Key points
- Superman discovered he was from Krypton in 1949, after more than a decade of adventures in the comics.
- Superman discovered Kryptonite when he was weakened by a meteorite; it was melted Krypton from the explosion.
- The discovery of Kryptonite led Superman to discover his origins
In each Look Back, we look back at a comic book issue from 10/25/50/75 years ago (plus a wildcard each month with a fifth week). This time, we head back to August 1949 to see the first time Superman learned he was from Krypton, as well as the comic book introduction of Kryptonite!
As I pointed out in an article about when Superman first learned his name was Kal-El, when Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 (by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster), there was very little information about Superman's origins, other than the fact that the character was from another planet…
Here’s the thing to remember about that time. Comic books were still a new thing, so if you were someone who could do a comic book, you would much rather have your own comic strip than a comic book. Comic strips were much more popular and treated with much more respect. So when Superman became a big hit, the creators (and National Comics) were very interested in seeing the comic strip adapted into a comic strip as well.
They didn't have to wait long, as the comic debuted in January 1939. Siegel and Shuster devoted most of their energies to the comic (when Shuster had trouble meeting deadlines, he focused on keeping up with the comic first). The comic introduced a new, much more detailed origin for Superman, and here we learn the name of the planet Superman came from, as well as the names of his parents and his true Kryptonian name. Here, however, it was Jor-L and Kal-L…
Later that year, Superman got his own solo comic book series, and Siegel and Shuster adapted the origin story into Action Comics #1 and added in Krypton but not the other aspects (like the respective character names)…
Superman then starred in his own hit radio series, and in that series, in 1943, they introduced the idea that kryptonite was a weakness for Superman (there's an interesting comic book legend about WHY kryptonite was introduced in the radio series). But what about the comics?
How was Kryptonite first introduced in the comics?
We first learned of Superman's Kryptonian heritage in the comic book PERIOD TEN YEARS AFTER his comic book adventures. In Superman #53 (by Bill Finger, Wayne Boring and Stan Kaye) we discovered HOW Krypton exploded…
However, despite the story's first page showing Superman recoiling from the destruction of Krypton…
The comic is simply told to us by an omniscient narrator. Superman himself doesn't learn anything about Krypton in the issue. But that makes sense, right? Later comic book stories (and movies) have come up with ways to explain why Superman would find out about his origins earlier in life, but generally speaking, if you land on Earth as a baby in a rocket, how the hell do you know where you came from?
Now, of course, someone probably thought, “Hey, why WAS that?” and so it was just eight issues later, in August of 1949. Superman #61, the same creative team introduced both Kryptonite and the revelation of his Kryptonian lineage to Superman.
How did Superman find out he was from Krypton?
Superman learned of his origins after he suddenly became terribly weak when he was near a piece of jewelry that was a piece of meteorite (it was used as a piece of jewelry in a Swami's headdress, so the Swami believed that it was his mental powers that caused Superman to become weak when he was near him). So Superman investigated the meteorites and then traced their path back in time (because, you know, Superman used to travel back in time in the blink of an eye) and learned that the meteorites came from his home planet, Krypton…
So the initial story is that when Krypton exploded, the entire planet fused together to form a new compound, and that new compound was Kryptonite. So it wasn't Krypton itself, but rather what Krypton turned into when it exploded. So it's not that Superman has a problem with pieces of his home planet, but that his home planet turned into something entirely different from the explosion.
Also note that kryptonite wasn't green to begin with. So even when it was finally introduced, it wasn't even introduced in the way it would have appeared in its most famous form (it slowly but surely turned green. You can check out that evolution in the link above).
If you have suggestions for September (or later months) of comics from 2014, 1999, 1974, and 1949 to feature, email me at brianc@cbr.com! Here's a guide, though, for book cover dates, so you can suggest books that actually came out in the correct month. In general, the traditional time period between a comic's cover date and release date for most of comics history has been two months (sometimes three months, but not during the periods we're talking about here). So comics will have a cover date that's two months before their actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Of course, it's easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was book coverage on the Internet at the time.