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Superman Post-Crisis #3

Superman: The World of Krypton

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Witness the past of Krypton in this volume collecting THE MAN OF STEEL #1, THE WORLD OF KRYPTON #1-4, and stories from SUPERMAN #233, 236, 238, 240, 248, 257, 266, 367, 375 and SUPERMAN FAMILY #182!

240 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

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1479 people want to read

About the author

John Byrne

2,955 books359 followers
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There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name


John Lindley Byrne is a British-born Canadian-American author and artist of comic books. Since the mid-1970s, Byrne has worked on nearly every major American superhero.

Byrne's better-known work has been on Marvel Comics' X-Men and Fantastic Four and the 1986 relaunch of DC Comics’ Superman franchise. Coming into the comics profession exclusively as a penciler, Byrne began co-plotting the X-Men comics during his tenure on them, and launched his writing career in earnest with Fantastic Four (where he also started inking his own pencils). During the 1990s he produced a number of creator-owned works, including Next Men and Danger Unlimited. He also wrote the first issues of Mike Mignola's Hellboy series and produced a number of Star Trek comics for IDW Publishing.

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5 stars
809 (39%)
4 stars
449 (21%)
3 stars
369 (18%)
2 stars
233 (11%)
1 star
182 (8%)
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
Profile Image for Jokoloyo.
455 reviews304 followers
March 24, 2021
This is not a Superman story. It is a science fiction/fantasy story about Krypton people. The Kryptonians on this comic can easily be renamed as human. The society issues on the comics especially the earlier chapters are usual stuff in science fiction tropes.

I like the story is relatively short without much filler. No 'porn' of meaningless long battle/fight scenes. So maybe for people who want to have that kind of entertainment, this comic could be a disappointment.
Profile Image for Welson Chang.
32 reviews1 follower
March 6, 2009
Superman: The World of Krypton presents a collection of stories put together to give readers a larger view of what life on Krypton was like. Written back in the 80s, the book's main focus is centered on the re-interpretation of Superman and his history by John Byrne. In John Byrne's re-interpretation, Krypton is a society that has lost its humanity through its absolute devotion to science. Nearly 2 decades later, many of the plot points in the World of Krypton that John Byrne presents is still relevant to today. The debate that surrounds cloning on Krypton finds itself played out in real life on Earth today over the battle of embryonic stem cell research. People are becoming more and more distant with one another as science and technology becomes more prevalent in our lives with the I-Pod and various other new technologies. As people look back to history, they may find that this collection may become as relevant as Watchmen currently is.
Author 26 books37 followers
January 3, 2010
Pretty decent history of Krypton, starting at the end of it's 'Golden Age' through a war and to the events that lead up to it's destruction.
Some nice sci-bits ( love the big warbots in the war story), but the art didn't entirely hook me and much as I like the effort Byrne made to create Krypton as a real feeling world, I missed the old Krypton of the silver age comics.
Lots of good bits, but an unsatisfactory whole.
Profile Image for Gregory.
323 reviews5 followers
March 17, 2018
I have decided to read this book since Krypton is set to premiere on The Sci-Fi Channel in late March and to kick off the celebration of Superman's 80th Anniversary and anticipation of the 1,000th issue of Action Comics.
I enjoyed the tales coming from Superman's home planet and the lessons that teach the reader that real heroism isn't genetic and comes from superpowers. The original mini-series was a blast to read. These stories also are cautionary tales about how we treat each other as human beings and taking care of our world. This was truly a treat for me as a Superman fan. For new Superman fans, this is must reading and definitely read the current adventures and the older material.
Nothing more to say but enjoy.
Profile Image for Rizzie.
557 reviews6 followers
October 16, 2023
I remember reading the first few pages of this a while back, and not feeling it at all. But I gave it a second chance today. Honestly? It was alright. I don't think it filled in any particularly interesting gaps. Many writers have tried and failed to make Krypton interesting, but it's just never gonna happen. I have never been a fan of Byrne, but his emotionless Krypton is probably the best of the many takes. Those parts were mildly interesting. But the bulk of the story is about Van-L in Krypton's distant past, and was extremely generic John Carter type stuff, most of which I've already forgotten. The final issue has some brief Superman/Lois stuff, which was honestly the best part despite being fairly standard.

