First of all let me mention that my knowledge of Superman is very limited.
I've read most pre crisis JLA comics, pretty much all of v3 JLA, Red Son, and a bit of birthright, and about 13 issues of Superman/Batman, so if what I'm about to say sounds stupid to you or has been explained, please don't get overly angry.
Now...here's my problem.
How in the name of God did Krypton not have colonies? I mean...I'm looking at our Earth, and I see a small planet with a huge demographic problem, with very limited tech, but that is seriously considering colonisation of other worlds.
Krypton:
1. a) MUST have had a demographic problem
b) if it didn't, then how is it possible it didn't? Where did all the people go?
2. a) MUST have had problems with resources. No matter how technologically advanced they were and how they could recycle crap or whatever, they definitely had to have a resource problem. We've had maybe 7-8000 years of civilization and we have a very serious resource issue.
b) if they didn't, how the hell did they get resources?
3. Had the technology to colonize. But did or didn't they have the desire to colonize?
I'm thinking any society that is so keen on advancing technologically, should have the drive to colonize. Some would go ahead and try to conquer, but if I understand correctly, Krypton was quite peaceful and gung ho. Even still, that only encourages the search for knowledge.
When you take all of these points, it makes no sense they would not colonize other worlds. Hell, other worlds in other solar systems even. If you're living in a red sun system, and you:
a) know it's gonna pop at some points, since it's a freekin red sun
b) know your race gets superpowers outside of that particular sun's radiations
Why wouldn't you go ahead and colonize other worlds?
IIRC they had colonies and even destroyed other civilisations, he Religion and Politics called all Krytonians back or so. I have to search for the issue...
it was in superman, with the third kryptonian iirc...
yeah, krypton had massive military might, and had even conquered other worlds, but when the science minded groups came to power, they recalled their empire and shut krypton off from the rest of the galaxy...
But how did they fit a small planet full of people with MORE people that they called back from previously conquered worlds? How did they handle the problem of resources?
Assuming there is a logical explanation for all these questions, I would like to add that if this is correct, then this xenophobia was their direct downfall as a species.
Raoul, you're a bit of a Supes buff, didn't Birthright mention anything extra about this stuff?
krypton knew of its people's abilities under a yellow sun, so their armies didn't have to be that massive... even if they were, i honestly don't know how they managed to stop overpopulation, i'm not sure if it was ever touched upon...
the xenophobia is, i agree, the main cause for krypton's downfall, that and the governments own arrogance...
birthright did touch on it a little, but they never really went into any huge detail iirc...
I still don't understand how they could be so moronic as tonot expand. Limit their knowledge, limit the amount of space and resources they can use...
If that happened to us in the real world (assuming we were krypton) you can bet there would be a huge group of dissidents ignoring the government's stipulations and establishing colonies in other solar systems...
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Yeah, I know it's just comics and obviously we can't just have a world of 6 billion Supermen because that would be boring, but if you think about it, they could send just like a few people to a planet with a yellow sun who could, powered up, prepare the planet for a large scale colonization in a few weeks or months, then send everybody else. Of course as soon as the new people got there they would be superbeings so they would not need preparations to begin with! And if travel back and forth was a problem, the new Superpeople could just carry ships at high speeds too. If they played it right, they should rule the universe outside of omnipotent beings. But what fun would that be?
Which would mean they should logically have the opposite which would be a peaceful drive to expand and accumulate knowledge and the necessary resources/space to accomodate their species while learning things about other worlds.
You may be right but I'm only doing this because in comic books, any sort of species with a humanoid shape is usually made out to have the same general urges and desires and emotions as humans (lack of being able to think in a completely alien pattern by the writers I 'spose).
So what are you suggesting, that they were sloths? Or that they were peaceful, not sloths, just didn't care about gathering any more knowledge? Or they decided to take a time-out of a few hundred years from researching other worlds or what?
Also, I could understand that they wouldn't think quite like humans and wouldn't necessarily be a or b, but that still doesn't explain the issue of demographics and resources...
the science ministry (or whatever they were called), manipulated the public, and brought in laws disallowing people from leaving krypton... people felt threatened to the extent that they would rather do as they were told than have general zod banging on their door...
Kryptonian Hubris ---> Mass Denial ---> Poor Planning ---> Near Extinction...
...not to different from how humans behave, which should not be surprising, since Kryptonians and humans hail from the same "universal humanoid" progenitors (which DC has yet to explore, afaik)
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Last edited by Mindship on Jun 18th, 2008 at 11:56 AM
Agreed, BUT in the entire world's history there is no case where everybody on the planet agreed on any issue. If it had been Earth instead of Krypton I can assure you dissidents wouldn't have given a crap and would have colonized other planets anyhow.
So I suppose the topic title pretty much makes sense. Refusing to garner additional resources, as well as refusing to get extra space for an either already existing or bound to happen demographic explosion, as well as refusing to explore for the purpose of gaining knowledge, coupled with the knowledge that their entire species in on one single planet...in a solar system with a RED sun...so yeah...a species of idiots huh?
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Jun 17th, 2008 12:57 AM
The kind kryptonians like 
