| Kryptonite | |
Lex Luthor in front of a display of kryptonite and holding Green Kryptonite. From a panel in Action Comics Annual #10, 2007. |
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| Publication information | |
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| Publisher | DC Comics |
| In story information | |
| Type | Element |
| Element of stories featuring | Superman |
Kryptonite is a mineral from the Superman mythos, originating in the Superman radio show series.
The material is usually shown as having been created from the remains of Superman's native planet of Krypton, and generally has detrimental effects on Superman and other Kryptonians. The name "Kryptonite" covers a variety of forms of the substance, but usually refers to the most common "green" form.
The word Kryptonite is also used in modern speech as a synonym for Achilles' heel, the one weakness of an otherwise invulnerable hero.
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A forerunner of the kryptonite concept was the unpublished 1940 story "The K-Metal from Krypton", by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel. The K-metal in the story was a piece of Krypton which robbed Superman of his strength while giving humans superpowers, a plot point which made its way into the tv series Smallville.
"Kryptonite" was introduced in 1943 on the Superman radio series, as both a plot device and to allow Superman's actor, Bud Collyer, to occasionally take time off. The substance played a part in at least one major plot-line during the course of the program.
It was not until 1949 that the comic book writers incorporated it into their stories, as both a convenient danger and weakness for Superman and to add an interesting element to his stories. Kryptonite is most commonly depicted as green in coloring, with a few exceptions; it was red in its first appearance in Superman (volume 1) #61 in 1949.[1] When Superman followed the time trail of a piece of red rock that weakened him, he was able to trace his origin back to Krypton for the first time. Other colors of kryptonite, having different effects, began to show up frequently beginning in late 1950s comics, reaching a peak in appearances in 1960s Superman series.
Kryptonite was depicted as being so abundant that many ordinary criminals kept a supply as a precaution against Superman's interference. They kept it hidden so Superman would not be able to steal it and destroy it. In an effort to reduce the use of kryptonite in Superman storylines, all known kryptonite on Earth was transmuted into k-iron in a 1971 storyline, though kryptonite could still be synthetically manufactured by a variety of known and unknown means, and additional material left over from the destruction of Krypton would continue to fall from space.
While quantities of Kryptonite are reduced, the material is still present Post-Crisis, albeit only in its green form. However, through the use of Batman's notes, Ra's al Ghul is able to fashion a synthetic Red Kryptonite. Even after quantities have been reduced there's still a fair amount of Kryptonite available, which prompts Superman-friendly corporations, such as Wayne Enterprises and Kord Industries, to take it upon themselves to round up all remaining pieces so as to make its acquisition by small-time crooks more difficult.[2]
After the second recreation of the Multiverse, the amount of Kryptonite on Earth skyrockets, carried down to Earth in a huge meteorite by the rocket that brought Kara to Gotham City.
In the recreated Universe Kryptonite is in such abundance that it becomes easily available to ordinary criminals and crooks, as before. Following orders issued by Lex Luthor and Lana Lang, LexCorp starts stockpiling it and selling to government facilities and weapon makers. Superman and Batman embark on a mission to rid Earth of Kryptonite; a mission that almost fails when the cornered Lana Lang launches a large number of dirty Kryptonite warheads, all simultaneously, tainting the whole Earth atmosphere. Hiro Okamura builds and frees a storm of nanobot devised to capture and deactivate the tiniest fragments of Kryptonite. [3]
Once again, as in the 1971 storyline, all Kryptonite is destroyed, the remaining fragments wrapped in lead and hurled into the Sun by Superman himself, save for one fragment, which Superman gives to Batman. However, it is later revealed that Batman has acquired a fair amount of every variety of the alien material, keeping his samples in the Batcave [4]
Despite the matching name, it was never suggested that the element krypton had any significance to the name of the planet Krypton.
Under standard chemical naming procedures, the -ite suffix of kryptonite would denote an oxyanion of the element krypton. However, krypton is a noble gas that forms compounds only with great difficulty, and such an oxyanion is not known. (Nevertheless, the University of Leicester presented the Geological Society with krypton difluoride to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Superman [1].)
