Jor-El
Lara, Jor-El, and Superman. From the cover of Superman (volume 1)
#141, 1960.Jor-El is a fictional character that appeared in the
Superman comics published by DC Comics. He is the biological father of
Superman, and the husband of Lara (nee Lara Lor-Van).
Jor-El was a highly respected scientist on the planet Krypton before
its destruction...a fate which he foresaw, but was unable to convince
his colleagues of in time to save their race. Jor-El was, however,
able to save his infant son Kal-El, sending him in a homemade rocket
ship to the planet Earth just moments before Krypton's destruction.
After constructing his Fortress of Solitude, Superman honored his
deceased biological parents with a statue of Jor-El and Lara holding
up a globe of Krypton.
History
Jor-El was first referred to in Action Comics #1 in 1938, but made his
first full-fledged appearance in the Superman newspaper comic strip in
1939, where his name was spelled as "Jor-L"; his name first appeared
as being spelled "Jor-El" in a 1942 Superman novel.
A 1948 retelling of Superman's origin story first delved into detail
about Jor-El, though his formal and more familiar Silver Age aspects
were firmly established starting in the late 1950s and over the course
of the next several decades, with a definitive summarization in the
1979 miniseries The World of Krypton (not to be confused with the
post-Crisis on Infinite Earths late 1980s comic special of the same
name).
As it was summarized in this miniseries (and in various other Silver
Age stories), Jor-El was Krypton's leading scientific genius, having
been the inventor of, among things, the "Jor-El" (a hovercar) and the
discoverer of the Phantom Zone (and the inventor of the Phantom Zone
projector). He lived in Krypton's major city of Kryptonopolis.
Jor-El had a brother that lived in Argo City named Zor-El, who
eventually became the father of Kara Zor-El, alias Supergirl.
Jor-El eventually met and married Lara Lor-Van, an astronaut in
Krypton's fledgling space program (which was soon permanently grounded
after Jax-Ur blew up one of Krypton's inhabited moons), and the two
soon had an infant son, Kal-El.
When Krypton began experiencing a series of earthquakes, Jor-El
investigated, and soon discovered that Krypton's core was greatly
unstable, and would eventually explode, taking the entire planet and
its populace with it. Jor-El tried to convince the members of
Krypton's ruling body, the Science Council, of this impending
disaster, and urged re-establishing Krypton's space program so giant
spacecrafts could be built to carry the populace to another habitable
world. However, the Council was dismissive of Jor-El's findings, and
refused to comply with his plan.
Frustrated, Jor-El continued his work on space travel on his own,
hoping to build a spacecraft to save his own family; this included
launching several smaller test rockets (one of which included the El
family dog, Krypto). However, as time ran short, Jor-El soon found
that he would only have enough time to build a spacecraft to save his
son Kal-El. Jor-El decided to aim for sending Kal to Earth, realizing
he would gain superpowers under Earth's yellow sun and lower gravity.
As Krypton finally went through its final destructive stages, Jor-El
and Lara placed their son in a rocket, and launched him toward Earth,
before perishing along with nearly the rest of the planet's
population.
After the 1985-1986 miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths and John
Byrne's 1986 miniseries The Man of Steel rewrote Superman's origins,
details about Jor-El's background and character were changed. Under
Byrne's version, Jor-El inhabited a cold, emotionally sterile Krypton
where even bodily contact was forbidden. Jor-El was considered a
"throwback" for actually expressing emotions toward his wife Lara, and
for his favoring the less sterilized days of past Kryptonian eras.
Another change in this version was Jor-El genetically altering his
son's fetus (gestating in a "birthing matrix") to allow him to leave
Krypton (in this version of the mythos, Kryptonians were genetically
"bonded" to the planet itself, not allowing them to leave), and merely
attaching a rocket engine to the matrix instead of constructing a ship
wholesale.
In the 2004 Superman miniseries Superman: Birthright, Jor-El, along
with Krypton and Lara, was more-or-less reverted back to his Silver
Age versions, though with updated touches (such as Lara contributing
equally to the effort of sending Kal-El to Earth). |
