Xonar

History

In the Issue ACTION COMICS #223 Superman discovers a lead box in space containing another journal of Jor-El’s and some films which he made. When he reads the journal and views the films, he learns how Jor-El first discovered evidence of Krypton’s coming destruction shortly before Kal-El’s birth on the 10,000th year of Krypton’s civilization. Since the ruling Science Council of Krypton failed to heed his warning, Jor-El began a search for a suitable planet on which to relocate. He chose Earth as a possibility, and created an artificial site which duplicated Earth’s gravity and yellow-sun environment to learn what effect they would have on Kryptonians. To his astonishment, he gained super-powers in the simulated Earth-site.

However, the Science Council again rejected his findings, save for two members named Val-Arn and Khai-Zor. After they learned for themselves how they would become “supermen” on Earth, the two scientists captured Jor-El, Lara, and their newborn son Kal-El, and announced their plans to build a rocket which would take them to Earth, which they would tyrannize with their great powers. Jor-El tricked them into taking him to the Earth-simulation site, where he broke free of his bonds, shut off the gravity and yellow-sun machines, and captured them. After delivering them to the authorities, Jor-El made another trip to Krypton’s core in a mole machine and found the chain reaction was building.

When he returned, he inserted a warning sequence depicting Krypton’s possible destruction in a film presented during the 10,000th anniversary celebration, and was denounced as a crackpot. The journal goes on to describe how Jor-El sent his son Kal-El to Earth in a rocket, and ends with a note to Kal-El, if he finds it, to remember his heritage as a Kryptonian and to do only good with his powers.

Superman realizes his father was the first “superman” of Krypton, and silently promises to use his powers only in the cause of righteousness.

In the Issue Superboy #158 Superboy receives a radio message which comes from a recording made by his father Jor-El. He gets a fix on its location in outer space, discovers the bodies of his parents, Jor-El and Lara, in a floating space-capsule “coffin” radiating Green Kryptonite rays. A Kryptonian villain named Xonar, formerly Khai-Zor, an enemy of Jor-El’s, almost knocks him into the Kryptonite with shaped charges, but another Kryptonian, Dr. Krylo, rescues him.

Krylo explains that he had believed Jor-El’s prophecies of doom for Krypton, developed a form of suspended animation which he hoped would preserve himself and Jor-El’s family in space “coffins” to be flung into space by the explosion, with tape-recorded instructions on revival procedures included. After Kal-El’s rocket was sent into space and Jor-El finished his last journal entry, Krylo ray-gunned both Jor-El and Lara down, subjected them to suspended animation treatment, and placed them in a space capsule equipped with a taped message for Kal-El, to be activated when he came of age. Seconds later, Krylo’s robots did the same procedure for him and placed him in another space capsule. Both capsules were rocketed into space only minutes before Krypton exploded.

Both capsules were found by Xonar, formerly Khai-Zor, whose partner Val-Arn had perished in the cataclysm; Xonar himself survived Krypton’s destruction in a rocket he had built similar to Jor-El’s plans. Xonar revived Krylo and used the taped message of Jor-El’s to lure Superboy, son of his old enemy, into a trap. In the conflict that follows, both Xonar and Krylo die, but Superboy manages to get Jor-El’s and Lara’s capsule back to Earth with the help of a space-suited Jonathan Kent.

But Jor-El’s tape is activated shortly thereafter and plays all the way through. The voice of Jor-El tells his son and his son’s foster father that Jor-El had been irradiated with killing radiation while on an expedition into Krypton’s interior, which radiation he passed along to Lara, inadvertently, but not to Kal-El. Since the incurable radiation would doom them both to a slow, lingering, painful death if they were revived, Jor-El asks that Superboy leave them both lifeless in space, should Krylo achieve his objective of preserving them against his will. Sadly, Superboy and Jonathan Kent return the capsule to outer space.