The last installment of this tour guided us through the Red Kryptonite stories published from 1972 through 1999. Here's a link in case you missed it!
Red Kryptonite started out with real charm in those early Silver Age days, pure comic-book weirdness, every chunk doing something completely different and temporary, turning Superman into whatever the writer felt like that month. It was fun, unpredictable, and kind of perfect for the era.
Then it slowly slid into overuse. By the mid-to-late ’60s it felt less like a neat gimmick and more like a reliable plot device you could pull out whenever you needed a quick transformation or personality flip. Eventually DC just wiped the board clean, turning all the Kryptonite on Earth into useless iron and putting Red K on the shelf for a good long while.
When it finally started showing up again after the big continuity resets, it came back tempered, rarer, and more deliberate. This brings us to our final stretch... 2000 through 2024. Let’s see what they did with the old red rock once the new millennium kicked in.
Entry numbering will pick up from our previous Red K blogs.
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Then it slowly slid into overuse. By the mid-to-late ’60s it felt less like a neat gimmick and more like a reliable plot device you could pull out whenever you needed a quick transformation or personality flip. Eventually DC just wiped the board clean, turning all the Kryptonite on Earth into useless iron and putting Red K on the shelf for a good long while.
When it finally started showing up again after the big continuity resets, it came back tempered, rarer, and more deliberate. This brings us to our final stretch... 2000 through 2024. Let’s see what they did with the old red rock once the new millennium kicked in.
Entry numbering will pick up from our previous Red K blogs.
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The next appearance of red kryptonite is in JLA #44 (August 2000), during the multi-issue “Tower of Babel” story.
The Justice League is up against Ra’s al Ghul and his daughter Talia. Talia exposes Superman to a red form of kryptonite. She claims the previous owner experimented on it to make it less lethal but still crippling to Kryptonians. His flesh looks like it’s gone and the pain is intense.
In the next issue he’s able to repair his body by bathing in the sun’s rays. It’s eventually revealed that the previous owner of this chunk of kryptonite, and the person who experimented on it, was Batman. He’d been looking for ways to incapacitate the individual members of the Justice League in case their powers ever got out of control. Ra’s al Ghul managed to steal it from him.
The Justice League is up against Ra’s al Ghul and his daughter Talia. Talia exposes Superman to a red form of kryptonite. She claims the previous owner experimented on it to make it less lethal but still crippling to Kryptonians. His flesh looks like it’s gone and the pain is intense.
In the next issue he’s able to repair his body by bathing in the sun’s rays. It’s eventually revealed that the previous owner of this chunk of kryptonite, and the person who experimented on it, was Batman. He’d been looking for ways to incapacitate the individual members of the Justice League in case their powers ever got out of control. Ra’s al Ghul managed to steal it from him.
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Time really flies when it comes to red kryptonite. It’s seven years later before we see our crimson mineral again!
In Action Comics Annual #10 (March 2007), some of this new continuity gets unfolded. In one story, readers are shown that kryptonite once again comes in many colors, each with its own effect. Red kryptonite is back to being something that causes strange and temporary changes to Kryptonians.
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In The Brave and the Bold (vol. 3) #7 (December 2007), Power Girl is holding Wonder Woman's magic lasso and states that she's going to the Fortress of Solitude to kill Superman. After she blurts this out, both women are taken aback and attempt to find out what is going on.
It turns out they are up against Dr. Alchemy. He uses the Megistus stone to inhabit Power Girl's body and control her. As Power Girl, Alchemy flies to the Fortress, and using his powers, he turns the interior into red kryptonite. When Superman is exposed to it, his body begins constantly morphing in monstrous ways.
Eventually Power Girl breaks free of Alchemy's control, Wonder Woman sends the stone hurling into the sun, and Superman's Red K alterations quickly wear off. Power Girl concludes that "home-grown" kryptonite must not have the same 48-hour strength as real chunks from Krypton.
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Red kryptonite briefly appears in Action Comics Annual #11 (July 2008).
In an ongoing storyline centered around several escaped Phantom Zone prisoners, Lex Luthor organized the Superman Revenge Squad to help defeat them. One member of this squad is Metallo, a Superman villain whose body is powered by, and infused with, various forms of kryptonite.
Metallo exposes one of the escaped Kryptonian villains to red kryptonite, and that Kryptonian transforms into a lobster-like form, at which point Metallo murders him.
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In Supergirl (vol. 5) Annual #1 (November 2009), the Girl of Steel gets caught up in a hostage situation while in her secret identity as Kara Lang. Members of the Science Police are working to identify and weed out Kryptonians living among humans, so they try exposing the hostages to red kryptonite.
Kara starts worrying about when it’ll be her turn, but then a small boy named David tries to run away. The SP hit him with Red K, and he transforms into an adult-sized mutated being.
