Gadget Spotlight: Jor-El's Hologram

The trouble with doing a blog like this is that sometimes things are so well known that you think you've covered it already, but you actually haven't! This happened to me last week when talking about Krypton's prison rings; I mentioned an example and went to link to it, only to discover I'd never written about it before. Luckily, I needed a post for this final week of the year, so it works out. And that example - which you already know if you've read the title - is Jor-El's hologram.

See, everyone knows that Jor-El sent a baby Superman to Earth in a rocket to save him from the exploding Krypton. And for a long time, that was the story. Superman eventually learned about Krypton through time travel, Phantom Zone criminals, and various things that fell to Earth, but it was something that happened over time.

That was not the case in Superman: The Movie (1976). This depiction that Clark come to Earth with a crystal that, when dropped into the Arctic Circle for whatever reason, formed the Fortress of Solitude. Inside the Fortress was a hologram of Jor-El that could tell Superman pretty much anything he wanted to know about Krypton or any other location in the 28 known galaxies.

Originally, this did not affect the comics at all. In fact, even when Superman's origin was updated in the 80s, it would've been impossible because Superman's ship was a "birthing matrix" that housed an unborn Kal-El. There was nothing that would hold a crystal or anything else. But when they updated his origin again in Superman: Birthright (2003 - 2004), we see that - perhaps because they reverted to the rocket of the classic origin - Jor-El packed a tablet in the rocket that acts as a Kryptonian encyclopedia. However, despite the tablet passing a very brief message from the adult Superman back to Jor-El and Lara, it does not allow for a Jor-El AI to act as a surrogate father figure, as in the movie and Smallville versions.

That all changed in Action Comics #844 (October 2006), around the same time the Fortress of Solitude came to resemble the one from the movies. Now Jor-El was a fully interactive hologram.

Thankfully it didn't stick. My personal belief is that Superman should have as little interaction with Jor-El as possible; my ideal version of Superman considers the Kents his real parents and has an alive Jonathan (and Martha) to talk to when he needs help. It seems a lot of people disagree with me on this point, however.