp'Tn. With Capellean and Eridanean aid, the Kryptonians were able to build successful colonies. The mining of the power crystals boomed and interstellar trade blossomed. It was soon discovered that the brilliant Marra had seemingly made a serious error in creating the Kryptonian genome. The Kryptonians were susceptible to lead poisoning, which made them virtual prisoners on their home world. Marra vowed to find a cure.
First, however, he announced that he had discovered a longevity treatment that would only take one treatment and would also provide general good health and maintain a young, muscular physique. This treatment was another invention Marra lifted from the Thyophians. He had discovered various nanites in the Thyophian systems that provided longevity, general good health, and body maintenance. He learned to reprogram the nanites so they would not be specific for the Thyophian body
It was discovered that Marra had used clone drones to create his version of the longevity nanites. These were clones with a low mental capacity. Although most Capelleans were horrified at the idea of using these altered human beings as guinea pigs, clone drones soon became used for menial tasks and high-risk vocations such as mining.
As Kryp'Tn thrived and its population grew and cities were formed out of the barren wastes, the Eridanean and Capellean civilizations each began to covet Kryp'Tn. Two devastating wars between the great interstellar civilizations followed. Although they were concerned with other issues, the possession of Kryp'Tn remained a sticking point in the treaties ending the wars.
Clone drones became prevalent, even on Kryp'Tn. A society of high science, technology, and art formed with clones composing the menial class. It seems that once freed of their need for subsistence living, the Kryptonians proved to have super minds as well as super bodies. About two hundred years after the second Eridanean-Capellean War ends, a Kryptonian scientist discovered an inter-space dimension, which he named the Phantom Zone. He described it as the space between the space between dimensions. If transported into the Zone, living tissue becomes static and insubstantial without losing cohesion. At this time, however, there is no way to successfully retrieve an object back from the Zone.
In twenty-five years this problem was solved and living objects could be successfully transported back and forth between the Phantom Zone and real space. This method, however, did not work for the first human volunteer, who was trapped in the Zone for fifty years.
After the first human explorer was finally retrieved from the Phantom Zone, it was discovered that his physical body had not aged one second while he had been zoned. His mind, however, had been active all the while. He described the Phantom Zone as a vast chaos of quantum sinkholes, black hole estuaries, floating energy fields and distortions, odd singularities, and formless wastes. Shortly after his restoration to the physical world, he committed suicide, something he had wanted to do for the previous 45 years.
After the Third Capellean and Eridanean War broke out, one of the biological warfare viruses (designed by Marra) had an unfortunate effect on a portion of the Eridanean population. They became violently addicted to sex. If denied sexual outlet when they desired it, they would resort to rape and murder. The Eridanean Council of Nine had no choice but to exile the victims of this plague to the Phantom Zone until a cure was found. The disease victims were known as the Tocs.
Kryp'Tn, however, believed that the Phantom Zone was a punishment worse than death and refused its use for such purposes. They reserved it only for the most vicious and evil of criminals. Their most common form of the death penalty was to put a person in suspended animation and place them in orbit around the planet.
While Kryp'Tn thrived, so did Daxam. Despite starting a civilization virtually from scratch, they used the learning machines that Marra had left behind to build a society that moved rapidly into a technological age. The Daxamites spread out across Daxam as their Thyophian ancestors had on Thyoph. Yet as a people they wondered how and why they were placed on this planet. They yearned to travel from it. They had reached the stage of powered flight when the death from the stars struck.
A meteorite high in lead content struck near a city, and the people began dying. Wearing protective suits, scientists gathered up the meteorite rocks and stored them in a golden box, which was then buried. It was at this time that the idea of traveling to the stars was given up, for it was believed that it would be too deadly for the people of Daxam. Their abandonment on this world and their inability to leave it led to a break down in the social order and civil war.
