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Quote1 When I shut my eyes, I feel the trembling... I hear the groaning at the center of the world. Our cities and our farmlands, our libraries and our laboratories... Our ten thousand years of learning to be civilized... are wrapped about a core of uranium, a virtual atomic pile, building toward critical mass. Will it be tonight...? Quote2
Jor-El src

Jor-El was the father of Superman. A scientist on the planet Krypton who predicted its destruction, he was ignored by the Science Council. To save his people's legacy, he rocketed his infant son to Earth.

Youth

Jor-El II and his identical twin brother Nim-El were born in Kandor, Krypton to Jor-El I and his wife Nimda. Zor-El is their younger brother.

Early Adulthood

Shortly after his he finished his primary education, Jor-El II started his career as a scientist. On his first day he met one of his superiors, Jax-Ur, and his wife to be, Lara Lor-Van. Jor-El and Lara married a short time later.

Early on during his career Jor-El discovered that Krypton was on the verge of its own destruction. Jor-El notified Krypton's Science Council of his findings and got what he needed in order to prepare for a mass evacuation of Krypton.

Jor-El's Best Friend

Jor-El eventually hired an assistant, but unknown to him it was his own time traveling son, Kal-El, who had come back in time to meet and help his father in his evacuation effort of Krypton. They had created a prototype space ark in Kandor, the home of Jor-El's twin brother, Nim-El and his wife Dondra Klu-Ta.

One day after the day's work was finished Jor-El and Kal-El noticed a saucer like spaceship that Kal-El recognized as belonging to Brainiac.

Shortly after Brainiac stole Kandor, Jor-El's father died, another event witnessed by Kal-El. After a short mourning period Kal-El realized he was about to be conceived and thus returned back to his own time.

The Last Son of Krypton

When Kal-El was born Jor-El and Lara decided to name their son after their good friend, Kal-El. (So basically Superman was named after himself.)

On The Science Council

Shortly after the birth of his son, Jor-El discovered the Phantom Zone and he then created the Phantom Zone Projector and in order to win a seat on the new Kryptonian Science Council (Since Kandor was Krypton's capital city, the Kryptonian Science Council was based there and when Brainiac stole Kandor, he also stole the Kryptonian Science Council.), Jor-El presented his discovery and creation to be considered for membership on the new Council. Jor-El won the seat and criminals on Krypton would now be banished for a period of time in the Phantom Zone.

Shortly thereafter Jax-Ur was testing a missile system, which went bad and destroyed Krypton's only inhabited moon, Wegthor. As a result Jax-Ur was sentence to spend eternity in the Phantom Zone for the death of the 500 colonist on Wegthor. After the destruction of Wegthor the Kryptonian Science Council forbade all forms of space travel and space craft experimentation.

The lowest point in his family life was when Jor-El had to sentence his own cousin, Kru-El, to the Phantom Zone for terrorist activities and creating forbidden weapons.

Jor-El continued working in secret on space crafts to evacuate the planet. Working so hard that he was not taking care of his own health and as a result while in a weakened state the banished criminals used the telepathy that being in the zone gave them to control him and force him to release them from the Phantom Zone, but Lara threw Jor-El and just in time reversed the procedure.

Krypton's Last Days

As Krypton's doom approached Jor-El used experimental animals to test his space crafts. One such animal, Beppo, a Kryptonian monkey was missing when Jor-El needed him so he substituted baby Kal-El's Kryptonian puppy, Krypto for the test flight, which never returned.

On the eve of Krypton's destruction a spacecraft landed near Jor-El's home. Jor-El and Lara rushed to warn the pilot off. Jor-El gave the pilot, a Daxamite named Lar Gand, and warned him about Krypton's laws about space travel. Lar Gand escaped the Kryptonian authorities just in time to keep from being arrested.

A short time later that day Krypton began to quake so Jor-El, realizing he had run out of time, placed baby Kal-El into the experimental space craft. Aware that his son would develop superhuman abilities under a yellow sun, Jor-El devised pills that would restore Kal-El's powers if he ever lost them on Earth, but he was unable to place the box containing the pills in Kal-El's rocket before he launched it.[1] Jor-El launched the rocket with Krypton's last son and Beppo, an unknown stowaway toward it's destination, Earth.

As the space craft was soaring toward Earth the planet Krypton exploded, with only Argo City (home of Jor-El's younger brother Zor-El and his wife Allura In-Ze, surviving the explosion.

Jor-El died on Krypton, but his son lived on as Superman.


Abilities

Equipment


  • This version of Jor-El, including all history and corresponding appearances, was erased from existence following the collapse of the original Multiverse in the 1985–86 Crisis on Infinite Earths event and later restored following the rebirth of the infinite Multiverse during the Dark Crisis of 2022-2023. Even though other versions of the character may have appeared, this information does not apply to those versions.
  • According to one apocryphal account, Jor-El and Lara escaped Krypton's destruction in a suspended animation capsule thanks to one Dr. Krylo, but when Superboy discovered them floating in space 15 years later he learned he could not revive them as they both had fatal Kryptonite radiation poisoning.

Related

External Links

Footnotes


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Superman Family member
This character is or was an incarnation of or an ally of Superman, and a member of the Superman Family. This template will categorize articles that include it into the "Superman Family members" category.

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