In 2012, Neil deGrasse Tyson made headlines when he appeared in a Superman comic book and pinpointed a real planet (located in Corvus) that matched the description of Superman's homeworld, the fictional planet of Krypton. This story tracked all over the world. Why? I will look at the figure of Superman, whose back-story--orphan from an exploding planet--is somehow known by everyone from the age of eight on. I will look at how specific astronomical phenomena (in the sky and in the news) may have inspired Superman's young teenaged creators in the 1930s to create this iconic modern myth--a myth, like many, grounded in astronomy. My goal is to show that comics--which we normally think of as juvenile, throwaway entertainment--actually tried to base themselves (and certainly were inspired by) actual astronomical events in the thirties and forties, made more accessible to the public by new scientific explanations, including a real supernova that may have inspired the destruction of Krypton.
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