Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

In the closing overs of the second season, Superlad was struck by a Kryptonian rainbow and, as Sir Isaac Newton proved in his groundbreaking research into prisms, thereby immediately gained knowledge of the Kryptonian language, including all Kryptonian symbols and writing.

These Kryptonian symbols (also called ‘Kryptonese’ by traditionalists and the chemically medicated) were first seen in old Superman comics. Naturally, as with most things, Smallville took the Kryptonian writing and completely muddled the whole situation up, using some Kryptonian letters for words, others for vague, ethereal concepts and a handful for local Smallville traffic signs.

Regardless, Superlad’s instant understanding of Kryptonian writing proved almost immediately handy, as the Good Spaceship Jor-El took control of the Superlad hot-eyes and started burning Kryptonian symbols all over the place. He burned the Kryptonian symbol for ‘hope’ () into the barn, the symbol for ‘fear’ () into the bathroom sink and the symbol for ‘burrito’ () into the local delivery van.

The Kryptonian language has popped up here and there since then, baffling young Master Luthor’s resident linguist, Dr CunningLinguist with its, y’know, baffling refusal to succumb to traditional translation methods. Kryptonian writing has also offered any number of excuses to shoehorn the entire cast of the Superman movies into random episodes of Smallville. Most recently, the symbol for ‘Zod’ () was plastered all over a Kansas farmyard. Zod, genocidal but not all that subtle.

So what are we to make of the Kryptonian language? What does it offer us, the viewer? Does it help us to swear in imaginative new ways? Is it perhaps the language that the makers of washing machines use to encode their manuals? Or is it still just a simple letter-by-letter cipher originally developed by the comic books that has, in whole-hearted Smallville tradition, been shamelessly pilfered, distorted and recycled with gay abandon?

All of the above, really. The Kryptonian language – making Latin look interesting for a new generation of TV addicts.

Related Pages

If you hated this, you'll probably also hate:

1. Smallville Extra: Cave Paintings - Now how in red and blue blazes do you think that Native American cave paintings got muddled up with the Smallville experience? After all, he’s growing up to be Superman,...
2. Smallville Extra: Magic Stones - Magic stones! To the seasoned Smallville viewer (or, indeed, to one who has seen only the fourth season) they are words that invoke trembling and fear. And eye-glazing. If your...
3. Smallville Extra: Kryptonite (aka Meteor Rocks) - In a time before Smallville (and let us never forget that there was such a time), kryptonite had a relatively simple role. Namely, it killed Kryptonians. And fair enough, too....
4. Smallville Extra: Homo-Eroticism - Rumour has it that there’s something queer going on in Smallville. That some of the balder members of the cast may be having a gay old time. That, to be...
5. Smallville Extra: Spaceship - When one is rocketed to Earth from the exploding planet Krypton, almost all safety engineers recommend doing so in a spaceship of some kind. And, thus, the young Superlad arrived...