The term kryptonite instead implies a meteorite from the planet Krypton, as in the Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman episode "The Green, Green Glow of Home", where it is given as "period element 126", which in reality corresponds to unbihexium/eka-plutonium, the most stable of the elements in the so-called island of stability. Superman: The Man of Steel Sourcebook (1992), while non-canon, concurs, referring to kryptonite as "the common ore of the super-actinide kryptonium, an unusually stable transuranic element, whose atomic number is believed to be 126". Kryptonium is given a radioactive half-life of 250,000 years.
In Superman Returns, Lex Luthor steals a fragment of kryptonite from a Metropolis museum, where it is on display under the title 'Sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide with fluorine'. As borosilicate glass is commonly crystalline and green-tinted, this could be a plausible human mis-identification of kryptonite; alternately, as no 'unknown' component is listed, one might assume this blend to be the actual composition of green kryptonite. Real sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide (without fluorine), Jadarite, was discovered[5] in a Serbian mine in April 2007, and takes the form of a white powder rather than large green crystals.
In Superman: The Movie, Lex Luthor describes Superman's enhanced Kryptonian physiology as being vulnerable to kryptonite's particular radioactive "signature". More recently, some issues of Superman indicate the mechanism by which green kryptonite may hurt Superman. Superman's cells absorb electromagnetic radiation from stars (like Earth's sun). Kryptonite's radioactivity interferes with this semi-photosynthetic process, driving the energy out of his cells in a painful fashion.
Long-term exposure to kryptonite is said to have the same effects on human beings as exposure to other radioactive materials; an extended storyline in the comics around 1990 involved Lex Luthor developing cancer from the kryptonite ring he kept on his finger.
As noted above, kryptonite was originally created for the 1940s Superman radio series. Kryptonite has appeared in various forms in the various Superman media spinoffs, however.
Kryptonite was used in a rap song called Kryptonite by rapper Big Boi, but in the song kryptonite means marijuana because they are both green.
Kryptonite also appears in the 2000 3 Doors Down hit by the same title as well as the Five For Fighting 2000 song "Superman." Both songs deal with the often over-looked difficulties in being a superhero, depicting a trend in the superhero genre where these classic heroes--once seen as untouchable and, indeed, superhuman--are portrayed as flawed and troubled.
"Black Kryptonite" was what Will Smith described the Men in Black to be in the soundtrack to Men in Black II.
Professional wrestler Mike Bucci, who performed under a superhero gimmick called Super Nova, named his finishing move the "Kryptonite Krunch".
Depictions of kryptonite in the various films and TV series of Superman have largely been limited to green kryptonite, with occasional appearances of the red and blue varieties.
In an episode of the TV show Empty Nest, the main character, a pediatrician, suggested facetiously that Kryptonite, though harmful to Superman, might be of beneficial medical value to Spider-Man.
Kryptonite was used in several episodes of Adventures of Superman, proceeding from straightforward to increasingly far-fetched plotlines. The specific color is not definite, given that it is never mentioned and that the series was initially in black & white, but from its effects, it is presumed to be green kryptonite in all cases:
Kryptonite was featured in Superman: The Movie. In the film, Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) and his cronies (Ned Beatty and Valerie Perrine) track a large chunk to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where they steal it from a museum under the cover of night. In this film's usage, the term "kryptonite" seems to mean simply a "Kryptonian meteorite". After co-opting and launching two missiles for opposite ends of the United States, Luthor places the kryptonite on a chain around Superman's (Christopher Reeve) neck and drops him into a swimming pool. When Perrine's character Miss Tessmacher learns that one of the missiles is headed for Hackensack, New Jersey (where her mother lives), she rescues Superman from drowning and removes the kryptonite, after which his strength and powers quickly return.
