GONE & FORGOTTEN REVISITED : THE DOG DAYS OF KRYPTO

There's two "L"s in "Kolli", because the
Superman writers think they're clever

"Hi, this is a very special and very different edition of Gone & Forgotten. Instead of reviewing some lousy comic, we're going to look back on the career of a beloved comic book institution, Krypto the Super-Dog! And the Super-Dog Family! Woof!

"I'm Kolli, Krypto's super-sweetheart. Don't sweat it if you don't remember me. Shortly after my only appearance, I was run over by Braniac's spaceship. Nonetheless, before my untimely demise, I did scatter Krypto's illegitimate pups all over the inhabited cosmos, so next time any of your unmanned Mars mission probes finds itself humped by super-powered dogs, you know what's going on.

"In any case, please enjoy reminiscing with some of Krypto's greatest friends and enemies - as if a dog could have friends and enemies - and try not to think about how we're all dead now."

"I AM KING KRYPTO AND I SENTENCE YOU TO DEATH!"

Hello visitors, I am Krypto, greatest of the Super-pets because I was Superman's favorite, and because Streaky and Comet aren't even really Kryptonian and Proty is a pile of snot! Ha ha! I am not only super-powerful, but also much smarter than any normal dog. Notice, for instance, that I have no desire to cram my nose into your crotch as a form of greeting. I have transcended that. Also, I do not eat feces or ruin the carpet. Only bad dogs would do that. I am not a bad dog. Krypto is a good dog.

The look of pure dumb malice on his
face just straight cracks me up.

THE ADVENTURES OF KRYPTO
In Adventure Comics No.262 (July 1959), Krypto becomes “The Colossal Superdog”, by which they mean “Colossal Menace”, after coming across a combination Kryptonite/Rainbow-Metal meteorite during a romp in space. The two meteors had either collided or were in the process of mating when Krypto happened upon it, and its combined Kryptonite/Rainbow radiations affected Krypto in a singular fashion. It’s also worth mentioning that the meteor looked a little like a space-butt.

Returning to Earth, three things happen to Krypto – one, he grows to a titanic size. Two, he goes mad, with one caption even coining the obvious but still delightful phrase “SPACE RABIES”. Lastly, he becomes paralyzed, firing his X-Ray eyebeams into space forever, sterilizing entire alien empires.

Superboy builds a memorial for his now-titanic pet and then leaves him there where he remains to this day, just off I-10 south of Phoenix. Bring the kids, they built a Dairy Queen and a Dinosaur Park around the back, it’s a real tourist destination.

KRYPTO’S FOES AND RIVALS

Who makes all these capes for dogs? 

"I am Swifty, one of about a billion super dogs who, over the course of the fifties and sixties, usurped Superboy's affections for Krypto and replaced him as a partner. I know we usually all turned out to be robots or Krypto in disguise, but still, if I were Krypto I wouldn't put up with Superboy's shit. You know what I mean?"

Arr! I am a pirate!

"And I am Destructo, who was Lex Luthor's pet dog! I was given super-powers so that I could help my master open a can of whoop-ass on Superboy and Super-Dog. Back in the Sixties, every one of Superboy's foes seemed to have a dog. Kryptonite Kid had the Kryptonite Bulldog there. I'm sure there would've been more villain dogs, but frankly, Superboy only HAD maybe two or three villains. Most of the time, he used his incredible super human strength to beat the hell out of penny ante gangsters and con men."

"I am Kryptonite Dog, and I like to eat beef jerky and fart noxious Kryptonite fart clouds everywhere."

It's true. Beef Jerky gives me the farts.

Actually, I was trained on the Shakespearean stage.

"Raaaagh! Me am Bizarro Krypto! Me make mess on carpet! Me eat own feces! Me hump all legs! Woof woof! Me am barking loud all night! Me am apeshit crazy!"

"Grr! Naff off Bizarro Krypto! I fucking hate you!"

Hilarious. ROLL, YOU FATTY!

THE ADVENTURES OF KRYPTO
In Superboy vol.1 No.64 (April 1958), Krypto becomes "The Rebel Super-Dog" when he begins to feel underappreciated by his master. Getting himself adopted by Lana Lang, who I think only did it so that she could ride around on Krypto's back like he was a tiny horse, the Superdog is shocked - SHOCKED, I tell you! - when Superboy adopts a NEW dog to replace his Kryptonian pal.

