A Multicultural Krypton? - On Dan Jurgens, Ian Churchill et al's "Action Comics" #977
From 2016's "Action Comics" #977, by Dan Jurgens, Ian Churchill et al Of all the sweeping changes made by John Byrne to the Superman mythos in 1986, it was perhaps his depiction of Krypton that proved the most contentious. Even many who embraced the back-to-basics puritanism of Byrne's post-Crisis reboot balked at how Superman's homeworld had overnight been transformed from super-scientific paradise to sterile, hidebound dystopia. In the words Byrne gave to Jor-El, the new Krypton was a "cold and heartless society, stripped of all human feeling, of all human passion and life". As with the Kryptonians, so with their world. No longer a wonderland of pulpish micro-environments, Byrne's Krypton was an icebound wasteland. How was the loss of the Arcadian Krypton to inform Superman's character and mission when his birthplace was now anything but a paradise lost? Hell rather than heaven, this reworking of Krypton introduced a serious of fascinati...