Superman Annual (Volume 1) with a cover date of October, 2009. It was published on August 19, 2009.
Synopsis for "The Secret origin of Mon-El and his world!"
Mon-El holds several crystals that offer him a history of Daxam. He considers the last few days, including movie trailers and fighting strange villains, and realizes he's been viewing his own history in flashes out of fear. Mon-El goes to a club and dances to forget the history in his head.
Mon-El goes to see Mitch for some Spaghetti, and Mitch advises him not to avoid the past, because the future comes too quickly, and if you don't know the past, you can't appreciate the present. Consequently, Mon-El examines the history.
He learns that the history of Daxam starts with Krypton, and that like all races, Kryptonian men came from the mud, made their lives perfect on their planet, and then took to the stars in a conquistador style conquering called the "Great Inquiry."
A young pilot named Dax-Am is sent to a habitable planet around a red star, and he founds Daxam. Though the Kryptonian Great Inquiry was pushed back, the Daxamites remained on their planet and interbred with the locals, creating a different genetic race.
Within a few centuries, most knowledge of Krypton was lost.
Zax Vane aspires to the stars, and pleads with the Grand Assembly to be allowed to explore for the betterment of Daxam and the stars they plan to go to. The Daxamites head for the stars, but without the conquest of Krypton, in the name of peace.
Though Kryptonian genetics make it impossible to interbreed with other societies (other than the first Daxamites), Daxamites have an easier time mixing their genes. However, it is still forbidden. Nonetheless, a woman astronaut from Daxam visits South America and is impregnated by a local warrior. As she leaves, she pleads with the warrior to say her name.
On Daxam, she has her child and it lives and dies without knowing of Earth, despite the fact that the mother left her ship programmed to return at a certain point. The ship becomes covered with vegetation as the years pass. The descendants of the woman all seem more inclined to space travel, and most take to the stars, despite laws being passed against travel.
The society becomes more xenophobic, perhaps because of the Kryptonian Eradicator. This leads to the Science War, which destroys a quarter of the population of Daxam. The Eradicator uses subterfuge to stop the Great Inquiry, and alters people in order to stop them from exploring and conquering. On Daxam, it made the council xenophobic and caused the populace to forbid space travel.
In the recent past, Lar Gand (Mon-El) finds the ship, and prepares to use it to go to the stars. Consequently, a male and female friend die when the xenophobic Sorrow Council find out, and he takes to the ship as an emergency measure.
He arrives on Earth, meets Clark, and goes in to see Ma. We learn that the spacefaring female astronaut whose descendants were more eager to explore space was named Bal Gand, a distant relative of Mon-El.
Appearing in "The Secret origin of Mon-El and his world!"
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Notes
- This issue is reprinted in Superman: Mon-El: Man of Valor.