Superman: Bottle City of Kandor

by Edmond Hamilton

Follows the adventures of the Man of Steel and the fate of Kandor, the capital city of the planet Krypton.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Comic Book, Dc Comics, Superman

200 pages, Paperback

First published October 3, 2007

About the author

Edmond Moore Hamilton was a popular author of science fiction stories and novels throughout the mid-twentieth century. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, he was raised there and in nearby New Castle, Pennsylvania. Something of a child prodigy, he graduated high school and started college (Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania) at the age of 14--but washed out at 17. He was the Golden Age writer who worked on Batman, the Legion of Super-Heroes, and many sci-fi books.

Reviews

[Jean-Pierre Vidrine · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories are from one of the weirdest corners of the Superman mythology. They don't always take full advantage of the potential for speculative stories, but they are always fun. Little holes in the pseudo-science can be shrugged off while the Silver Age silliness can be seen as either embarrassing or charming.
Though Kandor has been revisited in later eras, it was never as colorful as this.

[Desire Manara · Rating 3 out of 5]

No sé qué tantas de estas historias se habrán traducido al castellano en las ediciones modernas.

Muy raro el tratamiento del color en la vd que se consigue, como si se hubiera hecho en base a páginas mojadas.

[Frederick Lopez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kandor was once the capital of Krypton, until the space-villain Brainiac shrank it and stuffed in into a bottle. That pink-jumper-wearing weirdo wanted to kidnap cities from all over the place and dump them on some planet, with himself as the ruler. He tries this routine on Earth, with Paris, New York, and Metropolis, only for Superman himself to put a kibosh on the scheme. Superman manages to restore each of Braniac’s cities to full size, with the exception of Kandor. That city he brings to his Fortress of Solitude, vowing to undo Braniac’s miniaturization.

Kandor existing in the Fortress of Solitude is the status-quo for most of these stories. Being stuck in a jar, I wouldn’t describe that as living, just existing. I imagine that for the Kandorians who survived the bottle period that it would be like surviving a siege. Superman and his friends can shrink themselves down and have adventures, and some Kandorians briefly leave the bottle, although the consequences aren’t pretty if they stay out for too long. Stories from this period include Superman and Jimmy Olsen moonlighting as Kandorian Batman analogues, Lois Lane and Lana Lang palling around with a Kandorian doppelganger of Superman, and various Kandorian villains mucking around on Earth. At the end, Superman does manage to fix the Kandor situation, although things don’t quite end the way he plans.

The nuttiest theme of the whole book was the large amount of doppelgangers. Superman has more than a few, some of whom are relatives and the rest you can just say ‘shared ethnicity.’ But to see the entire Daily Planet staff replicated within a shrunken alien city seems a little unlikely. Maybe I could find dopplegangers of all the people I know in a large city like New York, maybe Paris, but I wouldn’t bet on it. The Daily Planet doubles are some of the Kandorians who occasionally leave their city, mainly to impersonate the journalists at events where they could be assassinated. It’s a strange thing to want to do, I guess, but the Kandorians are just that grateful to Superman. Plus it’s probably their only way out of the bottle, even if it is just temporary.

Silver Age Superman was a complete loon, which is really fair enough. I mean, the man does come from another planet. His eccentricity finds its finest expression within the Fortress of Solitude, where he keeps souvenirs of some of his adventures. In this volume Superman shows Lois Lane the room that he’s dedicated to her. It’s filled with mannequins of her and other souvenirs. The whole thing creeped me out, but Lane actually seemed flattered. From one stalker to another, I guess.

I enjoyed this book quite a lot. I liked the fantastic details of Kandor, the skewed priorities of Superman and his friends, and I appreciated the situations in which Superman’s powers left him. The dopplegangers of Kandor gave me a real Borges vibe, and some of the things that they do in the bottle city bought Calvino’s Invisible Cities to mind. I’d recommend it.

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of my all-time favourite covers. Unfortunately like so many covers, what's inside doesn't quite live up to the hype.
Before Krypton exploded Brainiac miniaturized the city of Kandor inside of a bottle he kept in his ship. Superman takes Kandor to the safety of his Fortress and tries to figure out a way to return the Kryptonians to normal size.
The stories are a little hokey, written in the 50s/60s pre-moon landing. It is absurd how many people, (Superman, Lois, Lana, Jimmy etc.) can enter and then exit back to normal size yet somehow the Kandorians can't be returned normal. The machine only has a single charge left in it or there's a limited amount of "element" or whatever it gets silly. Obviously a healthy suspension of disbelief is needed with these tales that aren't terrible but not very good either. I'd love to see this bottle city idea reintroduced today because it has a lot of possibilities. The idea or different mutations of the idea occasionally pop up but I'd like to see a dedicated new arc focused on the original idea like the tales in this graphic novel.

[JM · Rating 1 out of 5]

The artwork is fine, if a bit too boilerplate. While the idea of Kandor is a fascinating one with potential, these stories are all really silly and poorly written, and given their original context as single comics each one begins with a 'Oh hey so ya there's this City in a bottle that used to be on Krypton' followed by lots of narrating what's already being depicted (fairly common in the really old comics I've read). Meh.