Supergirl manages to save him and takes him into space to expose him to sunlight. This is the second time in the post-Crisis universe that this method ends a Red K mutation early.
David and his mother turn out to be Kryptonians who didn’t want to join the other Brainiac-displaced Kryptonians when they left Earth to set up New Krypton.
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It’s another seven years before red kryptonite shows up in a DC story. And the rock itself isn’t even seen!
Supergirl Rebirth #1 (October 2016) features a character named Lar-On, a citizen of Argo City afflicted with a form of lycanthropy. His transformation into beast form was triggered by exposure to red kryptonite. Supergirl’s father, Zor-El, sent him to the Phantom Zone as a quarantine until a cure could be found for his condition.
When Kara’s rocket reached Earth, it caused a rift in the Phantom Zone, and Lar-On escaped. He and Supergirl battle, but they eventually realize they share the experience of being foreigners, both trapped on a new and unfamiliar world.
The Red K effects wear off after Lar is exposed to sunlight, but he ends up placed in stasis under the care of the D.E.O. for observation.
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In Superwoman #13 (October 2017), a flashback takes us to Lana Lang's teenage years, where she is wearing a necklace with a red kryptonite stone her grandpa found in a field. When she kisses young Clark Kent, the necklace burns him.
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In (vol. 4) #37 and #38 (2018), a future version of Tim Drake travels back to the past and traps Superman with red kryptonite. When Superman’s son Superboy (Jonathan Kent) tries to rescue him, Superman explains what red kryptonite does. At this point in the DC continuity, we see that it robs Kryptonians of their strength and also manipulates their emotions.
Superboy ends up succumbing to the red kryptonite too, but the Teen Titans eventually manage to rescue both Superman and Superboy.
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In Adventures of the Super Sons #2 (November 2018), Robin (Damian Wayne) and Superboy (Jonathan Kent) are battling Rex Luthor when they end up held captive.
Robin experiments on a chunk of kryptonite he has, and it suddenly turns red. Once Superboy is exposed to the red kryptonite, he splits into two beings… Superboy Red and Superboy Blue! Lots of bickering follows the split.
This separation lasts until issue #4, when the two separate entities eventually merge back together.
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The crimson stone next appears in Superman Red and Blue #2 (June 2021). Lex Luthor has a sample delivered to his office. One of his scientists confirms that the effects of red kryptonite are unpredictable, but that it can be modified to target specific Kryptonian genetic codes.
Three scenarios play out where Lex tries to use the red kryptonite to best Superman, and each time Superman comes out on top. Whether these three events actually happen or are just Lex musing about possible encounters is left up to the reader. If the Red K actually had any real effect on Superman, it was that it robbed him of his powers… like green kryptonite.
Lex has the sample sent back to a warehouse that seems filled with artifacts that could be used in the future to thwart the Man of Steel.
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In Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #2 (September 2021), Kara Zor-El is traveling with her new friend Ruthye in outer space on a “haulferry,” a kind of galactic mass transit vehicle.
They run into a space dragon, and because Kara’s strength is diminished, she calls on the passengers to give her “a red”… red kryptonite tablets used medicinally!
Kara explains to Ruthye how red kryptonite works (with a fun wink to the seasoned readers!), then waits for the transformation… hoping it’ll let her battle the space dragon.
In yet another nod to Supergirl’s DC past incarnations, she grows fiery wings and is able to slay the dragon. The effects wear off, and Kara continues her journey.
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Superman (vol. 6) #11 (April 2024) features a villain named Graft who uses a Kryptonite Klaw, a gauntlet with synthetic kryptonite tips. He exposes Superman to his synthetic red kryptonite, which is designed to trigger deep anger in the Man of Steel.
Luthor is able to counteract the effects of the red kryptonite by exposing Superman to green K. It seems Luthor had long theorized that green K would negate red K, and now he finally had a chance to test that theory.
And that’s the end of the road for red kryptonite... at least for now!
It’s worth remembering that kryptonite itself didn’t even start in the comics. It first showed up on the old The Adventures of Superman radio show back in the 1940s as a way to give the Man of Steel a real vulnerability, and only later made the jump into the printed pages. Red kryptonite followed, arriving as a weird, unpredictable offshoot of that original radioactive rock from Krypton.
From the early, strange, one-off tales filled with red kryptonite bizarre transformations, it gradually became a handy (and sometimes overused) plot device that could do just about anything the story needed in the moment.
In the last couple of decades, it’s shown up in more grounded, character-driven ways, still unpredictable, but often tied into bigger emotional or strategic stakes.
Thank you so much for sticking with this particular tour through red kryptonite's vast history. We've covered seventy-five years of the mineral's impact, stretching the subject across nine separate blogs. I appreciate everyone who rode along for the whole thing!
Superman and all related characters, names, and elements and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of DC Comics, Inc.
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