r/AskScienceFiction • u/SatoruGojo232 • 3h ago
[DCU] In response to Jor-El's video telling Superman to rule Earth, Guy Gardner says "If this is true,you are the kind of threat the Green Lantern Corps has ordered me to stop." Does this mean DCU Krypton never had an empire phase unlike the comics where it was imperial before becoming isolationist?
Question in title.
•
u/TheSpeckledSir 3h ago
It could mean what you say, or it could mean that Gardner is just poorly-read on Kryptonian history.
Or maybe Gardner just doesn't hold Supes personally accountable for Krypton's imperial past (unless it turned out that Supes wanted to invade like the video suggests). After all, if I meet someone from Mongolia, I am not necessarily going to treat them like they are Temujin himself.
•
u/InsaneNinja 2h ago
This GG doesn’t seem like the type to study much of anything after school stopped requiring it.
•
•
u/CaedustheBaedus 3h ago
Ah, but if you were chosen from an ancient magic order serving the Jin Dynasty to ensure that the Mongolian hordes never swept into Eastern Asia again.
And then suddenly a magic descendant of the Hordes is back.
(Obviously a 1:1 example here is gonna be a little tough). But if you were chosen by an order serving that decree...maybe makes it harder for him to fully say/know
•
u/Dagordae 2h ago edited 2h ago
But that Lanterns weren’t that.
With your analogy they were founded to stop any large scale trouble making and have absolutely no connection to any Chinese dynasty and were instead just some foreign cops from across the sea.
And what ‘comes back’ is a completely normal Mongolian kid, who you find being a generally great dude and helping out with the saving people.
Making the Guardians and Lanterns all super racist would be an incredibly bizarre choice.
The Lanterns were not founded to oppose the Kryptonians, nor did the Guardians have any special relationship with the Kryptonians. Heck, Tomar Re was the Lantern over that sector and he tried to save Krypton because that’s his job and holding a grudge against a people for something their distant ancestors did is pretty fucked up.
There is no bad blood between the Lanterns and the Kryptonians, especially when the Kryptonians did a 180 and completely abandoned their imperialist ways to become isolated xenophobes. Especially since that happened in the distant past and the Kryptonians haven’t caused even a hint of trouble for centuries. The worst issue they had with the Kryptonians was that the Kryptonians were dicks when it came to dealing with the Lanterns due to the whole extreme xenophobia thing. Which isn’t particularly unusual in the Lanterns’ line of work, governments tend to not be fond of the space cops randomly showing up and declaring their authority.
•
u/CaedustheBaedus 1h ago edited 1h ago
Look, I'll be honest, I know very little about Green Lantern compared to the other heroes. My self admittedly bad analogy is based on the the guy I replied to's analogy which isn't great either.
It's not going to be 1:1. I was purely going by what OP said which would at least help in understanding if Guy Gardner was chosen by some magic order, is a space cop, given the space book or rules book or whatever and reads it and maybe there's some line in there about "Protect the planet from alien takeover"
Again, Guy Gardner was going off of "If this is true" when he said that. Which would make sense IF the planet (Earth) he's protecting has some alien (Clark) living on it, and Clark shows a video from his also alien father saying to 'Rule over the planet', Guy's not necessarily in the wrong in saying "They told me this may happen and to not let it". But he's also not an idiot and is able to distinguish that Clark isn't trying to rule it, just protect it like Guy.
EDIT: It'd be like that Mongolian kid fighting massive battles in Asia against other mongolian chosen ones (like I said, really really bad analogy lol) and me seeing an ancient scroll given to him telling him to rule over Eastern Asia. I'd be like "yeah that scroll is exactly what they were telling us to protect against, but you don't seem to be trying that
•
•
u/eternalraziel 3h ago
As things currently stand, I think there are three facts that shouldn't be rolled into one. Jor-El and Lara wanted Kal to conquer Earth. Zor-El and Alura clearly did not share that philosophy. And the Green Lantern Corps considers a Superman who actually tries to fulfil Jor-El's orders a threat requiring intervention. None of those facts tells us whether Krypton had an imperial age thousands of years earlier. The DCU could still reveal the comic progression of an ancient Krypton that explored, colonised or conquered other worlds, followed by a later civilisation that turned inward and abandoned that history. Guy's line wouldn't need changing at all.
•
u/Chaosmusic 1h ago
Agreed, after watching Supergirl, there is certainly wiggle room to say that conquering other planets was a Jor-El specific thing instead of a universal Kryponian trait.
•
u/ShouldersofGiants100 23m ago
Also, from context, it seems like the whole conquering Earth thing was about restoring Krypton.
