Kandor - the Bottled City

[Captain Kal]

    One thing i have always wondered about; regarding Kandor's enlargement.   What happened to everything in the bottle that was not Kandor?  The scarlet jungle,  caves, & other things that surrounded the city.  As well as everything under the city.  The chunk of Krypton extended from the planet's suface to a portion of its core.  Where did it go?  

The truth is the writers forgot about those aspects and wrote as if only Kandor city proper was in the bottle to be enlarged.

But I suspect one of two things happened in the DCU fictional world to explain this.

1) Those aspects were also enlarged and displaced things on Rokyn.

2) The enlarging ray was concentrated on Kandor city proper so those other aspects were mostly unaffected, remained miniaturized, then were destroyed by the enlarging city around them.

I like to think the first option occurred re: displacement.  One piece of evidence to support this is in The Krypton Chronicles when they found the supposedly destroyed city not only restored but better than ever.  Whole sections of the city were unaffected by the defect in the enlarging ray that were not noticed in the enlargement story, probably due to the vast size of affected mass.  If Kandor city itself wasn't completely seen in the enlargement story, then we can suppose the other aspects were similarly too far away to be seen on enlargement.

https://www.supermanthroughtheages.com/tales2/chronicles/1/?page=7

https://www.supermanthroughtheages.com/tales2/chronicles/1/?page=8

[llozymandias]

I also prefer the first option.  It would also explain the real reason why the kandorians refused to let Kal-El enlarge them on earth.  They knew that enlarging that much indestructible mass would destroy earth in the process.  Kal didn't think of that.  He was too intent on the task of restoring Kandor to think of all possible consequences.

[Klar Ken T5477]

We've never seen more than a group of people sent to or from the Phantom Zone at a time.  .

There's a full 20 or so of unnamed zone baddies (ala Mala and his ilk) causing mayhem in "The Town Of Supermen".  They challenge Supes to a quick draw and he re-zones them.

Some fine discussions on enlargement here...as opposed to our daily spam. :wink:

[Super Monkey]

We've never seen more than a group of people sent to or from the Phantom Zone at a time.  .

There's a full 20 or so of unnamed zone baddies (ala Mala and his ilk) causing mayhem in "The Town Of Supermen".  They challenge Supes to a quick draw and he re-zones them.

Some fine discussions on enlargement here...as opposed to our daily spam. :wink:

Mala and his brothers were exiled from Kyrpton before the discovery of the Phantom Zone.  Speaking of which, I need to finish their entries.

However, I never read the follow up story, so someone else needs to finish the entries with info from that issues after I finish filling in info from the 1st story.

[Captain Kal]

We've never seen more than a group of people sent to or from the Phantom Zone at a time.  .

There's a full 20 or so of unnamed zone baddies (ala Mala and his ilk) causing mayhem in "The Town Of Supermen".  They challenge Supes to a quick draw and he re-zones them.

Some fine discussions on enlargement here...as opposed to our daily spam. :wink:

Correct me if I'm wrong, Klar Ken T5477, but didn't Superman kind of cheat in that story?  IIRC, he used his heat vision to deactivate their zone guns so his was the only working one.

Back somewhat on-topic: If Kandor was so vast as to be like a continent on Earth (and Godfall describes Kandor as a nation), perhaps the same applied to Argo City?  The original Supergirl origin supposed a bubble of air just happened to cling to that city.  If that chunk was massing comparable to Kandor's real estate, maybe the asteroid gravity alone would explain that air bubble.  The later retcon of the dome is interesting but unnecessary in hindsight.

[llozymandias]

The "Krypton-portion" that Argo City rested on was composed of anti-kryptonite.  the ground in the city was covered by lead to protect the citizens.  Maybe there was only enough lead to shield the city proper,  & the dome was there to keep them from leaving the city.  Or the dome was part of an experiment that enabled the city to survive Krypton's destruction.

[dto]

The "Krypton-portion" that Argo City rested on was composed of anti-kryptonite.  the ground in the city was covered by lead to protect the citizens.  Maybe there was only enough lead to shield the city proper,  & the dome was there to keep them from leaving the city.  Or the dome was part of an experiment that enabled the city to survive Krypton's destruction.

Originally in Action Comics #252, Argo City was blasted into space with a surrounding “air bubble” but no dome.  This was changed in later retellings of Supergirl’s origin.  However, I always thought the visual depiction of the Argo City asteroid surface barely extending beyond the dome to be unconvincing (and let’s not even consider how the inhabitants survived the blast acceleration).

However, the first story arc of Superman/Batman implied that the new Kara Zor-El’s home was located on a chunk about the size of Australia.  This huge size would make it more feasible for a city to survive intact, shielded from the explosion.  Maybe the incredible mass would even dampen some of the acceleration, resulting in fewer G-forces.  Finally, such a large chunk of heavy Krypton would conceivably retain at least a trace atmosphere, though such an “air bubble” might soon dissipate in the vacuum of space.

What if the original Kara Zor-El’s home asteroid “lifted off” in the same manner, but was later “trimmed down”?  We know in the final issue of DC Comics Presents that the Argo City Asteroid was only the size of Metropolis’ Central Park, which seems absurdly small – but what if that was the largest area that could be enclosed by a dome?  Perhaps there was a pre-existing domed site within Argo City, or one was hastily constructed post-explosion to contain the dwindling atmosphere.  

It would have been expedient to concentrate the survivors in one place, and abandon the remainder of the surface.  Then the rest of the asteroid was reshaped, either by remote-controlled explosives or reprogrammed excavation robots.  Why?  There are a few good reasons.  

Probably the fractured crust was already beginning to break up into smaller fragments.  Shedding all this unstable material would be deemed wise, since nobody wants any debris coming loose from the “leading edge” and striking the dome.

Perhaps Zor-El’s propulsive system would work more efficiently by pushing less mass, and the irregular contours made the asteroid difficult to maneuver.  “Streamlining” this rock would make it easier to position the thrusters, since the center of mass would be calculated faster.

Most important was the danger of X-Kryptonite.  Even the lead lining of Argo City would have been overwhelmed by a continent of this lethal material, and you also had to worry about radiation from outlying areas seeping through the dome.  Thus, removing everything just beyond the dome and leaving only enough below the city to maintain structural stability was essential.  Alas, even this amount was eventually deadly for Argo City.   :cry:

[llozymandias]

That last issue of DC Comics Presents was one of the worst Superman stories ever written.  Too often the writers (& artists) depicted Krypton as slightly more advanced than earth.  Also many of them seemed to have forgotten that Krypton was much larger than earth.  Plus the kryptonite in Argo City was anti-kryptonite.  Anti-kryptonite only affects non-powered kryptonians.  X-kryptonite gave temporary (kryptonian) powers to non-kryptonians.