An imperfect synthesis of artificial kryptonite containing tar appeared in Superman III. Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn) orders the creation of synthetic kryptonite after remembering a Daily Planet story about the last original chunk disappearing years earlier after falling to Earth (whether Webster references the kryptonite robbery in Superman: The Movie is unclear.) Developed by Gus Gorman (played by Richard Pryor), it was intended to be a copy of Green Kryptonite. After scanning the coordinates of Krypton's former location via satellite, results return a small percentage of an unknown component. The substitution of tar (which Gorman used after glancing at a cigarette carton) for a crucial, but unknown, component resulted in the synthetic kryptonite behaving like a combination of Red Kryptonite and Black Kryptonite; in this case, the kryptonite turned Superman evil and eventually split him into two people. The evil Superman and Clark Kent, the embodiment of Superman's remaining good qualities, then engage in an epic battle at a deserted junkyard, where Clark emerges victorious and the evil Superman fades from sight (it should be noted that this might only have been an hallucination on Superman's part). Later in the film, Gorman's creation, the Ultimate Computer, severely weakens Superman with a kryptonite ray before Gorman has a change of heart and attacks his own machine.
In Superman Returns, an additional piece of kryptonite is found in a rock fragment, once more in Addis Ababa. Lex Luthor steals it from a Metropolis museum and uses it in his quest to create a new kryptonite landmass, much like how young Clark created the Fortress of Solitude. In addition, he uses a shard leftover from processing it to create a kryptonite shiv, which he uses to stab Superman with at one point. Interestingly, Kryptonite is never once referred to as the term "meteor" as it is in the previous movies and Smallville series, only as "distant remains" or "radioactive pieces of [Superman's] home-world". This may have been an attempt on the writers' part to distinguish the Kryptonite of the movie away from Smallville, which is almost always referred to as "meteors".
Kryptonite made frequent appearances in the syndicated "Superboy" TV series, most of it green. It first appeared in the first-season episode "Kryptonite Kills" in which Professor Peterson retrieved it from Addis Adaba believing it to be a harmless meteorite and brought it to his gemology class at Shuster University. Superboy in his guise as Clark Kent(played by John Haymes Newton in Season 1, Gerard Christopher in Seasons 2-4), a student in Peterson's science class, collapsed from the radiation and felt its effects for the first time. He later threw most of the Kryptonite into space, except for one piece which was washed into the sewer. That piece was discovered by a mixed-up scientist who used it as a power source for Metallo (Roger Corben) in the second season episode "Metallo".
Green Kryptonite made several more appearances throughout the series, used mostly by Lex Luthor (played by Sherman Howard) and Metallo (played by Michael Callan). In the third season episode "Bride of Bizarro", Luthor sent Bizarro to a military research base to steal a large amount of Kryptonite, which Luthor was seen using on Superboy in later episodes. In the fourth season episode "Kryptonite Kid", a young man named Mike Walker (played by Jay Underwood) working at the same military research base was caught in a Kryptonite explosion while working to find a cure which would make Superboy immune to the radiation. The Kryptonite entered his bloodstream and turned his skin green and he became "living, breathing Kryptonite" able to fire Kryptonite radiation from his hands. In "Obituary for a Super-Hero", Luthor used a Kryptonite bomb planted on a yacht to attempt to kill Superboy.
Red Kryptonite made an appearance in the second season episode "Super Menace". This version of Red K was created at a military research base where scientists were working to neutralize Kryptonite's effect on Superboy while still retaining its radioactive properties so it could be used as a power source. Their experiments turned the Kryptonite red, making it useless as a power source and altering its effect on Superboy. This Red Kryptonite turned Superboy evil, much like Red K would later do in the "Smallville" TV Series, except only a single exposure to it was required, rather than constant exposure. After Superboy wreaked havoc with Metallo, Lana Lang (played by Stacy Haiduk) tricked Superboy into being exposed to another chunk of Red Kryptonite which reversed the effects of the first. This is Red Kryptonite's only appearance in the series, so it is unknown if the substance would have had other effects on Superboy if it had appeared again.