It's important to remember that these were the early years of the modern version of Superman, so every little thing that feels standard now was quite fresh back then. I can give credit on that front, but in terms of how enjoyable the story is...meh. Not great, not terrible. Deserves 2.5 stars, but I'll round up because I'm a Mike Mignola fan. This is one of young Mignola's first projects (though he only did breakdowns, so the finished pages are pretty unrecognizable).
Profile Image for Drew Canole.
3,168 reviews43 followers
October 1, 2022
This was surprisingly good! I don't know much about Krypton, but we see how the society collapsed in a way that's more satisfying than in the Man of Steel movie.

This is pretty early Mignola art and feels inspired by Hal Foster/Al williamson. The world feels a bit like Planet Mongo from Flash Gordon actually.

Krypton's rely on harvesting braindead clones to sustain their near immortal lives. There are some people that believe the clones should be given full rights, things come to ahead when one upperclass citizen steals a clone of herself and presents it to her son as a woman he will wed. When he discovers this he murders the clone woman which sends everything spiralling out of control.
Profile Image for Acton Northrop.
157 reviews
October 9, 2016
Ohhhh "Seyg-El." Like Jerry. Very good. (Also this miniseries is amazing and there's a slew of bonus stories, including one that answers the question of why the Green Lanterns didn't save Krypton. Where's the World of Smallville/Metropolis collections?)
Profile Image for John Yelverton.
4,431 reviews38 followers
August 21, 2017
This is a well done Superman story which gives us a look at a post "Crisis on Infinite Earths" Krypton and how those changes relate to the current Man of Steel.
Profile Image for Michael.
3,385 reviews
March 28, 2018
The trade collects the four-issue Byrne/Mignola miniseries, plus the "Fabulous World of Krypton" back-ups that ran intermittently in the Superman titles during the 70s.

Byrne's miniseries is solid sci-fi parable adventurism. It's nothing amazing, though Byrne does a solid job bringing all the history together by having Jor-El and later Superman flashback to the stories to show how it all led to Krypton's destruction. Solid. Mignola's art got much better when he started drawing Hellboy.

The prologue from Man of Steel #1 is included, though it doesn't add much. The dialogue is repeated - verbatim - in World of Krypton #4. You can compare Byrne's art to Mignola's, which is the only difference. Byrne, at this stage of their respective careers, looked better. Mignola would soon surpass him.

"The Fabulous World of Krypton" short stories are mostly corny and tacky.
Profile Image for Ian Miller.
142 reviews7 followers
December 28, 2018
I read the four-issue miniseries "The World of Krypton" by Byrne and artist Mike Mignola prompted by the free giveaway of the first issue in comic stores to promote the tv show Krypton. While the show turned me off by its insistence on getting away from the cool politics of Krypton for time travel nonsense with characters I don't care about, this series was a fun, if rather overly expository look at a possible past of Superman's race. The problem being: you don't really care about anyone, especially Superman's parents. The art and thought behind it were quite nice, though.
Profile Image for Cendikiawan Suryaatmadja.
133 reviews
June 14, 2023
lol wut, they started a one thousand year long planet destroying war cause some schmuck murder-suicide his family after finding out his bride is a clone of his mom, and no real transition given just clean cut from utopia to post-apocalyptic wasteland. It's like if at the ending Brave New World's society got pikachu faced then cut to however many years later and suddenly its 1984, but the characters are the same.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for OkatuFanBoy.
7 reviews
June 15, 2017
This comic was very interesting for me to read as a little kid. This comic is a prequel about Superman's birthplace which looks pretty neat. I really liked the world that his kind lived in and I also liked the culture that they had.

All in all, a fun comic.
Profile Image for Daniel.
164 reviews15 followers
June 28, 2016
In the 90's Byrne has reinvented Superman which was at the most fun. I remember to collect all those stories specially because Byrne is not just one of the best artists in the genre but one of its finest writers and who obviously is influenced by science fiction and fantasy authors. Although I hardly have wanted to read his superman stories again, "World Of Krypton" remains as one the best comics ever written. The re imagination that Byrne and Mignola made of Krypton brought it to a higher level in Superman's mythology adding a definitely poignant back up story and a spectacular world building setting.
18 reviews2 followers
June 26, 2013
I'm not a regular Superman's reader, I heard John Byrne's run was very good, so I decided to start from there.
This is an interesting and entertaining story about Kripton. When Superman shows up it gets worse, but not enough to ruin it. It's more like an origin story, but it ends where the origin usually starts, could it be called a pre-origin story then?
The science fiction aspect of Superman's origin is one I enjoy, and here it's well done. Enjoyable reading.
Profile Image for Barney  Dinosaur.
51 reviews
December 3, 2018
This comic is very entertainig for me and all my friends, we were reading it all along in my house, and all of us felt like Superman was going to die, but like always he just, he just did it.

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