Lara
Lara
The wife of Jor-El and the mother of Superman. Offered the chance to flee the impending death of Krypton by escaping to Earth with her infant son, she steadfastly refuses to abandon her husband, remaining behind with him instead to perish in the cataclysm.
Surprisingly little is known about Superman's mother. "Noted for her advanced intellect as well as her beauty," she worked in a shop that manufactured robots prior to her marriage to Jor-El. During the period immediately preceding the marriage, she served as Jor-El's assistant at the Kryptonian missile base where Jor-El was engaged in top-level research.
At the time the lovely, dark-haired Lara gave birth to the infant Superman, she and her husband were residing in Kryptonopolis, the city that became the capital of Krypton following the theft of Kandor by the space villain Brainiac.
When, around the time of Superman's birth, Jor-El made the dire discovery that Krypton was on the verge of exploding "like one colossal atomic bomb," Lara was one of the few Kryptonians who believed Jor-El's prophecy of impending cataclysm.
When doomsday finally came, and Jor-El urged her to flee the holocaust with their infant son in an experimental rocket, Lara steadfastly refused to leave her husband's side. "I will not leave you, Jor-El!" she cried. "But we will save our son!"
Hurriedly, "the helpless infant was placed into the space-ship," and the tiny craft was "launched forth into the void."
"Krypton is dying!" cried Jor-El, as the ruins of Krypton crumbled about them.
"But our son will live," answered Lara, "—the last survivor of a great civilization!"
Then, as husband and wife clung together in a desperate last embrace, "nature's fury gathered for one final cataclysmic eruption...And as the pitifully small space-ship hurtled through interstellar space, the once mighty Krypton exploded into stardust!"
Because he remembers his parents as having been so loving and kind—and because the anguish of losing them in childhood was so unbearably painful—Superman has memorialized his parents in numerous ways, the most well-known of these being the memorial in his Fortress of Solitude. (TGSB)
Lara does become one of the first Kryptonians in space when she is launched to the moon called Wegthor (S No. 233/2, Jan 1971: "Jor-El's Golden Folly").
Lara's full name is Lara Lor-Van.
(See also Lora of Krypton-2)
