That idea that Kryptonite was a compound formed from the explosion of the planet Krypton was mostly kept consistent over the years. However, there were some interesting twists on the concept from time to time Page 2: How did that crate turn into Kryptonite? His writing has been featured at ESPN.
He features legends about entertainment and sports at his website, Legends Revealed and other pop culture features at Pop Culture References. By Brian Cronin Published Nov 12, Share Share Tweet Email 0. Top Comic Book Storylines: And this is because of two things: cells and radiation. It is thought that the people of Krypton had a much denser molecular structure and therefore, it would be extremely hard for anything to penetrate through their supremely compact molecules!
It would be like having a body of Kevlar! Not only are Kryptonian cells very dense, but they can metabolize solar radiation. The radiation given off by Krypton's red sun was too weak for Kryptonians to process. Yet, when Superman lands on Earth and into the light of our younger star, he is able to take the radiation from our yellow sun and metabolize it—the way a green plant converts light from the sun into energy through a process called Photosynthesis. This extra boost from the sun gives Superman the ability for flight, super strength and invincibility.
Superman is invincible! But, there is a BIG exception to that statement. This alien element is so well-known and engrained into pop-culture, that Microsoft Word recognizes it and can auto-correct to it for you!
The element comes in many forms, but the most iconic is as a glowing, green rock. It could be that Kryptonite affects Superman by interfering with his cells and their ability to metabolize solar radiation.
Thus, it makes him weaker due to the inability of his cells to process the radiation necessary to give him his superpowers! Writers want instant effects to keep the reader interested and intrigued! Green Kryptonite makes Superman weak and can even kill him. It was actually introduced in on the Superman radio series , as both a plot device and to allow Superman's actor, Bud Collyer , to occasionally take time off. The episode in which it first briefly appeared now exists only as a script, but the substance played a part in at least one major plotline during the course of the program.
It was not until 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.
Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel did write a story in that involved a piece of Krypton, referred to as The K-Metal from Krypton , which robbed Superman of his strength while giving humans superpowers, but the story was never published.
The amount of kryptonite shown to fall on the Earth in Silver Age stories is too large to have been evenly distributed from the explosion of any reasonably sized planet, so the usual explanation for the large amount that made it to Earth was that the kryptonite and other materials from Krypton were dragged to Earth by the experimental warp drive that brought Superman to Earth.
A similar explanation has been used in many subsequent continuities, such as the s television series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman , Superman: The Animated Series , the graphic novel Superman: Birthright and the s television series Smallville which saw a massive amount of the material arrive with Kal-El's ship, devastating Smallville with a violent meteorite shower.
It was possible to artificially create green kryptonite, which the rogue genius Lex Luthor performed on various occasions. However, he rarely needed to do so, as kryptonite was so abundant that many ordinary criminals kept a supply as a precaution against Superman's interference. In a storyline, all known kryptonite on Earth was transmuted into iron and the existence of kryptonite on the moon was classified for decades , but 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.
Still, this storyline achieved its intended purpose of greatly reducing the use of kryptonite in Superman storylines. Kryptonite emitted a radiation that had an adverse effect on Kryptonian natives such as Superman, though different varieties of kryptonite had different effects. It was assumed for a long time that kryptonite radiation was harmless to non-Kryptonians, but occasional isolated incidents were reported where it had sporadic effects on humans.
After the limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths and writer John Byrne 's subsequent revision of the series in , the status of kryptonite was vastly changed. In the post-Crisis universe, only one form of kryptonite was naturally occurring: the green variety. As revealed in the World of Krypton mini-series the abortive detonation of a doomsday device by the Black Zero terrorist group set off a slow chain reaction within Krypton's core causing the native elements of Krypton to fuse together into a new radioactive element.
As millennia passed, the unique background radiation from this element began to kill increasing numbers of Kryptonians. The authorities suppressed knowledge of the "green death", but the scientist Jor-El was able to trace the source of the radiation. He discovered that the amount of the new element in Krypton's core was reaching critical mass and that it would soon explode, destroying the planet.