Out of the midst of this civil war came a prophet, an old man who began preaching a doctrine about the god Rao. When the old man was exposed to lead and did not become ill, it was seen as a sign that he was truly a messenger from God. His story was that he had been leaving his own planet, which was on the verge of destruction and had found himself standing in the center of a great city. It was noted that this old man resembled one of their most ancient statues. This statue, which had been in the city's square since the founding of their world, was gone. Eyewitness accounts stated they saw the statue struck by lightning and then this man had stood there. His name was Jaf-El and he was the uncle of Zir and Gir El.(30 )
The faith of Rao swept Daxam; they had needed something to believe in. Jaf-El believed that the mystery of how these children of Rao had somehow been placed on this planet and gained strange new abilities could only be found in space. He understood that the Daxamites could not accompany him, but he felt the need to try to discover what had happened to his ship, which he believed was the one that had placed the Daxamites on Daxam. The Daxamites used their technology to build him a star ship but it could only travel at sublight speed. Jaf-El was approaching the end of his thousand-year life span, so it was a gamble whether he would find his people before he died in the remaining two hundred years allotted to him. The Daxamites also provided him with suspended animation technology to increase his chances of finding his people before he perished.
One of the Daxamites decided to accompany Jaf-El despite the possibility that he could be poisoned by lead. His name was Halk Kar.
Halk Kar and Jaf-El traveled into the Capellean system, where they were believed to be Kryptonians foolish enough to leave their home planet. Hearing of this planet where there were people much like themselves, they traveled towards it. Since their ship was so slow they visited several planets along the way, Halk Kar taking pains to wear a protective suit each planet fall. During their travels, the Fourth Capellean-Eridanean War broke out.
They were dismayed at the slavery that they saw, the clones being kept in physical and mental bondage. Jaf-El began to preach about Rao and against the practice of holding clones in bondage.
Many Eridanean and Capellean citizens felt the same way, as did most of the clones. The clones may have been genetically tailored to be intellectually deficient, but that does not mean that they could not reason or did not have any emotional capacity. In the midst of the Fourth Capellean-Eridanean War, the clone revolt broke out.
Even though Kryp'Tn was neutral in this war, as with all of the conflicts between the Eridanean and Capelleans, they were not unaffected by the clone rebellion, especially when Jaf-El and Halk Kar arrived and began to preach. Halk Kar was a man from a distant planet who had the same abilities and weakness as they did despite not having to live in such harsh conditions. Jaf-El was a man who was super strong and yet did not have their weakness to lead.
Many Kryptonians believed that they had been lied to about their origins. As the clone rebellion gained momentum, a civil war broke out between those who believed that Jaf-El spoke the truth about their origins. The leader of the pro Jaf-El faction learned all he could about the worship of Rao and about the customs and culture of their ancestors. He asked to be adopted into Jaf-El's family and took the name of Jan-El.
In the midst of the Kryptonian civil war, Jaf-El finally succumbed to old age. Halk Kar decided to leave Kryp'Tn and continue searching for Jaf-El's people or his home planet of Thoron. (31). Jan-El agreed that it was important to find roots, however, political and social concerns made the Kryptonian expedition to lost Thoron impossible. Instead, Jan-El promised to follow after him once the civil war had been won.
Using the information given to him by Jaf-El, Halk Kar was able to plot a course for the Thoron system. Going into suspended animation, he slowly traveled towards our solar system.(32)
As Halk Kar traveled towards Earth, the fourth Capellean-Eridanean war ended, clones were granted limited rights in the Capellean and Eridanean civilizations, and Kryp'Tn declared its independence. Believing that the Capellean and Eridaneans had lied about their origins, Jan-El, who had emerged as the world's leader, declared Kryp'Tn isolationist. All trade would be between robot ships. Any attempt to kill off the Kryptonians by poisoning their atmosphere with lead would result in the destruction of all power crystal mines. Jan-El forbade the use of space travel lest a Kryptonian accidentally bring about the destruction of his people. All knowledge pertaining to hyperdrive ships was destroyed.
As it turned out, the Eridaneans and Capelleans were soon involved in another war, which included the use of virulent bacteriological and biological weapons. The Adversarialists had decided to write these too static civilizations off. Using Marra as their agent, they kept the tensions high. Since Marra had been a good agent for them and they believed that his usefulness would continue, they offered him the chance to experiment on a civilization unknown to either the Eridaneans or Capelleans. He could carry out his experiments to his heart's content but could not eradicate the population of the planet, and he had to use whatever means he could to keep the world in a state of chaos.
The planet was soon discovered by Capellean and Eridanean scientists, who were intrigued to find another planet of human beings. They sent observation teams to observe the planet. Marra managed to get a place on the Capellean observation team. While the Capelleans and Eridaneans were observing the planet, the final Capellean and Eridanean War broke out. The two observation vessels carried out a ritual space duel, and both ships were destroyed. The survivors took refuge on the planet they were observing, a planet called Earth.
