Argo City

[dto]

I believe it was said in DC Comics Presents #97 that Argo City was about the size of Metropolis' Central Park.  It we use New York City's Central Park as comparison, that's 840 surface acres plus all the planetary crust underneath to hold it all together.  I suspect that's less than 6 miles in diameter total volume, but still a HUGE amount of green kryptonite!   :shock:

And even if all that rock was pulverized to gravel and gently settled over Metropolis, the city would have been destroyed much like Pompei, buried alive under a roof-crushing mantle of green rubble.

[llozymandias]

Argo City rested on anti-kryptonite not green kryptonite.  If it were on green k Kara & her parents would still be there.  Non-powered kryptonians are immune to green k, it's anti k that kills them.



       The idea that argo city is no bigger than central park makes no sense.  On krypton that should make it less than a small town.

[MatterEaterLad]

Can anyone tell me what plot devices were made better by retconning the krptonite ground of Argo to "anti-kryptonite"...what was made better by having green kryptonite only deadly to super-powered Kryptonians as opposed to any surviving Kryptonians?

[dto]

llozymandias, sorry but that's what DC Comics Presents #97 said -- size of Central Park, composed of green kryptonite.   :roll:

Of course, did we really need "anti-kryptonite" to kill the Argo City residents?  The entire population (including a VERY young Kara Zor-El) briefly experienced superpowers under a yellow sun before Argo City was diverted by Jer-Em.  Perhaps that triggered biological changes which rendered the Argo City inhabitants somewhat vulnerable to regular green kryptonite even when deprived of yellow sunlight.  Even a mild acquired sensitivity could become a lethal reaction considering the HUGE continual overexposure of green kryptonite.  

As for instances where Superman was unaffected by green kryptonite after purposely removing his superpowers, perhaps there wasn't enough green kryptonite to overcome this initial resistance.

[llozymandias]

True the thing about anti-kryptonite was a retcon.  As early as the early 60s (if not earlier) it was shown that green k only kills super-powered kryptonians.  The retcon was probably done to explain why the non-powered citizens of argo city were killed by kryptonite when they should have been immune.  Iirc the lead linning was placed before argo city's sojourn into a yellow star system.

[MatterEaterLad]

I wonder what stories they were, it seems to me that the changing of kryptonian matter into a radioactive material that's deadly to any Kryptonian would have worked as well, even with the number of Silver Age survivors, there weren't that many of them and what would have been the loss if Green K was deadly on a Red Sun world...well, that's just me...

[NotSuper]

I also prefer the idea of Green K killing non-super Kryptonians. It's not like being under a red sun completely changes them into humans; they're still aliens.

[Jor-El]

I have the story which features Mr Mxyzptlk bringing Argo City crashing down on Metropolis which lets loose the green Kryptonite ridden bodies of the dead Argo Citizens.
It also features an origin story for most of the Phantom Zoners