The replacement pooch is named "Hot Dog" and is a fat dachsund with no super-powers. In fact, in one of my favorite panels of all time, Krypto expresses his feelings towards Hot Dog by blowing his pudgy ass into a ditch.

Using Hot Dog as a means by which to humiliate his former pet, Superboy does the following things: Wraps Hot Dog up in bulletproof padding and uses him to deflect bullets, drags him across the sky by his leash so as to create a wiener-shaped shadow across Smallville (he has a reason, it wasn't just a fanciful whim), rolls him up like a wheel and rolls him down the sidewalk and then stuffs him in a missile made of spare car parts and throws him like four hundred miles to deliver a letter.

Krypto eventually reunites with Superboy, mostly to save Hot Dog's life I imagine.



THE MANY MOODS OF KRYPTO

It's not a purse, it's a satchel!

OOooh. Who could I be? Am I a be-yooo-tiful lady dog? HAHA!

No! I am Krypto! I flew through a Red Kryptonite comet once and, for forty-eight hours, was changed intoa beautiful collie dog. The master's girlfriend said I was so pretty. She petted me and gave me treats. She said I was the lovingest most special doggie in the universe. Even my master thought I was beautiful. He brushed my fur and threw many balls for me to chase.

Then the Red K wore off. "Surprise!" I said. "It is me, the beautiful dog you loved so much was me, plain old Krypto! Now you see that you only loved what is special inside of me!" They hugged me and said they liked me the way I was. Then they went off together and I was left alone for several hours.

They call me - no joke - Air Dale!

"This is one of my ingenious disguises. I am secretly a dog, but look, I am wearing glasses!"

No, Krypto, don't stick your
muddy tail in a hole to wash it.

THE ADVENTURES OF KRYPTO
In Superboy No.75 (September 1959), we learn "How Krypto Made History" when the superdog is first inspired to travel back in time. In search of fresh dinosaur bones, Krypto spins himself so quickly that he pierces the time barrier but, because he is a dog and stupid at this, he repeatedly fails to go back much further than a few decades at a time.

While hopping from era to era, Krypto manages to help Babe Ruth score his 60th home run, gets Washington across the Delaware, saves the Netherlands from flooding, does something with Robin Hood I didn't really understand, helps King Arthur remove the sword from the stone and then - having finally made it to prehistory - punches out a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Do you know what killed the dinosaurs? Krypto did.

Superboy brings Krypto back before he can eat a whole dinosaur skeleton in kind of a weird panel where kids may have been forced to confront the idea of death before they were really emotionally ready to process it  - when Krypto says "Oh boy! I found a pile of bones from some dinosaur that died here in a desert" it seems to be batting home the idea of mortality a little too hard for my tastes. People die and their remains are eaten by dogs, kids! Now go to sleep!


ALLIES OF KRYPTO

His eye didn't look like that before he got hit.

"Begorrah! I am Tail Terrier, Captain and chairman of the Space Canine Patrol Agency, a team of intergalactic, telepathic crimefighting dogs who made Krypto a member back in the Sixties. Every member was required to have a super-power; for instance, I possessed an infinitely elastic, malleable, prehensile tail I could use to lasso crooks. Krypto, by comparison, could flash fry us or stomp us into nothing with his mighty paws. We didn't mess with Krypto."

"By dame ib Tusky Husky,
adb by bib toobh ib ubeful
for obening dings. Bib Dob!
Bib Dob! Bow Wow Wow!"

"Other members of the team included Chameleon Collie, who could change his shape, Mammoth Mutt, who could inflate to a huge size and thereby become an easy target. There was also Precognitive Pup whose freakish head turned translucent and gave us views of the future. And lest I forget, there was also Paw Pooch, Hot Dog, Tusky Husky and Snoop Dogg."

"We'd meet in our galactic clubhouse and bark out our pledge:
"Big Dog Big Dog, Bow Wow Wow. We'll Stop Evil, Now Now Now!" Then we'd keep yapping and howling for half an hour or so. Mark Waid can't ever remember our anthem correctly. We mock him for it. I, personally, have dropped poopy on his house on more than one occasion, laughing heartily as we veer our hyper-dimensional cruiser through his rosebushes and do donuts on his lawn."

Sing our pledge along with us!

Big Dog Big Dog Bow Wow Wow

We’ll Stop Evil Now Now Now!

We’ll take a poop in evil’s shoe!