This was a parallel to the pre-Crisis version of Krypton which was destroyed when its uranium core exploded. A non-canonical roleplaying game supplement by comic book writer Roger Stern called the new element "kryptonium" with kryptonite being its common ore. However, this has not been acknowledged within the comic books. Initially kryptonite was much rarer on Earth in the revised stories, the only available sample being a fist-sized chunk which had embedded itself in the tail of Kal-El 's rocketship as it fled from the exploding planet Krypton.
It was later secretly removed from the rocketship by a government cabal to become the power source for the cyborg Metallo. That sample was also responsible for triggering the powers of the supervillain Conduit. The sample was in turn stolen by Lex Luthor who had a piece cut from the main stone and mounted in a signet ring to keep Superman at bay. However, continued exposure to the ring proved carcinogenic to Luthor a significant difference from Silver Age stories, in which kryptonite was completely harmless to humans , necessitating the amputation of his hand and ultimately causing his supposed death.
Superman recovered the ring and entrusted it to Batman to be used if he ever became a threat to humanity. Another part of the stone was cut into a kryptonite bullet. An unknown fraction of the first sample is securely stored in the Fortress of Solitude. As pieces of the Lexcorp sample were distributed, many fell into the possession of other criminal organizations and supervillains. For many years the only way a character could have access to kryptonite in the DC Universe was to have a piece of this original sample, or to somehow fetch it from the remains of Krypton itself.
A variety of kryptonite types similar to the pre-Crisis range appeared in the Pocket Universe created by Legion of Super-Heroes villain the Time Trapper. Superman, while visiting the pocket universe, used this universe's native Gold Kryptonite Superman found he was immune to the kryptonite that existed in that universe to remove the powers of General Zod and several other Phantom Zone criminals who had destroyed all life on that world; Superman then executed the criminals by use of green kryptonite, as punishment for the villains' crime.
Two post-Crisis stories have featured artificially created red kryptonite. The first kind was a kryptonite-like, but non-radioactive rock that seemingly stripped Superman of his powers although the source was actually Mr.
Mxyzptlk 's magic in the story "Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite". The second, in the Justice League story "Tower of Babel", was created by Batman as a way of stopping Superman without killing him, should this prove necessary.
It was stolen by Ra's al Ghul , who quickly put it to use. It is a "relatively stable" isotope of kryptonite, which, like its pre-Crisis version, disrupts Kryptonian cells in an unpredictable way. In the story, it turned Superman's skin transparent, resulting in his "solar batteries" overloading. In the s, jewel kryptonite made its reappearance in modern continuity in DC's The Silver Age limited series.
As shown in the Action Comics Annual 10, Lex Luthor put a piece of red, green, gold, and blue kryptonite into Metallo.
Some issues of Superman have indicated the mechanism by which green kryptonite may hurt Superman. Like Hanna-Barbera 's Birdman , Superman in some ways is a living solar battery; his cells absorb electromagnetic radiation from stars like Earth's sun. Kryptonite's radioactivity possibly interferes with this process, driving the energy out of his cells in a painful fashion.
Long term and high-level exposure to green kryptonite can be fatal to Superman. In post-Crisis comics, long-term exposure to kryptonite is known to have the same effects on human beings as exposure to Earth-born radioactive materials; these effects include cancer. Lex Luthor discovered this inadvertently after acquiring a ring with a green kryptonite fragment set in it to provide protection against Superman—Luthor first lost the hand he wore the ring on to cancer and later had to have his brain transferred into a new, cloned body after the cancer was found to have spread throughout his original body.
It is speculated that kryptonite may be located in a hypothetical " island of stability " high on the periodic table , beyond the currently known unstable elements, in the vicinity of atomic number The transmutation of Earth's kryptonite could be explained by the acceleration of its natural atomic decay under this theory.
The different forms of kryptonite may represent multiple allotropes or isotopes of green kryptonite, or a more exotic variation in composition based on currently unknown particles. Under normal chemical nomenclature the -ite suffix would denote a compound e. Thus the name implies that kryptonite is a compound and not an element something supported by the "tar" analysis in the third Superman movie.
