World of Krypton #3 (February 1988)
World of Krypton #3 (February 1988)
This issue opens with Superman’s dad, Jor-El, as a 15 year old teen locked in a dark room, staring at digital images of people in robot suits fighting each other – so, exactly like a 15 year old on Earth today, pretty much.
The images Jor-El is watching are recordings of something that happened 100,000 years earlier: as we saw last issue, Jor-El’s (and therefore Superman’s) ancestor Van-L was trying to stop a cult called Black Zero that wants to destroy Krypton for cloning people and using the clones as spare parts. At this point clone harvesting hasn’t been practiced for centuries, but the nutjobs at Black Zero still believe the only way to atone for that sin is to drill a hole to Krypton’s core and drop something there that will eventually (as in, around 100,000 years later) make the planet blow up. Van-L is unable to prevent this from happening, so in a way we can say Superman’s family is responsible for the Kryptonian apocalypse.
Anyway, back in young Jor-El’s present, his alone time is interrupted by his dad Seyg-El (GET IT?) and two other members of late-period Krypton’s high society. Turns out a Kryptonian has died, which is a rare occurance at this point in time, so a spot has opened up for one more person on the planet and Jor-El has been selected to one day become that new Kryptonian’s genetic father. Jor-El says sure and asks to see an image of the girl who will be the mother – an unusual request because it’s all done via test tubes now, and Kryptonians are a cold, emotionless race. However, when he sees the image of young Lara, Jor can’t contain his excitement and goes “HOT DANG! Now that’s a real looker!” (I may be paraphrasing).
Character-Watch:
This is Seyg-El’s introduction, though I believe his only other appearance was a late-90’s issue of Starman where Jack Knight travels back in time and almost gets arrested by Superman’s hard-ass granddad. We also get to see Jor-El’s robot servant Kelex (introduced in Man of Steel #1), and we find out that Kelex was basically Jor’s nanny.
WTF-Watch:
Mike Mignola, you know I love you, but your 15 year old Jor-El looks exactly like your adult Jor-El. If the dialogue didn’t mention he was a teen I never would have noticed. I don’t know, maybe give him a sideways cap or something.
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