The "Superboy" series also introduced a form of White Kryptonite, however this was not the white kryptonite that kills plant life (as seen in the Pre-Crisis comic books). This White K was created by Professor Peterson's duplicating ray in an attempt to create a form of Kryptonite that would kill the molecularly unstable Bizarro. This Kryptonite did not kill Bizarro, however. It instead had an opposite effect on him and actually stabilized and cured him, preventing him from eventually exploding as previous Bizarro duplicates had. White Kryptonite made only one appearance in the series in the episode "The Battle With Bizarro". It is referred to again in "The Bride of Bizarro" but it is not seen.
Kryptonite was used throughout the 1990s television series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
In the 2000s television series Smallville, a large quantity of green kryptonite comes to earth at the same time as the infant Kal-El. It is referred to as "Meteor Rock", rather than "kryptonite," even by Clark Kent. In the season two episode "Rosetta", Clark learns the name of his home planet for the first time, and the term "kryptonite" eventually comes into use by those characters who know Clark's secret.
On the show, not only is green kryptonite harmful to Clark Kent, but it can produce bizarre changes in humans, animals, and plants, typically turning them into powerful mutant menaces, commonly known by the inhabitants of Smallville as "Meteor Freaks," that Clark must oppose. These changes seem to be linked to the circumstances under which the subject was exposed to kryptonite and the subject's emotional state (similar to how gamma radiation affects people in the Marvel Comics universe). Groups of people have been shown to acquire the same powers from kryptonite by exposing themselves to it in the same manner.
The harm inflicted on Clark by kryptonite on Smallville is varied. He cannot be near green kryptonite without doubling over in nausea and pain, and if he were to hold a fragment of it in his hand, it would burn to the touch and the veins in his hand would become exposed and green. However, on other separate occasions Clark has held and even ingested kryptonite (albeit in dilluted form) and been merely weakened. When a vial of Clark's blood was held up to kryptonite to verify its authenticity, the blood began to boil.
Red kryptonite has also been shown in Smallville. Its effect on Clark Kent is to rid him of all inhibitions, making him rebellious and potentially dangerous if exposed to it for too long. Also created for the series was black kryptonite (first appearing in the episode "Crusade"), which is capable of separating certain entities within individual organisms, e.g., splitting a person's good and evil sides.
Black kryptonite was formed by heating up green kryptonite. In the series, after Clark's "reprogramming" by Jor-El in the caves, Martha Kent used black kryptonite to reveal the two psyches of Clark, the militant Kal-El (not to be confused with the rebellious "Kal" alias caused by red kryptonite), and normal Clark. In a later episode, Lex Luthor was experimenting with a process to heat up green kryptonite and irradiate seeds, in order to separate the "weak" genes from the "strong" genes in the seeds. The result was hardy but rotten-tasting fruit, implying a yin and yang balance within fruit, as well as within humans. An accident with this process caused Lex to split into a good Lex and a bad Lex who referred to himself as "Alexander".
Silver kryptonite made an appearance in the fifth season episode entitled "Splinter'. Like the previous comics incarnation, this silver form was not a true form of the stone. In the episode, Clark pricked his finger on a rock that was black and had silver-metallic clusters, and subsequently became increasingly paranoid, hallucinating that others were conspiring against him. In the episode's final scenes, it was revealed that a splinter of the element entered Clark's bloodstream. It was also shown that silver kryptonite was created artificially from the liquid metal which forms Brainiac's body.
In the eighth episode of Smallville's 7th Season, entitled "Blue," there was a new form of Kryptonite. It was blue kryptonite, and it stripped Clark of his powers. This happened when Lara-El, Clark's mother, gave Clark his father's blue ring to wear, without knowing the effect it would have on him. The ring was impossible to remove until Clark returned to The Fortress of Solitude. As in the comics, blue kryptonite is fatal to Bizarro. It increases Bizarro's power exponentially so that his body is not able to contain it, causing him to explode.
