Lara Lor-Van (Absolute Universe)

As a girl, Lara was an exemplary student who dreamed of being an astronaut and looked set to enter the elite Kryptonian Science Academy. However, when she was nine she wrote an essay criticising Krypton's lack of interstellar exploration. For this she was deemed "unruly" by the ruling Science League and blocked from even entering the Academy.^[1] When she was twelve she built a prototype combined spacesuit and rocketship which would have allowed people to travel in space, but was never able to test it.^[2]

Lara was consigned to the Kryptonian Labor Guild, the lowest caste of Kryptonian society. However, she wore this low status with pride, as the labourers were the only people on Krypton who still worked with their hands, deeming herself and her fellow workers as the "Children of the Sun" and the "People of Steel".^[1]

When she grew up, Lara became a mechanic on a farm in the "Redlands", the agricultural hinterlands outside Krypton's great cities. She married Jor-El, another genius blacklisted from the Science League for heterodox opinions. Together they had a son named Kal-El. When Kal-El was a boy, Jor-El's old theory that overmining was putting Krypton at risk of a global environmental catastrophe was proven correct. A mine which had appeared stable suddenly collapsed, releasing clouds of deadly radioactive vapour.^[1]

Jor-El believed this heralded a planetary catastrophe and gathered evidence to prove his theory, while Lara worked to develop the suit she had invented as a child. Her husband hoped that if he could provide proof of the coming disaster and a plan to save the people of Krypton then the Klerics of the Science League would listen, but Lara predicted they would ignore anything they had to say simply because they were Labour Guild. He promised her that if that happened he would steal enough Sunstone for her to build a ship large enough to save everyone they loved, and their family would escape to the stars.^[2]

Jor-El's research eventually proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Krypton was doomed and they had at most months before total planetary collapse. True to his word he stole vast quantities of Sunstone, allowing Lara to not only complete the suit but also build a ship large enough for the El's and all their friends and neighbours in the Redlands. She also created an artificial intelligence named Sol to operate them. When everything was ready Jor-El decided to go to Kandor to present his findings and Lara's designs to the Klerics. Lara told him that she knew that he felt he had to try, but predicted the Klerics would not listen and asked him to give up on them when they did.

Jor-El went to the Halls of High Wisdom in Kandor on the same day that Kal-El had a field trip to the very same building. Kal-El ran home in the middle of the day and told Lara that Jor-El had been arrested for heresy. Lara donned the suit and armed herself with a gun which fired lava that she had built for such an emergency. They returned to Kandor and went to the Central Law Guild Office where Jor-El was being held. The cops tried to also arrest Kal-El for sedition as he had tried to publish the details of Jor-El's research. Instead, she fought her way in and rescued Jor-El from the cells before he could be executed.

The El's returned to the farm and Jor-El and Lara tried to tell Kal-El that Krypton was doomed, but he revealed that he already knew. He believed that they planned to shoot him into space alone with the suit, but they told him they would never send him off by himself and showed him the ship. Lara lamented the fact that the ship wasn't big enough to save everyone and told Jor-El that she was right and the Klerics didn't want to know the truth. However, just then Jor-El got a notification on his tablet and saw that the Klerics already knew and had been building ships to save the upper classes while hiding the fact that Krypton is doomed from the people. The story was all over the Luminarium and had just been uploaded from the Central Law Guild Office. They both realised that Kal-El had released the story and smiled at him with pride. Kal-El looked up at the ship and asked where they were going.^[3]

The entire El family were sentenced to death and an army of Law Guild shock troopers attacked their home, but the Els were able to fight their way out and escape with their ship to the Rao Mountains; where the people they had told about the coming apocalypse and their plans to escape were waiting for them. They desperately wished they could save more, but Lara could not modify the ship to make any room for more people without compromising the ship's integrity. When they all boarded the ship, it formed a spacesuit around each of them. The ship took off successfully, while every ship the Science League tried to launch from the cities was either destroyed by rioters or crashed immediately. However, before they could leave the atmosphere the ship was destroyed by a rouge chunk of the exploding planet. Each refugee's spacesuit formed a personal rocketship around them as Lara had intended, but every ship except Kal-El's was destroyed by asteroids, including Jor-El and Lara's.^[4]

Powers and Abilities

Abilities

Paraphernalia

Equipment

Armour

Transportation

Kryptonian Rocket

Weapons

Lava Gun

Notes

Lara was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, first appearing in the Superman comic strip. However, the Absolute Universe version of Lara first appeared in Absolute Superman #1 by Jason Aaron and Rafa Sandoval.

Lara Lor-Van (Absolute Universe)

Contents

History