Bio-bombs that Marra had placed throughout Eridanean and Capellean space killed off entire worlds and brought about the collapse of these great civilizations.
Kryp'Tn grew and thrived in its isolation. The Kryptonians learned to use their super minds to bring about super science, which transformed their world from a barren wasteland to a virtual paradise, while still being able to preserve many of the exotic, natural features of their planets such as the jewel mountains, gold volcanoes, etc.
Jan-El's son Wir-El freed Kryp'Tn from its greatest fear: he created a nanite that would keep their bodies free of lead. No longer would they have to fear death from exposure to some bizarre element. Had they not been living in self-imposed isolation, they could have conquered the remnants of the Eridanean and Capellean civilizations. On the other hand, they could have also freed the Daxamites from the curse of lead poisoning. Yet they chose isolation and a growing pacifism due to the religion of Rao.
For two thousand years the Kryptonian civilization flourished. The El family played a dominant role in its history. One of Kryp'Tn's preeminent scientists was Jor-L. He seems to have played a role on Kryp'Tn similar to Earth's Doc Savage, although perhaps to a lesser degree since Kryp'Tn did not have that much crime. He stopped a mad man from using a quake making machine, which would had destroyed planet.(33) He stopped the teenage rampage of a gang of juvenile delinquents under the leadership of a boy named Dev-Em. Dev-Em accidentally killed a man during one of his exploits and was placed in a suspended animation vessel.(34) Jor-L's greatest fight was against a military man who had seized control of one of the continents of Kryp'Tn. This man used a fundamentalist version of the Raolian religion to form a fascist government. General Zod was also a racist. He believed that blond hair coloring was result of mongrel Eridanean and Capellean genes mixed with the pure Kryptonian genome. Because of his practice of killing such persons whenever his forces conquered an area, when General Zod and his ruling party were finally caught it was determined to place them into the Phantom Zone despite the Kryptonian belief that this punishment was worse than damnation.
However, General Zod had followers who petitioned for his return and constantly belittled Jor-L's accomplishments and twisted the truth about his campaigns against Kryp'Tn's few criminals. Many people came to believe that Jor-L's seeming altruism was merely self-aggrandizement and came to believe that he exaggerated the threat of the criminals he fought, including General Zod.
After Jor-L discovered the geological instability that would destroy Kryp'Tn, he began a campaign to get the Science Council to lift the ban on interstellar travel so that the Kryptonians could flee their planet. Some of General Zod's followers accused Jor-L of fabricating the threat so that the door would be opened for Kryp'Tn to end its isolationism, a position which Jor-L had always favored. According to the Zodies, ending the policy of isolation would once again allow Kryp'Tn to be polluted by off-worlder influences. The disinformation campaign of General Zod's followers was so effective that the Science Council vacillated on the decision until it was too late.
Jor-L and his brother went ahead with their plans to build ships large enough to allow their families to escape the planet's destruction. Their plans were severely set back when their first prototype was stolen. The Science Council got wind of their activities and the brothers were forced to go into hiding, separating for their own safety. Seismic disturbances began to shake the planet. This also reflected a fracture in the social order as frightened people became ardent Raolians or joined the legions of the Zodies.
Zor-L used the warp engine they had designed for the first prototype to build a one-man vessel, which he tested. After his successful flight, he placed his teenage daughter in the ship and sent her towards the solar system from which the legendary Jaf-El had originated. The warp drive was a slow one, but Kara remained in suspended animation.
Jor-L was arrested by the Science Police for his illegal activities. It was only through the aid of some of his friends that he was able to escape from imprisonment. There was no time to build a vessel for the entire family, so Lara and he concentrated on making their test rocket suitable for their child's safety and for his new life on the alien world. They filled his ship with various devices, including teaching machines, a Phantom Zone projector, and a construcrystal that had been programmed to recreate The L family mansion, including the articles within it such as family portraits, various scientific devices, etc. The latter, of course, were built by nanites programmed into the crystals, which would use Earth materials to replicate the non-crystalline elements.
Although Jor-L and Lara had named their son Kal after a friend of hers, Kal was also a family name and further hearkened back to Jas-Ef's tales of their true heritage. Jor-L sent his son in a rocket with a faster warp engine than the one sent by his brother. The destination was the same, towards the solar system Jaf-El had stated was the origin of their race. His son's rocket would land on Earth long before his niece's would.