The 1970s and 1980s Super Friends animated series featured kryptonite in various episodes. In the episode "Rest in Peace", Sinestro refers to a form of kryptonite called "Krypton Steel" as "a harmless form of kryptonite that only Superman can penetrate". In another episode, "Darkseid's Golden Trap", gold kryptonite appears, which is stated to have an effective range of 20 ft (6.1 m). Blue kryptonite also makes an appearance in an episode entitled "Terror From the Phantom Zone"; Superman, aging rapidly from exposure to Red Kryptonite, acquires a sample of Blue Kryptonite which had been discovered floating in space. Since Blue Kryptonite harms Bizarros, Superman reasons that it would help normal Kryptonians, and thus uses it to cure himself. In "Uncle Mxyzptlk", the Wonder Twins find a red, glowing stone and take it to the Hall of Justice. They show it to Superman, who immediately reacts to it. Samurai knocks the red kryptonite to the floor but the effects of the red kryptonite cause Superman to decrease in age, becoming a young child. The rest of the Superfriends refer to the kid as 'Super Brat'. In another episode, red kryptonite is exposed to Superman by Bizarro himself, causing Superman to transform into a gangly, weak klutz. In yet another episode, red kryptonite causes Superman to grow additional arms and legs. Most of the action takes place at the Fortress of Solitude where Superman finds some blue kryptonite hidden away to fight off Bizarro.
In the 1990s series, Superman: The Animated Series, one explanation offered for the science of kryptonite is that Superman feels the detrimental effects of kryptonite radiation quicker than normal humans because his body absorbs it more readily, as a result of sharing a common point of origin with the element. The effect is so potent that even a tiny shard is enough to painfully affect Superman at a short distance. This makes it impossible for Superman to even touch the substance, as it would be the equivalent of a normal man touching radioactive rods from a nuclear reactor with his bare skin. Only the element lead can block the radiation, and it is therefore Superman's only protection. Fortunately, Professor Hamilton supplies Superman with a distinctive and durable lead protection suit for such situations.
Kryptonite, in the animated series, still has effects on normal humans as well. Two moments are evidence of this. First, the "Jade Dragon" from The Batman/Superman Movie (a crossover between The New Batman Adventures and Superman: The Animated Series) is a statue of kryptonite carved in the form of a Chinese dragon, said to be cursed because all of its owners all died within a few years of acquiring the piece. Second is Lex Luthor's kryptonite poisoning/cancer as seen in Justice League, attributed to Lex's admitted habit of keeping a fist-sized chunk of kryptonite in his pocket for years. This does bring up the question of Batman's habit of also carrying a piece of kryptonite in his own belt; however, since Batman has seen what the kryptonite did to Luthor, the famed methodicality of Batman may mean that he likely has the pouch lined with lead. In Batman Beyond, it was revealed in the two part episode "The Call" that Bruce Wayne kept the kryptonite for the rest of his life, and kept the needle of kryptonite locked up very securely in the Bat Cave. The Justice League series also reveals how Batman obtained the kryptonite.
Green kryptonite remains the only variety of the substance ever seen in the DC Animated Universe.
As mentioned above, the Krypto the Superdog episode "Streaky's Cat Tail" features "purple-spotted kryptonite", which causes Superdog to compulsively chase his tail. However, this was almost certainly a product of Streaky's imagination. Red Kryptonite has appeared and is stated as having weird effects on Kryptonians for a day; it has swapped the minds of Kevin and Krypto, removed Krypto's powers, and in another episode caused Krypto's tail to become sentient and separated from his body.
Kryptonite also appears in an episode of the Legion of Super Heroes cartoon, where it is revealed Brainiac 5 has a piece of it, and that the villain Drax, who, despite being an analogue to Superman, is immune to it. In the season 2 episode "Dark Victory", a brainwashed Brainiac 5 not only attacks Superman with a Kryptonite ray, but also produces a band of Kryptonite from within him and places it on the hero's head, the band then tightening around it.
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