This issue was normally overlooked in the pre Crisis comic books, but a non-canonical game sourcebook did refer to kryptonite as "the common ore of the super-actinide Kryptonium, an unusually stable transuranic element, whose atomic number is believed to be One thought about the source of the -ite ending is found in astronomy wherein a meteoroid is a rock floating in deep space, a meteor is one streaking through the sky, and a meteor ite is a rock lying around on the ground after falling from the sky.
The -ite ending could have been used to denote chunks of Krypton that had fallen to Earth. The aforementioned atomic number was reinforced by the first season episode of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman entitled "The Green, Green Glow of Home," where it was stated that kryptonite was "periodic element " and that it "emits an extremely high band radiation that does not seem to affect humans".
The substance itself had no formal designation until the very end of the episode, where Lois Lane 's suggestion that it be named "kryptonium" was eschewed in favor of Clark Kent's "kryptonite" due to the fact that it initially appeared in the form of a meteorite.
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. During the extraction process, the rock appears to hold a significant amount of green kryptonite. The scientific name for the rock was displayed on its case, 'Sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide with fluorine'.
Though more likely, the researchers who performed the analysis of the fragment did not perform a core sample test. They may have only chipped off the outer layer in order to test it. Amazingly, in April it was announced that geologists in Serbia had found a mineral identified as having the chemical formula sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide [1].
But instead of the large green crystals in Superman comics, the real thing is a white, powdery substance which contains no fluorine and isn't radioactive. The mineral, to be named Jadarite after Jadar , the location of the Serbian mine where it was discovered , will go on show at the London Natural History Museum [2]. In both Superman Returns and its indirect predecessor, Superman: The Movie , Green Kryptonite is shown as effectively removing Superman's powers during the time he is exposed; in the first movie, Superman is nearly drowned while exposed to Green Kryptonite, and in Returns , Superman is brutally beaten by Lex Luthor's henchmen and stabbed with a Kryptonite shard by Luthor.
In most versions of the comics continuity, Superman retains his powers and invulnerability to conventional weapons while exposed to Green Kryptonite, although dramatically weakened and in severe pain.
This avoids the logical shortcut which would result if a villain could, for instance, simply expose Superman to Kryptonite and then shoot him with a gun. The comics continuity has consistently held that only exposure to Kryptonite, in and of itself, would be sufficient to kill Superman but his body can reject it before death as seen in Smallville.
Green Kryptonite has no short-term effects on humans though strictly in post-Crisis continuity, long-term exposure is apparently lethal to humans, due to radiation poisoning or non-superpowered Kryptonians. In one early Silver Age story, Superboy built up immunity to specific chunks of Green Kryptonite through repeated non-fatal exposure, as seen in the story "The Great Kryptonite Mystery", Superboy volume 1 58, July This idea was further developed in the Elseworlds series Kingdom Come , when Luthor reveals that the older Superman's absorption of solar radiation over the years rendered him immune to Kryptonite.
In most incarnations, lead blocks the effects of Kryptonite. In the television series Smallville , Green Kryptonite, refined or not, can cause normal humans to mutate special abilities, although an outside catalyst such as a strong electrical charge is usually required.
Although most of these were accidental the mutants were accidentally exposed , others started to refine and take in Kryptonite willingly to obtain its effects. One character named Marsh inhaled liquid Kryptonite to gain superhuman strength. This also gave him temporary Kryptonite radiation, thus causing Clark to be unable to stop him until the "dose" wore off. In the episode Void when clark is injected with kryptonite,his body rejects it before death meaning it can't actually kill him. Whenever Clark was exposed to it, it caused nearly crippling pain and temporarily removed his powers.
Additionally, it would take some time usually a few minutes after the Kryptonite was taken away for Clark to regain his powers; during this period, he was as vulnerable to injury as a human.
Removes superpowers from Kryptonians permanently; however, in one story, a temporary antidote was developed that negated this effect for a short period of time.
For obvious reasons, this variety was little used in Superman stories. It played key roles in the limited series "The Phantom Zone ", as well as in three noncanonical stories, namely the tale Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?
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