After his son's rocket was lost to sight, Jor-L saw another heat trail cross the sky and exit the atmosphere. He wondered who else had created a rocket.(35) A giant chasm opened up in Kryptonopolis, and thousands of people fell to their deaths, Jor-L and Lara among them. They clutched each other, gladdened at least that their son had escaped this fate.
Kal-L's rocket was accompanied by a great deal of debris from Kryp'Tn, which was carried along in his warp bubble. When the warp engines stopped as Kal-L's ship neared Earth, the fragments of Kryp'Tn slammed into the asteroid belt intermixing with the debris from Thyophite, forming a new element that has come to be called Kryptonite.(36)
Pummeled by debris, Kal-L's ship entered earth's atmosphere at a bad angle. Despite the shielding on the ship, the heat caused the ship to break in half. The section with the engine in it blew up in the jet stream, scattering Kryptophite and pieces of Clark's ship across the landscape of America. The supplies that Jor-El had packed were mostly incinerated through heat friction, but the Phantom Zone projector and the construcrystal were undamaged for the most part.(37) The main section with the toddler in it was unaffected by the heat friction since Jor-El had made certain this had the most shielding. He had also wrapped the child in special heat resistant and impact resistant blankets.(38)
Little Kal-L's ship fell in the fields of a Kansas farm family. Jonathan and Martha Kent investigated the falling star and found a small baby, delivered by God to their hands, or so they thought. They named the boy Clark Kent and raised him as their son. Their upbringing made him into a super boy scout, or so he acted through much of his career as Superman.
NOTES
(1) The Zumorians were first identified in Tarzan on Mars by John Bloodstone.
(2) For more on the Mutia Escarpment see Tarzan? Jane? By Dennis E. Power
(3)The Q are extra-dimensional entities with unlimited powers. On the Richter scale of cultural development, they rank as the highest known level of evolutionary development. A Q can assume any shape, any phenomena, and even manipulate the space/time continuum itself if he so desired. It is speculated that they can harness immense amounts of energy and manipulate them through thought alone. The Q are as close to immortality as anyone has seen One particular individual has taken an interest in humanity and has been known to interact with the crews of the Enterprise D, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. He first appeared in Star Trek The Next Generaton "Encounter at Farpoint".The Organians are Powerful Non-Corporeal life forms from Organia IV near the Klingon-Federation Border. The Organians were humanoid once several hundred thousand years ago, but they evolved into near omnipotent beings. They maintain a guise of a primitive, peaceful, agrarian people for the benefit of visitors and were considered to be just as they appeared until they made their existence known in 2267. They displayedjust how powerful they could be collectively by disarming a Federation starship and a small Klingon invasion fleet. They imposed a treaty between the Federation and the Klingon Empire because they detest violence and their world is along the border and along a strategic corridor. The treaty they imposed established the neutral zone. They predicted the Federation-Klingon détente by at least 40 years. The Organians are responsible for the Organian Peace Treaty in 2267, which is responsible for peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire until the two allied many years later. Star Trek. "Errand of Mercy" Star Trek Aliens http://cage.p.tripod.com/index.html
(4) The Guardian of Forever is a The Guardian of Forever is located on a planet called "Time Planet". This world is the only planet of a giant red star in its last stages. The Guardian is more than ten million years old. It is not known much of the civilization that built the Guardian, with the exception of impressive, extensive ruins and the Guardian of Forever itself. The Guardian is located in the city of Oyya, which occupies 2000 square kilometers. The material and the principles on which the Guardian of Forever are based upon are completely unknown. Its function seems to be that of showing the past of any planet, with the exception of the Time planet itself and of allowing journeys in time. The planet has been set under quarantine and the Federation Counsel has declared General Prohibition P-119 that establishes that no person or vessel under any circumstance can approach the UFC system 465537. The Stargates are devices that create wormholes allowing for instantaneous transportation between star systems. They were created by the Ancients who eventually abandoned them as the Ancients evolved beyond physical form. The stargates were later found and operated by various other races a few such as the Iconians who duplicated the technology and others such as the Goa'uld who merely seized control of them without actually mastering the technology behind them. The Iconians can be seen in the Star Trek: The Next Generation. "Contagion"and the stargate system is a major player in the Star Trek novel serial Gateways, Pocket Books, 2000. The Goa'uld are from film Stargate and also the television series Stargate SG-1
(5) In the annals of the Legion of Superheroes the first non-corporeal being who evolved is referred to as the Time Trapper.
