Mag-En

Mag-En

A “famous psychologist” of Krypton and the father of the “brilliant scientist” Ral-En. An attempt by Ral-En, an unscrupulous associate and former “college friend” of Jor-El, to establish himself as dictator of all Krypton, by using “Kryptonian hyper-hypnotism,” an especially potent form of “mass hypnosis” taught to him by his father, to convince the populace that he possessed superhuman powers and that resistance to his rule was therefore hopelessly futile, was successfully thwarted through the courageous intervention of Jor-El during the period when Superman was still an infant and Krypton had not yet exploded.

Ral-En was subsequently banished into the Phantom Zone for his ruthless attempt to seize power, and Mag-En, who had supported and encouraged his son’s dictatorial ambitions, perished with Krypton when the planet exploded, although not before he had successfully implanted in the mind of the infant Superman an unconscious “hypnotic command” to perform ten evil deeds the next time he saw a certain blue comet hurtling through the heavens.

Years later, in July 1962, after having encountered the blue comet somewhere in space, Superman finds himself gripped by an overpowering compulsion to commit evil acts, including a narrowly averted attempt to destroy the planet Earth, until Supergirl, alerted to the true cause of Superman’s bizarre behavior by the Kandorian scientist Lon-Es, successfully brings about the destruction of the baleful blue comet and, by so doing, obliterates for all time the “destructive command placed in (Superman’s) sub-conscious mind" by the villainous Mag-En many years ago (S No. 154/2: “Krypton’s First Superman!”).