Favorite version of Krypton!

[superduperman]

What is your favorite version of Krypton? Birthright is pretty much my favorite origin all around (in the comics at least) but I am also a bit partial to the Byrne Krypton. It is the most "alien". I recently picked up the first issue of World of Krypton from 1987 and I actually like it. Despite my dislike of the post-Crisis Superman. If I can find the other issues, I'll snag them too.

[Ascended]

I tend to favor the Byrne version as well.

I love a lot of the stuff about the pre-Crisis Krypton, but at the end of the day I want my alien worlds to feel....well, alien. And a lot of those Silver Age and early-ish Bronze Age stories don't make Krypton feel "different" enough for my tastes; its just future earth with weird fashion.

I do like the Morrison New52 version, which held the kind of fantastical whimsy of the Silver Age but still felt just alien enough to satisfy me (barely). Birthright was pretty good but I don't feel like I got enough time with the place to really have much of a handle on it. And Snyder's Krypton from Man of Steel is amazing.

But if I had to pick only one, it's Byrne post-Crisis. It's funny, I love so many things about post-Crisis....except how they often handled Superman himself. But his world and supporting cast were never better. Mostly.

[Lightning Rider]

I'd love to see a video that captures all the depictions sequentially.

[JAK]

I love the Byrne and Pre-Crisis Kryptons equally for totally different reasons, with Donner's just behind and all others behind that.

[GreatKungLao]

Man of Steel version hands down. Liquid metal > crystals.

[Kuwagaton]

I'm with JAK in that I think it's Gil Kane AND Mike Mignola, not or.

With the films MoS should easily take the cake, except there's no way to turn down Marlon Brando wearing the S.

[godisawesome]

I tend to like a lot of them for different reasons.

Pre-Crisis Krypton is a lot of fun, in part because, like anything else not directly tied to the precious status quo of Metropolis, they got to do incredibly crazy stuff with it. I still find it a bit silly, but internally consistent.

Byrne's Krypton was a very high-concept sterile Krypton, and I liked its history, but found its end times kind of lackluster thanks to their obsession with making Superman the Last Son of Krypton.

I don't give a darn about Donner's Krypton, or the attempts to hammer it into later Post-Crisis stories. It kind of seemed to merge the stirility of Byrne's with the illogical nature of Pre-Crisis Krypton.

The eventual guild system created with New Krypton was cool though.

MOS's Krypton kind of feels like the best to me on a functional level while maintaining some tantalizing mythos aspects from others: we had the planned society and stagnation aspects of Byrne's, a caste/guild system like in New Krypton, and an overall architecture and style that seems to hint at an epic past. But the biggest thing is how MOS's Krypton is ultimately a failed planet with a deeply and fatally flawed system, justifying Jor-El's warnings being ignored, Zod's rebellion and somewhat perplexing lack of strategic sense, and why the Kryptonians aren't spread out (at least anymore; I'm hoping that Daxam's out there somewhere). The pre-planned society has so specialized the species that it's caste system is screwed up; the Ruling caste is too timid of change to take logical risks and knowingly harvests the planets core in spite of warnings, Zod's military caste is far too quick to apply simplistic military solutions to problems that could be resolved in other ways, and the Security caste is totally ignorant of Zod's machinations.

Joe-El sending Kal away makes the most sense in MOS because they've shown why Krypton was doomed on every level as both a planet and a culture.

[superduperman]

The Donner movie Krypton is on par with the Byrne one. It's alien enough to still be interesting. I think we take for granted how much influence the Donner movies had on the character.

[Jim Kelly]

I like the version of Krypton that was built up in the comic books and comic strips between 1938 and 1985--what provided material for the 1979 WORLD OF KRYPTON and 1981 KRYPTON CHRONICLES minis.

There is so much there--researched, collected and revised by E. Nelson Bridwell--you've got family trees, histories of the continents, flora and fauna, maps, a glossary of the Kryptonian language. It really bothers me when DC talents ignore all that work and make up junk just to be different.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I think the Krypton with guilds representing all the various incarnations of the planet is by far the best one because it actually succeeded in doing something very, very few fictional worlds have ever achieved--genuine diversity.

The only thing I would change is to update the Military Guild to Snyder's liquid metal armor Krypton from Man of Steel.

[Kuwagaton]

The Donner movie Krypton is on par with the Byrne one. It's alien enough to still be interesting. I think we take for granted how much influence the Donner movies had on the character.

To me it's more like the John Barry Krypton, since it had more iconic aesthetics than history.

I like the version of Krypton that was built up in the comic books and comic strips between 1938 and 1985--what provided material for the 1979 WORLD OF KRYPTON and 1981 KRYPTON CHRONICLES minis.

There is so much there--researched, collected and revised by E. Nelson Bridwell--you've got family trees, histories of the continents, flora and fauna, maps, a glossary of the Kryptonian language. It really bothers me when DC talents ignore all that work and make up junk just to be different.

Fun fact, WoK was the first mini series in comic books, according to Paul Kupperberg. Man of Steel #1, of course, had the first variant cover.

[Adekis]

Have you seen The Death of Superman Lives? There's a description of Krypton and a fair amount of concept art which really resonated with me. Basically, Tim Burton wanted to syncretize the sense of the alien and bizarre that Byrne's Krypton had with the Silver Age utopian sense of joy, without using either set of visual signifiers. Far from being a choice between a Buck Rogers world that's basically '60s American or a totally desensitized dystopia that Clark is interested but not really invested in, Burton's Krypton would have been both alien, bizarre and joyful, and even living a great and influential life on Earth as Superman, there would still be a sense that Kal missed out on being a part of something truly wonderful, just to be an ordinary man on Krypton.






That's my favorite Krypton, from a story that was never even made.