(6)The Preservers tended to pick human populations that history recorded as dying or disappearing to avoid causing possible temporal anomalies. Evidence for this tendency is seen in the Philip Jose Farmer novel Dare,in which the Roanoke colony is transplanted onto a distant planet. There are several likely reasons why they picked this group of Phoenicians, but the exact reasons cannot be known for certain. One of the theories is that this group of people already had one common ancestor with superior genes, some knew him as a god named Aquat the Archer. He was also known by the name Terah and perhaps Gilgamesh, most commonly he is known as Tarzan.
(7)Canaanite/Ugaritic Mythology FAQ, ver. 1.2 by Christopher B. Siren http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze33gpz/canaanite-faq.html
(8)Although Jupiter has one giant storm which has been raging for hundreds of years the so called Red Spot, the storms seem to be a recurring phenomenon of varying intensity. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the planet also had such phenomenon at the time the Phoenicians arrived
(9) QADASH KINAHNU A Canaanite Phoenician temple http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/2938/mindei.html#kothar
(10) One can see how the Ko sound could be transformed into a Tho sound as the languages shifted. Concurrent with this shift was a half remembered revival of Hellenic and Egyptian gods added into the emerging pantheons. This is not as odd as it sounds. There were actually close ties to Canaanite and Egyptian mythology either from an originally shared semitic culture, cultural diffusion, religious syncretism, or all of the above. Kothar was equated with Taut/Thoth, the son of Re. In some cultures the name for the planet shifted from Kotharpth to Thothpth as the Thoth name was exchanged for Kothar. Thothpth would eventually be transformed into Thyopth. This has been further transformed into Thyoph which has become the name by which the planet is known to most Earthly scholars, this will be the come the way we will spell it in this article. The differences in spelling and pronunciation in the name can be accounted for by modifications of the language.
(11) http://members.tripod.com/historel/egypt/09egypt.htm
(12)The stoning technology is described in Philip Jose Farmer's The Stone God Awakens and his Dayworld series: Dayworld, Dayworld Rebel, and Dayworld Break Up. A stoner is a sort of matter-freezer, capable of freezing all the atomic movement in a piece of matter. The molecules and atoms, and the parts that made up the atoms-the protons, neutrons, and so forth cease all motion. A bacterium subjected to this matter freezer would become a microscopic statue. Theoretically nothing could destroy it: acids, explosives, great heat, atomic radiation, and so forth.
(13) Al Schroeder's "The House of El"- argues that Superman was descended from Dr. Who and Luke Skywalker. We agree with these speculations but with reservations on the exact construction of the genealogy Dr. Schroder has laid out in this article. Given our premise that there are two Supermen, Hugo Danner and Clark Kent who share a similar heritage, all of Mr. Schroeder's genealogy is correct in a sense, yet not all of the genealogical speculations are true for both men. I believe that Dr. Who and Luke Skywalker are common ancestors of both Clark Kent and Hugo Danner but that the majority of Mr. Schroeder's genealogy on Krypton actually only applies to Clark Kent.
(14)In other words the Adversarialists are forcing evolution in accordance with the principles of punctuated equilibrium For more see Punctuated Equilibrium http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/PUNCTUEQ.html
(15) Another version, although differing in details, of the destruction of Thyoph and the creation of the asteroid belt can be seen at NOTES TOWARDS A MYTHOS HISTORY OF THE ASTEROIDS by Steven Marc Harris.
(16)Although there appears at first to be no known connection between the tragic Heaven's Gate cult and the Raelian cult, given the correspondences between the former and the suicidal bent of the Heaven's Gate cultists and the Raelians whose beliefs and emphasis on cloning also had some resonation with the cloning culture on Krypton. Yet any connection is surely absurd for one an indivdual to have been exposed to both concepts of the Gate of Heaven and the Raolain cloning cult would have had to be extraordinarily long lived. Although some conspiracy minded WNU researchers claim that documents from the Watcher organization concerning the immortal Marra claim that he was a member of Heaven's Gate and also had close ties with Rael the founder of the Raelian movement. For more about Heaven's Gate please see, http://www.stelling.nl/simpos/heavgate.htm For more on Rael please visit www.rael.org
(17) We believe Al Schroeder's research conflated the space arks of Zir El and Zat El into one vehicle. He speculates that the Daxamites were born of this event. We agree with his speculation in this matter but disagree in the particulars, as will be shown.
