Credit where credit is due: Doyle Kryptonian, Kryptonese, and Kryptonian

[Daughter of Krypton]

I want to give some long-overdue credit where credit is due.

The following information blurb ran in an (apparently new) Superman-family news section that is now contained in all of DC's Superman-related titles.  This particular scan is from Supergirl #1, which came out a couple of months ago:



In this panel, and elsewhere in recent DC books, E. Nelson Bridwell's 1970s pre-Crisis "Kryptonese" characters have returned to DC's continuity, as part of their latest mega-continuity-revamp which appears to be a mash-up of all previous continuities, both pre- and post- Crisis. In effect, everything you ever read did, in fact, happen; regardless of which "age" it is from (but that's a separate post...)

When Professor Waid writes that "Kryptonian is a cipher", he is referring to the 2000-era Kryptonian transliteration font, that was originally created for DC merchandise (such as the Bottle City); then became the basis of the Kryptonian languages that appeared in various TV shows, from Smallville onward, and in Superman comics beginning in 2001.

When he refers to "Kryptonese is a different dialect with 118 characters and its own grammar," he is referring to the undiscovered E. Nelson Bridwell and Al Turniansky project, used in comics in the 70s and early 80s and then erased from continuity for all time, until "all-in" when it came back.

What is not said:



This beautiful, pre-Crisis in appearance Kryptonese font that DC is now using in its comic books was painstakingly created by Darren Doyle and made available on his website here: Silver Age Kryptonian Font: Reborn. Just to clarify: DC is not using their own font, nor manually lettering Kryptonese - they are using Darren's actual font.

"That font was a bear to create. I hand wrote each letter until I got a version I liked, scanned it, vectorized it in Illustrator, then imported each character 1x1 into the font program."

Darren Doyle is a professional linguist. In 2003, he began what was then called "The Kryptonese Lanuage Project". In short, he constructed a full-on "Kryptonese" language based on E. Nelson Bridwell and Al Turniansky's notes, and incorporating all information that had appeared in the published comic books.

This is a complete constructed language with its own vocabulary and grammar based on canon works and its own new alphabet, based on the transliteration cipher, but improved and expanded.

DC hasn't just used his Silver-Age font --



His constructed language was used on the screen for the spoken form of Kryptonian in the CW Supergirl television series (episodes 302, 306, 307, and 313 - maybe more);



and his improved "Doyle Kryptonian" font as well as his constructed language have been used in DC comics' Supergirl Special #1 -- DC appears to have been working directly from his online dictionary:


As far as I know, he has received no attribution from CW nor from DC.

A growing community has arisen around his language, people are learning it; working on original compositions and translations; artwork, and more.

Thank you, Darren.



See kryptonian.info for more info!