It seems the world's falling down around me

[austin_dern]

My old-time radio station picked up the Adventures Of Superman serial from its start in 1938 on the Mutual network. This take on the Origin Story starts on Krypton with Jor-El going to the Temple of Wisdom (not my joke) to threaten and insult the Krypton High Jerk Council into seeing things his way, which inexplicably fails to work (``Remember what I have said, gentlemen, when Krypton is shattered into a hundred million stars! When the glorious civilization we have built is no more! When you and your families are swept from the face of Krypton like dust!'' ``Yeah, yeah, and UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED, right, Jor-El?''), and this time around Krypton isn't exploding all on its lonesome. Instead it's suffering some gravity problem from its star where the extra gravity strain is going to blow it up like a bubble. Huh.

And as with early Superman stuff, Supes will be faster than a speeding building, able to support a long, long line of Superdickery examples, etc, because Krypton is so much better-developed than Earth, not because of any differences in the colors of the suns or for that matter Krypton being a higher-gravity planet than Earth. They're just all better physical examples than us which is why they can leap an eighth of a mile into the air. This is a good thing because in this take Krypton isn't orbiting a red sun: it's orbiting our Sun, on the far side of it from Earth.

Well, that makes the rocket ship a less challenging thing to build, certainly, but it leaves that gravity problem as all the more alarming. Oh, plus the rocket works by building up an electric potential and being shot off in one direction and going wherever it's pointed, which would seem to present problems with the whole getting-to-Earth thing. Oh, and Superman's mother has never heard of Earth even though it's in the same solar system and Kal-El knows about it.

Trivia: The Superman comic strip was initially placed in The Houston Chronicle, the Milwaukee Journal, and then the San Antonio Express. Source: Men of Tomorrow, Gerard Jones.

Currently Reading: How The World Was One: Beyond The Global Village, Arthur C Clarke.

Comments

[moxie_man]

they can leap an eighth of a mile into the air.

I'm sure the National Basketball Association is bummed with the destruction of Krypton, the lost talent they could have recruited. Imagine how basketball courts would have to be modified to accommodate the Kryptonian Basketball League. :)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It'd be a challenge, actually, to have a playing field big enough for the Kryptonians and small enough that people can witness it ... I mean, leaping an eighth of a mile is fun, but who's going to buy season tickets when they need binoculars even from courtside? ... Of course, if the audience has super-vision too then it's a different thing.

[patchoblack.livejournal.com]

Well, in the original origin story, Superman was far less powerful than the later Silver Age and Modern Age versions. In addition to not flying but rather leaping long distances, he wasn't truly invulnerably, but his skin could not be penetrated by anything less than a bursting shell (in other words, heavy artillery, and instead of being faster than speeding bullet, he could merely outrun an express train.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah. This is the radio serial, so it's about original as you could possibly get. (http://www.archive.org/details/superman_otr) The leaping is just what Jor-El mentioned to his wife in comparing differences between Kryptonians and Earthlings; they could go just about as far as they wanted in a single step.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Lara Lor-Van probably wasn't that much for planetology, is all. Especially as regards the hidden Earth.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but not being able to identify the other life-bearing planet in the Solar System? has she got any interest in the world she lives in? (I know, I know, she was a supporting female role in a comic book; she's lucky she died mercifully swiftly and without being specifically targeted.)

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Supporting female character in a 40's comic book, no less.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but at least there she was subject more to casual humiliation than to ending up in a refrigerator. You can't say the destruction of Krypton was particularly aimed at her, except in the Imaginary Stories where it turns out it was.