(18) DC Comics' allusion in "The War Between Krypton and Earth" that this colony of superbeings created Atlantis appears to be mere fantasy. The real story of Atlantis will be told in a forthcoming article by Dr. Peter Coogan.
(19) Details will be forthcoming Men of Steel article, part of the Superman Family 800 Page Giant series of articles.
(20)To save on space the ship only carried one stoner/destoner. This would turn out to be a serious oversight.
(21) Al Schroeder discusses the Marvaders in his Hall of Worlds I, Hall of Worlds II and House of El . The Gouald are discussed in Aliens Among Us: The Parasitic races. An alternative examination of the Marvaders can be found at Invasive Techniques:
(22)In STRANGE VISITOR FROM ANOTHER PLANET , Al Schroeder states:
"Krypton" is derived from the same word where we get cryptology, the puzzling out of secret codes and writing. It means "unknown" and the discoverer of the element Krypton was calling it "the unknown element"--because it was unknown until then. We might call it Element X instead.... Or planet X. Siegel was saying that Krypton was...unknown. A world unknown to human science."
Mr. Schroeder's entomological sleuthing is correct so far as it goes in deciphering one of the origins of the word "Krypton," and it is quite likely that this may have been the method that Jerry Siegel used to name the home of Superman. However, given our premise that there were in fact two supermen who both came from destroyed planets, however unlikely as that may seem, we believe that the similarity of the names is merely the case of one word of another language being spelled and pronounced nearly the same but having entirely different origins and meanings, as in the case of the Hebrew and Japanese names Dan.
Curiously, in labeling Danner's home world "Planet X" Schroeder struck closer than he knew. This was for many years the name for the theoretical missing planet that comprised the asteroid belt. Also meteorite debris from this shattered planet, which was often highly radioactive, was often dubbed Radium X (as dramatized in the film The Invisible Ray, Universal 1936 ) The actual name of the planet in question was not even known until the ancient stone shards known as the G'Harne fragments were translated by the Wilmarth Foundation in the 1970s, as recorded by Brian Lumley in "In the Vaults Beneath"
(23)One of the results of the Capellean and Eridaneans genetic drift from the earth human norm was that it became difficult for them to cross fertilize.
(24) This discovery was accomplished through the comparison of the DNA of Hugo Danner, Clark Kent, and Mon-El (Hak Kar) by the Legionnaire codenamed Braniac 5.
(25) One of the many shadow groups that the Adversarialists had planted on Earth was the League of Darkness opposed by Verne Julian whose adventures were conflated with Phileas Fogg and whose identity was conflated with Jules Verne to create the television show The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne. See Jules Verne, Savior of the World
(26)Despite his years of effort, Marra could never successfully recreate the technology to stone. He had merely discovered a way to end the stoning, not recreate it.
(27) Animals on Thyoph were not super strong or fast as there was no driving biological need for them to be so. Animals on Krypton, however, had to have dense muscular and skeletal structures and so were genetically tailored to be super strong.
(28) For more information on the stoning technology, please consult the following works: The Stone God Awakens, Day World, Day World Rebel, and Day World Break Up, by Philip Jose Farmer.
(29) Marra used the same DNA source for both sets of his clones. He had found one set of the de-stonedchildren to have extremely superior qualities. It should come as no surprise that these were the children of Zon-El. This DNA was used to form the basis of both the initial Kryptonian and Daxam populations.
(30)Here is another one of the instances where our speculative genealogy differs from Al Schroeder's House of El. We believe that Jaf-El was the direct ancestor of Hugo Danner and the distant ancestor of Clark Kent.
(31) As seen above, this was an alternate name for Thyoph, much as Terra is for Earth
(32)Halk Kar would land on Earth five hundred years prior to our current date. This was 500 years after the Capellean and Eridaneans from the crashed and stranded survey ships mentioned further down in the article had taken refuge on Earth. He avoided landing near large cities for fear that there would be lead in use there, and so landed in North America. Halk Kar coincided his landing with a meteorite shower so as to draw little attention to it. He found some glowing green meteorite rocks near his landing site that made him feel ill. He hurried from the site, hoping that he had not gotten lead poisoning.