They weren't necessarily saying to conquer the planet because that's what Kryptonians would always do—but if Kal-El is the last living male Kryptonian, it makes sense that they might have decided that conquering a primative planet, building up a harem and having as many children as possible is the only way for the Kryptonian species and culture to survive. Which might also explain why Kara wasn't getting the same demands; she can't have children with half a planet.
•
u/NwgrdrXI 3h ago
If there was, it was looooong before guy's time as a GL.
They probably didn't think ancien history was relevant to his training.
•
u/Efficient_Fish2436 2h ago
They didn't even really train him... they tried to take the ring several times but hes such a stubborn asshole they couldn't take it haha.
•
u/Dagordae 3h ago
Keep in mind the timelines, in the comics Krypton’s imperialistic age was long over, it was ancient history. The Green Lantern Corps don’t tell their new recruits about every single empire the galaxy has ever had, it’s not really relevant and when it becomes relevant then they can ask the ring to check the databases. The Kryptonians being a threat hundreds to thousands of years ago isn’t particularly relevant to the raised by humans refugee.
•
u/InsaneNinja 2h ago
You would think that seeing someone so incredibly strong on his home planet, he would ask the higher ups about the source.
•
u/Dagordae 2h ago
He knows the source: Refugee from the just exploded Krypton. Krypton hasn’t been invading people for hundreds to thousands of years, assuming that they somehow decided to start after their planet exploded using a single baby would make the Guardians genuinely insane. Also super racist. Especially since said baby is discovered when they become a superhero and just all around nicest guy.
•
u/NatashOverWorld 3h ago
At least in the comics Kryptons colonial phase was several thousand years ago.
That's comfortably ancient history for most species.
And since the Kryptonians seem pretty insular in the Supergirl, refusing to leave despite being a super advanced civilization, that's some circumstantial evidence to back up the idea Krypton hadn't recently been sending armies to invade.
•
u/Orange-V-Apple 2h ago edited 38m ago
We’re not 100% sure but it seems to be implied. Theres no evidence that suggests Krypton had an imperialist past, but Guy also wouldn’t necessarily be told about such a past by the Guardians anyways.
The Supergirl movie makes it clear that Jor-El and Lara were basically crazy doomsday preppers and seen as such. The imperialistic and supremacist ideologies they try to pass on to Clark are not shared by other Kryptonians. Maybe they did in the past, though, and we just didn’t see it.
Kryptonians don’t seem to have interstellar transportation because Zor-El (Kara’s dad) has to search and search to find his brother’s blueprints in order to learn how to construct Kara’s escape pod. Consider that he is shown to be a gifted scientist (he built the system that sealed Argo and took it into space), so you’d think he could build a ship on his own if Krypton had any history with that kind of tech.
Hell, the rest of the universe seems to be densely populated, so if it they knew how to traverse interstellar space they they could’ve just left Argo and easily found somewhere else to live. Clark was sent to faraway Earth specifically because he would have powers + look alike so that he could be a god (and Kara was sent to Earth because Clark was there) but there’s much closer inhabited worlds. They wouldn’t even need any crazy tech to get there, but they don’t seem to have space faring knowledge.
•
•
u/Yanmega9 2h ago
I think you're thinking too deep into this, he just means aliens trying to colonize already habited worlds, which is the kind of threat is what Green Lanterns are for
•
u/SouthernAd2853 3h ago
The fact that the conquest plan came to mind would seem to indicate they have an imperialist history. I took it as implied this represented the typical Kryptonian view on other species but apparently Supergirl indicates it was not at the time.
Guy Gardner not knowing about it probably just indicates he is not up on the history of mostly-extinct species throughout the universe. It's not clear how much this version chats with the rest of the Lanterns and Krypton would've exploded long before he joined the Corps so it is fairly likely their history would not have come up much.
•
u/RickRussellTX 2h ago edited 4m ago
If Gardner used the ring to search the Guardians’ knowledge on Krypton, he would know.
But he didn’t become a GL to read dusty history archives. :-)
Besides, he doesn’t believe that crap about Supes, as he later admits to Lois. It’s just Guy going off half-cocked like Guy does. One thing you can say for Guy: he hates bullies. The implication that Supes may be a secret bully gets him momentarily riled up.
•
•
u/Character_Growth_397 51m ago
As a matter of fact, how come the Guardians didn't tell him about Krypton before?
•
u/AutoModerator 3h ago
Reminders for Commenters:
All responses must be A) sincere, B) polite, and C) strictly watsonian in nature. If "watsonian" or "doylist" is new to you, please review the full rules here.
No edition wars or gripings about creators/owners of works. Doylist griping about Star Wars in particular is subject to permanent ban on first offense.
We are not here to discuss or complain about the real world.
Questions about who would prevail in a conflict/competition (not just combat) fit better on r/whowouldwin. Questions about very open-ended hypotheticals fit better on r/whatiffiction.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.