Warning: contains spoilers for Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #6!
The destruction of Krypton is central to the Superman mythos and has been depicted many times, but Supergirl has now revealed some truly graphic, never-before-revealed details of the planet’s final moments. In Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #6, on sale now in print and digital, readers learn new facts about Krypton’s destruction, facts that underscore just how horrifying an event it was.
Although there have been multiple portrayals of Krypton over the course of Superman’s 80-plus year history, it's inevitably destroyed every single time, usually ripped apart by geological instability. Comic fans know Superman escaped the planet’s destruction as an infant, sent away by his father, and that his cousin, Supergirl, was a teenager when she escaped. Supergirl has long worked in her cousin’s shadow, but writer Tom King and artist Bilquis Evely have redefined her for the modern era, sending her on a quest for revenge against the tyrant Krem, who mortally wounded Krypto and left Supergirl stranded on a distant planet. Along the way, Ruthye, Supergirl’s traveling companion has offered insight into Kara Zor-El, and in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #6, Ruthye recounts Supergirl’s story of Krypton’s destruction, offering new insight into this cataclysmic event. The issue is written by King, with art by Evely, Matheus Lopes, and letters by Clayton Cowles.
As Ruthye watches Supergirl dodge Krem’s Mordru Globe, she recounts details of Krypton’s final moments, as related to her by Supergirl. Readers learn that Supergirl was in school when the planet’s destruction began—and the end was not quick. People were fleeing in terror, with nowhere to go. Supergirl, leaving school, wanders through the confusion and chaos, seeing a man whose stomach had been cut open by a rock, his guts hanging out. He begs Supergirl for help but dies before she can render aid. As she continues her trip, Supergirl sees an abandoned baby stroller—but she cannot tell if a baby is in it or not. Countless eons of culture and art and literature were about to be lost.
Even those who managed to escape had a rough go. Argo City, Supergirl’s home city, was able to leave Krypton, sealed in a dome. However, as the city moved further away from their red sun, it set off a chemical reaction in the soil, turning it into the deadly Green Kryptonite. The survivors of Argo City began dying slowly of radiation poisoning.
Krypton’s destruction has been depicted numerous times in comics, TV, and movies. Big-budget films, such as 1978’s Superman or 2013’s Man of Steel, convey the sheer scope and chaos of Krypton’s destruction. However, nearly all of these depictions focus on Jor-El sending his son away and ignore how other Kryptonians were coping. The graphic details Supergirl conveyed to Ruthye filled in these gaps, showing a race struggling to comprehend why this was happening to them. Readers do not see the man with his guts hanging out, or the stroller—all of this is kept off-panel. But despite not seeing any of it first hand, it still leaves readers with a sense of the panic and sadness being felt by Kryptonians as their end approaches.
Krypton’s destruction was one of the most monumental moments in DC history, for it gave the universe Superman, one of its greatest heroes. Yet, new details related by Supergirl about the planet’s final moments also show what was lost in the process.