Friday 12 April 2013

K is for Krypton - Blogging from A to Z April Challenge

I'm not sure what I was planning to write when I decided on this prompt. The two words that came to me when trying to think up a K that Soph and I weren't already using for Drabblerotic were killing and Krypton. Since I already had a post on Death, I plumped for Krypton.

Krypton is actually a nobel gas with the atomic symbol Kr, but talking about that would be kind of boring, so Superman's home planet wins.

According to Wikipedia "The planet was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and was first referred to in Action Comics #1 (June 1938). The planet was given its first full-fledged appearance in Superman #1 (Summer 1939)."


I'm not a comic reader, but having read the Wiki page for Krypton it seems it has a large, colourful set of variations. I can never keep straight all the different universes in the comicverse of just about anything :).

What I remember of it is from seeing Superman The Movie, so everything was white and glowy and rather pompus. I never did understand why the Kryptonians didn't evacuate when their sun went supernova.

Of course Krypton isn't the only planet to land earth with it's young. Asgard does the same, although for different reasons, and come to think of it, that's rather glowy and pompus too, only a different colour of glowy :).

I don't actually remember the portrayal of Krypton in Lois & Clark, but Wikipedia tells me it was the same as the movie. Hence I could be mentally muddling the two. I was very fond of Lois and Clark when it was first broadcast, but it has been buried by new shiny in my brain over recent years.

Of course the most important thing about Krypton for movie watchers is that it produced Kryptonite; Superman's one weakness. Arriving as meteorites this substance fell to earth and depending on your source is actually many different things. If you would like to know more I suggest you wander over to  the Wiki page, because it has it all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptonite

The reason Krytonite was brought into the comics was because Superman was getting boring being invulnerable and the same can be said for any character. It's okay having an all powerful being as your central protagonist, but half the excitement about a story is danger or stress, even if it's only a little danger or a tiny bit of stress. That's why giving a character their own krytonite if a good idea. It doesn't even have to be a physical thing, it can be a character flaw or a blind spot in their mental thinking. Just something so they are not perfect and there is a way to bring them down. If you can't bring a character down, how are you going to build them up again?

Today's entry was brought to you by the letter K ... thanks for dropping by.
If you would like to see what all of my posts will be about in advance, click here to see my theme post.
My twin and I are also doing the A to Z Challenge over at our fantasy erotica blog: http://fantasyboysxxx.blogspot.co.uk/

4 comments:

  1. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. New follower here. I'm stopping by from the "A to Z" challenge and I look forward to visiting again.

    Sylvia
    http://www.writinginwonderland.blogspot.com/

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    1. Good morning, thank you so much for popping by. I shall check out your link :)

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  2. And how the bad guys always got some Kryptonite at the most important moments! Geez, Superman... you'd think it'd be harder to find rocks from another planet and figure out that this rock could weaken Superman. ;)

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    1. Clearly it's a conspiracy of some secret alien being who just likes to mess with Superman. It's like draughts/checkers with kryptonite :).

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