After he left the vicinity of the green rocks, however, he recovered rapidly. Halk Kar became involved with a group of Native Americans. Seeing him exhibit his super powers in times of emergency or danger, they took him to be a god. Although he tried to dissuade them of this belief and even preached to them of Rao, they believed him to be Rao or his son. Halk Kar would have moved on, but he fell in love with one of the young women of the tribe. They lived together as man and wife. He realized after several years that he was becoming ill. He discovered that the clay from which the Native Americans made their pots had lead in it. By drinking and eating out of these pots, he had become poisoned by the lead. He told the tribe that he was departing but would return. Not wishing to die, he returned to his ship and placed himself in suspended animation, in the hope that in the future a cure would be found for his lead poisoning. He placed his capsule in orbit about the earth. Eventually it would be knocked into a decaying orbit and crash land on Earth, circa 1930. Despite its free fall, his ship would manage to crash land near a Kryptonian. This was Clark Kent. Halk Kar's lead poisoning had affected his mind, making his memory very spotty. He half believed Clark Kent's theory that they were brothers. He soon found the levels of lead in the atmosphere due to the use of leaded gas to be quite deadly to his system and rapidly became ill after only a month. Dying, he recalled his true mission. Clark Kent aided him in repairing his rocket ship, fortunately the main systems had been unharmed by the crash. The ship only needed a new outer shell. Halk Kar once again placed himself in suspended animation and set his ship to drift around the farthest planet, hoping that by the time mankind had the ability to reach that planet, they could also cure him. The story of Halk Kar was portrayed in Superman 80, Jan/Fed 1953, as "Superman's Lost Brother." A portion of this was later rewritten as a Superboy tale in Superboy 89, June 1961, with Halk Kar being replaced by Lar Gand, named Mon-El by Clark Kent. Both tales contain elements of truth, but neither is entirely accurate. "Superman's Lost Brother" was accurate in showing the arrival of Halk Kar on Earth and the relative weakness of his super powers as compared to Superman's. This was the result of the already existing lead poisoning in Halk Kar's system, although the depiction of the differences in the powers of the two supermen also had another purpose, as we will see. The story of Superman and Halk Kar going after the racketeer seems to be fictional, as will be explained shortly.
Neither Hugo Danner nor Clark Kent had careers as a superboy. However these tales did have some connection to the extended Superman Family as will be revealed in Maids of Might: The Super Girls article. These tales are fantasies written to please the children that composed the majority of the superman fans. While these tales were mostly entirely fictional, sometimes the writers would included information about the two Supermen in them. The Superboy tale "Superboy's Big Brother" is accurate in so far as it happened when Clark Kent was a teenager rather when he was adult; it also depicts Halk Kar suffering from memory loss and suffering near death from lead poisoning. But, the placing of Mon-El (Halk Kar) into the Phantom Zone is fictional.
The majority of the storyline of "Superman's Lost Brother" is surprisingly accurate and does portray someone with a closer relationship to Superman than Halk Kar, although he too was related to Clark Kent through the El family. The true person who took part in Superman's (Hugo Danner) battle against the racketeer Wrecker Ross was Clark Kent, Superman. There were two men using the name Superman and also the name Clark Kent. This tale was actually a portrayal of the first adventure that they shared together. That one of the Supermen depicted had no heat vision and lesser strength and invulnerability than the other may have been an inside joke by the comics writers who were aware of the double identity or at least suspected it. The two men had similar but different powers, but in the comics stories they became conflated into one person, and so the stories that were based on either Clark Kent or on Hugo Danner gave them both the same array of powers when in fact Hugo Danner did not possess Clark Kent's level of invulnerability, level of strength, x-ray vision, or heat vision until the late fifties. Although the discussion of the lives of Hugo Danner and Clark Kent will be dealt with further in the Supermen article, briefly in the Imaginary Story, "The Death of Superman" (Superman 149, 1961) Lex Luthor succeeds in killing Superman. This story has some basis in reality in that Luthor managed to severely wound Hugo Danner, nearly killing him. A combination of transfusions and gene therapy from Clark Kent gave Hugo Danner, in an excruciatingly painful process, the full range of Kryptonian enhancements, so after 1959 Danner and Kent have the same range of powers. This transfusion, albeit highly fictionalized, was the basis for "The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue,"(Superman 162, 1963). Luthor had also nearly killed Lois Lane earlier, and she received a transfusion from Danner, which temporarily gave her super strength as well as the longevity nanites that would give her a thousand years of life.