Cram our nose in villany’s crotch

And drag out butts on tyranny’s couch

Big Dog Big Dog Bow Wow Wow

Arf Arf Arf Yowlll GRRR

AWWWWW SUFFRAGETTE (fart)

"Our biggest enemies were these rogue, sentient cats who kept trying to feed us tainted hot dogs. It was a mess. A lot of them were the pets of Kryptonian villains who'd been condemned to the Phantom Zone - I mean, I sort of don't blame them for turning to evil! They get eternally banished to a twilight dimension of terror just because they happen to be the pet cats of criminals. Sometimes I think it's a blessing that Krypton exploded."

"You take that back or I'll KILL YOU! I'll KILL YOU!"

Then there's us, the Legion of Super-Pets. Here's a picture of us on the Celebrity Super-Pets edition of Jeopardy. Me? I'm Comet, Supergirl's pet horse who secretly used to be a human male, and I won the game when I bet it all on "Super-Pets who've claimed SuperGirl's maidenhead"

Besides me, Beppo the Super-Monkey is also a member. Beppo was sent into space on an experimental rocket built by Jor-El. Just like Krypto, the freaking thing got lost and he wandered through space for a bunch of decades. Freaking Jor-El. To say it was traumatic is to put too kind a face on it. Poor little monkey used to chew on his own dried feces and weep violently, haunted by terrifying dreams of endless blackness. Anyway, Beppo's put it all behind him. Of course, Beppo pretty much blew his mind on peyote during the Seventies when he moved to New Mexico to "find himself."

"I figure surviving begins with healing, and healing
begins with forgiveness. I forgive you Jor-El. Sob."

There was also Streaky the Super-Cat, who was kind of a fraud, but he was also a freaking wild man so we kept him around for the parties. Streaky got his super-powers from something called "Kryptonite-X," which SuperGirl "accidentally" slipped into a ball of yarn for him to play with. He only kept his powers for a little while, so after they'd wear off we'd make him go do the beer runs.

Then there was this little ball of shit named Proty. We kept him around for laughs. What a feeb.

"Okay, okay, that's
enough already."

Over the years, we've had a number of great adventures, but mostly we flew to the 30th century and beat up on the Legion of Super-Heroes a lot. Hahaha. "No, no, Braniac 5, we were being mentally controlled!" HAHAHAHA. Oh yeah, and Bee Boy applied for membership once. Streaky made him swim out to the pier with a candle in his thorax. Those were wild times.

THE ADVENTURES OF KRYPTO
In Superboy No.71 (March 1959), Krypto hijacks a telepathy device a switches bodies with his master, Superboy, becoming "Krypto, The Human Superdog", which sounds like a threat.

In possession of Superboy's body, Krypto reveals his true personality as being that of a total fucking jerk. He throws away Superboy's trophies, melts a Superboy robot into a Krypto robot, and pours like a whole bottle of Ma Kent's perfume on Superboy (in Krypto's body) so as to make him smell like a rural farm community cathouse.

Krypto, being an immense fuckup, can't help but act like a dog while in Superboy's body, so he saves a falling construction worker by catching him in his teeth, eats dog food in public, humps the dome on Smallville City Hall and murders every cat within a hundred mile radius.

In the end, Superboy reverses the mind-switch by "shocking" Krypto with the startling image of Superboy (in Krypto's body) flying off into space forever, which is weird because I'd think Krypto would be beyond shock by this point. The things this dog has seen, the things he has done ...

These were my fantastic adventures. There were so many folks I couldn't find the time or space to mention, or for that matter, the inclination. There was my pal Ed Lacy, a retired Police Detective who palled around with me when I was playing the role of a professional stuntdog named "Jocko." Most of Ed's relatives were junkies on the run from the law. We had to keep finding them and saving them. I'm guessing that this was because Ed was a black comic book character and, therefore, family of junkies. Comic book logic. It makes sense to some folk.

"This is a drawing I made of Proty. He is stinky poop."

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Ma and Pa Kent, my master's adoptive parents and the kindly couple whose rugs I so often ruined over the course of a lifetime. I will always remember MA Kent as the woman who would sneak me pieces of lunchmeat off the counter. I'll always remember Pa Kent as the man who would pass wind and blame it on me. Also, these two created my absolutely excellent secret identity of "Spot" or some damn thing, which they created by spilling paint on my back. They meant well. But honestly.

"Fuck you! Fuck you
and die you fucking
stupid cat! I hate you!"

THE END! ARF!