Learn the Bizarre Origin of the Name Krypton!

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Mar 2, 2017

In their latest response to reader-submitted questions, CSBG reveals the strange origin of how Krypton gained its name.

Comic Book Questions Answered – where I answer whatever questions you folks might have about comic books (feel free to e-mail questions to me at brianc@cbr.com).

Reader Matt B. wrote in to ask if any comic had ever come up with an origin for the name of Superman's home planet, Krypton.

And wouldn't you know it, Matt, there actually was such a comic! I say that with some surprise, but the more that I think about it, the more sense it makes when you consider who we were talking about here. You see, when Julius Schwartz took over the editing gig on the "Superman" titles in the early 1970s, he also inherited outgoing editor Mort Weisinger's assistant editor, E. Nelson Bridwell. When Schwartz revamped the "Superman" books, he gave Bridwell a new back-up where Bridwell could look into the history of Krypton. Bridwell was one of those people who loved to go into the history of things and find explanations for certain aspects of a character's history. These back-ups became the perfect place to find out something like the history of Krypton's name. Although, the actual story where that information was revealed was written not by Bridwell, but by Cary Bates in the back-up story in "Superman" #238, with art by the great Gray Morrow.

It began with an explorer landing on a mysterious uninhabited planet surrounded by an odd cocoon. However, the explorer was actually NOT the first one on the planet...

The other astronaut (a biologist) who had been stranded on the planet tried to greet the new traveler with a message of warm greeting through a flower, but the biologist was not prepared for the atmosphere on the planet and it accidentally caused the flower to grow as if the biologist was attacking the new explorer. This led to them having a long fight.

Eventually, knowing that the other person was going to ultimately win because the explorer was so much bigger, the biologist decided to fling away the explorer as the biologist saw that a sort of syrupy substance from the surrounding cocoon was about to envelop both of them. This way, at least the explorer would survive.

The explorer naturally had a different view of his foe when that happened, so he tried to free what he thought had been a rival...

But oh, guess what, the biologist was a woman! Now that they were both trapped on the planet, they figured they might as well get to know each other and sure enough, their names happened to be...