Most fans know Superman as the last son of Krypton, but something that most fans don’t know about is that he was not the only one who survived the ill fate the planet ran into. Over the years we got to see new Kryptonians who survived the destruction.
We also later got to know that Superman’s father, Jor-El, who predicted the fall of Krypton, was able to survive its destruction to become Mr. Oz in the modern era, but he was recently sent back in time to perish with the rest of Krypton.
As it turns out, a small handful of people did survive the planet’s explosion, and quite a number of them followed the trail of Kal-El’s rocket and found their way to Earth. Not everyone who survived turned out to be Superman’s allies, some turned out to be his enemies.
1) Supergirl
Krypton’s most famous survivor other than the Man of Steel himself is Kara Zor-El. In recent years, the Kryptonian version of Kara was been reintroduced and confirmed as Kal-El’s biological cousin. In her TV show, she is physically and emotionally only 16 years old and attends high school in National City, where she lives with her adoptive parents Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers. But initially, Kara was raised in Krypton’s Argo City, which also survived the destruction of Krypton in most continuities to become either a domed asteroid city or a shrunken bottled city.
2) Krypto
Monkeys and dragons aren’t the only Kryptonian animals who made it out alive. In the Pre-Crisis days, there was also a Super-Dog from Krypton. Krypto possesses many of the same powers as Superman. An alternate version of Krypto made it to Post-Crisis comics as well.
In early pre-crisis day stories, when Jor-El is sending out test rockets like the one he eventually uses for his son, he sends one out with the family dog inside it. Though this rocket is knocked off its path, it eventually finds its way to Earth, where it is reunited with an older Kal-El.
3) Earth-2: Power Girl & Val-Zod
Power Girl’s origins can get a bit confusing, but it basically comes down to this: Power Girl is Kara Zor-L, a version of Supergirl hailing from an alternate reality of Earth-Two. She, like the more-famous Supergirl of the DC Universe, survived Krypton’s explosion and came to Earth.
The New 52 reboot uncovered that the new Earth-2 Jor-El was able to save more than just his son, and young Val-Zod soon stepped into the role of Superman after the death of his world’s original heroes.
4) Karsta Wor-Ul
She initially lived on Earth going by the name Kristin Wells, but she eventually revealed that she was actually a Kryptonian who was hiding on Earth to escape her past after surviving the destruction of Krypton while she was away from the planet. However, Superman’s bravery in fighting back enemy forces inspired Karsta to follow his lead and protect the Earth.
5) H’El And His Dragon
When H’El was first seen in the New 52, he revealed himself as a former student of Jor-El’s who had been tasked with preserving the legacy of Krypton’s heritage. H’El, just like Zod in Man of Steel, desires to reignite the lost flames of Krypton, and arrives with the appearance of what looks like a dragon, but is actually a Kryptonian animal called a Tripodal Curosiananium.
Apparently, H’El was sent to Earth by Jor-El many years before Krypton exploded. Trying to form an alliance with Supergirl, H’El confides that his goal is to bring back Krypton — and that his way of doing so is to travel back in time and prevent his planet’s destruction.
6) Bar-El And Lilo
Bar-El and Lilo were introduced in Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman. While Superman was off-planet, the duo quickly took control of Earth with advanced Kryptonian technology.
Bar-El and Lilo were Krypton’s first astronauts who were lost and drifting in space for decades before finding their way to Earth.
7) The Bottled Population Of Kandor
While most of the above survivors got out of their world’s destruction through Phantom Zone imprisonment and last-minute rocket rides, most of the last survivors of Krypton actually made it out for another reason: they got trapped in a bottle.
But whether the city of Kandor is in a bottle or not, the gist is the same: due to Brainiac, its population survives Krypton’s explosion and is held hostage aboard Brainiac’s ship until Superman rescues it. Upon bringing Kandor to the North Pole, the city expands and all of its inhabitants are released, resulting in 100,000 new beings living on Earth.
8) Doomsday
Doomsday is a character most famous for being the villain who finally killed Superman, but what most fans don’t know about is that he’s also a character with very deep Kryptonian roots.
Doomsday’s origin has been tweaked a bit by the various DC reboots over the years, but the most known is that a scientist named Bertron created a humanoid baby in his lab, and left it out into the environment. But the infant immediately died, the scientist then collected the infant’s remains, cloned it, and put it out to die again. This was done over and over again, as every new clone of the baby became stronger than the last, each one collecting the pained memories of the previous clone, until finally, a creature was created.
9) Xa-Du The Phantom King
The first person that was banished to the Phantom Zone was Kryptonian scientist Xa-Du. The reason behind this was that his experiments into suspended animation were found to be immoral by the ruling Science Council. This provoked hatred inside Xa-Du against Jor-El and his heirs.
Dr. Xa-Du created an ecto-suit that enabled him to survive of the Phantom Zone, and it was revealed he continued his dark experiments and used the other imprisoned phantoms as fuel for his powerful suit.
10) House Of Zod
In the pre-crisis stories, General Zod from another reality was killed by Man of Steel himself. In more recent stories we could see Dru-Zod, his wife Ursa, and his followers like Non and Faora were trapped in the Phantom Zone before the destruction of Krypton. Upon their escape, they go in pursuit of Earth — and Jor-El’s only son.
Source: CBR
