Famous ancestors of Superman were memorialized in statues within Krypton's House of El family vault. After the cataclysm, Superboy discovered them floating in space and they were eventually moved by Nim-El to a new El family vault on Rokyn .
History
Using the Mind-Prober Ray, Superboy recalled the time he visited the El family vault on Krypton with his father Jor-El. That crypt contained a Memorial, composed of larger-than-life statues that went back dozens of generations in the El line.[1]
Many statues memorialized that ancestor's achievements with a token that, when placed into statues' hands, caused a mind-tape to play their story. For example, when a model building was placed in the hands of Gam-El's, the tape played the story of his reconstruction of Kryptonopolis.[2]
Superman's Uncle Zor-El implied that no member of his family -- neither Var-El,[3] Jor-El Senior, nor Kal's father Jor-El -- were distinguished enough to have a statue in the vault, and that Gam-El was the last El that had been memorialized. Krypton was destroyed in the year 10,000[4] and Gam-El's architectural feats happened in the Kryptonian year 9852,[2] so the El's had been relatively undistinguished for 150 Krypton years.
During the cataclysm, the statues remained intact, though were transmuted into Green Kryptonite by the shockwave. Superboy found them much later, and recalled Jor-El's entreaty to honor Father's Day by using the tokens in the chest -- the chest that, improbably, remained with the statues as they floated through interstellar space. Once they'd been given a coating of lead, Kal-El completed the Father's Day ritual and placed their various tokens in their hands.[1]
The Kryptonite Five
Superboy had found five of his ancestor's statues and their tokens. They were:
- Gam-El. Token: Model Skyscraper
- Hatu-El. Token: Lightning Bolt
- Tala-El. Token: Krypton's Constitution
- Sul-El. Token: Telescope
- Val-El. Token: Ship's Wheel
Memorial in Rokyn
Years later, when Kander was finally enlarged,[5] a new city was built on the planet that would come to be called Rokyn; and Nim-El recreated the El family vault. Somehow he gathered all of the original statues from Krypton -- not just the five that Kal-El had found.
Superman and Supergirl visited the family vault to investigate their roots, and listened to the mind-tapes of the statues and had visions of their achievements.[2]
- Gam-El. Year 9852
- Tala-El. Year 9873
- Pir-El. Year 9846
- Im-El
- Sorn-El
- Fil-El
- Nox-El
- Plen-El
- Fedra Shu-El
- Thar-El
- Shu-El
- Wir-El
And while further statues existed, they did not contain recordings as it was the last, Wir-El, that first perfected the sophisticated recording equipment needed to make mind-tapes. Statues of more ancient House of El members such as Hatu-El, Sul-El and Val-El were silent, and Kal-El needed a machine to read their Kryptonian headbands.[6]
Alternate Earth-332
In an alternate universe where the historic positions of Jor-El and Zor-El's were reversed; Supergirl and both of her parents rocketed to Earth. They became the Zorelle family and farmed near the childless Kents in Smallville. When they tilled the fields, Zor-El and Allura brought up a meteorite of Gold Kryptonite and were permanently de-powered. That meteorite was the base and feet of one of the House of El Statues, transmuted into Gold Kryptonite.[7]
Notes
- The House of El family vault was limited solely to the Earth-One multiverse.
- Though none of the El's knew it when they viewed the statues in Krypton Chronicles #1, Kal-El soon discovered that the "undistinguished" Var-El had actually created instantaneous galactic travel; and that his historic "disappearance" was actually his one-way trip to Earth.
See Also
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Adventure Comics #313
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Krypton Chronicles #1
- ↑ Var-El's story was only coming to light concurrently with Krypton Chronicles #1 in DC Comics Presents #37
- ↑ World of Krypton #3
- ↑ Superman #338
- ↑ Krypton Chronicles #2
- ↑ Action Comics #332