(33) It was during this case that he discovered the geological instability of Kryp'Tn's core.
(34) Dev-Em's ship would be blasted free of Kryp'Tn's gravitational pull when the planet exploded. By some unknown manner his ship traversed the vast distances of space and found its way to Earth where he caused no end of trouble. That his ship landed on earth by happenstance belies the laws of probability, even in the Wold Newton Universe. He was probably deliberately guided there as part of some Adversarialist plot. At the story's end, Dev-Em is seen leaving for the future, but in actuality it was decided that he was too wild and dangerous to live among Earthlings, so Danner and Kent made the hard decision to imprison him in the Phantom Zone. It was this incident that gave rise to the notion that Halk Kar/Mon-El had been placed in the Phantom Zone. (ADVENTURE 288 September 1961, "The Knave from Krypton!" by George Papp).
(35) Actually Jor-L and his brother Zor-L had. This was the rocket stolen from them at the beginning of their research. Although the Zodies publicly proclaimed Jor-L a crackpot, they hedged their bets and stole his rocket in an attempt to keep the Zod legacy alive. They placed General Zod's son inside the rocket. They knew that on Earth he would be granted great powers and would rule as he was destined to. For more on Zod's son, Kalel Zod, see the Supermen article
(36) Kryptophite (which is called merely Kryptonite in most representations of it) and Thyophite.....
Being a Thyophian is Hugo Danner affected adversely by Thyophite? Is he affected by Kryptophite?
Being a Kryptonian is Clark Kent affected by Thyophite? Is he affected by Kryptophite?
Yes to all of these.
How you might ask?
The answer lies in the aftermath of the explosion of Thyoph. The artificial substance had an unforeseen effect once it was dispersed as debris. It became highly radioactive, but in a wavelength not detectable by modern science. Again borrowing another bad science idea from star trek the critical mass that exploded the planet transmuted the element. In addition to being highly radioactive it also combined with other substances to create new substances. These differing substances had different effects on biological matters causing a variety of mutations.
Hugo Danner's genetic structure had in part been shaped by thyophite in its natural form which gave Thyophians beneficial health as well as beneficial mutations, the transmuted thyophite was deadly to him, causing rapid cellular deterioration.
Concentrated Thyophite also causes mutations in human beings... as noted in Hyde and Hair, The Four,
Why are Kryptonians affected by Thyophite?. Well, because the original Kryptonians were clones of Thyophites, albeit greatly enhanced by Marra's genetic tinkering. When he based the Kryptonian genome on the Thyophian genes, he also inadvertently built in this affinity for Thyophite.
So why are Hugo Danner and Clark Kent affected by Kryptophite. In the Kryptonian article that the Kryptonians had a built in affinity for the power crystals upon which their world's economy was originally based. However these power crystals had been transformed on their way to earth which is why the once favorable mutation of having an affinity towards the power crystals became a weakness in Clark Kent. The Kryptonian article was in error in this speculation. The Kryptonite was transformed by passing through the asteroid belt where it combined with thyophite. So actually it not the Kryptonite that affected Clark Kent and Hugo Danner it was the thyophite combined with the Kryptonite, making Kryptophite
(37) Hugo Danner would eventually gain possession of the Phantom Zone projector and construcrystal, believing them to be artifacts from his ship. He followed the instructions on the construcrystal and planted it, using his saliva to activate it. Because he and Clark Kent shared a genetic heritage, the construcrystal began growing and replicated the Kryptonian El Family mansion, a.k.a. the Fortress of Solitude.
More information about the various versions of the Fortress of Solitude will be discussed in the article "Why Do I have a Big Ass Arrow Shaped Key pointing right to my Secret Lair?"
(38)Although the comic book accounts depict any thing that comes from Kryp'Tn as being invulnerable, this is not the case. Clark Kent was invulnerable by Earth standards because he had been designed to be so. That his costume was painstakingly woven from the fibers of the blankets in which he had been wrapped is true, but these blankets were specially made as protective garments and so were also designed to be nearly invulnerable.