The Third Kryptonian Revealed
Superman meets the other Kryptonian who was first hinted at over a year ago. The Legion of Super-Heroes strikes back. And Superman enlists Batman to help him rid the world of Kryptonite.
Superman #670
In a double-sized finale, the genocidal maniac Amalak attacks Superman and Karsta flees as she had planned to do when this situation arose. Amalak's pirates attack Superman's fellow Kryptonians around the world, Supergirl, Power Girl, and Krypto. Amalak tries to probe Superman's mind to locate Kandor, but in the process Superman glimpses into the killer's mind to see how his entire planet had been killed by Kryptonians. Amalak attacks the Fortress of Solitude but when he locates the Bottle City of Kandor he's infuriated to discover it's not the real one. Enraged, he shatters the bottle, although Superman hopes the city itself survived as the city was really in another dimension and the "bottle" was just an interdimensional interface. Although Superman had warned him to hide, his newly adopted son Christopher takes off his red sun watch and joins the others in the fight. Karsta returns to save the day, and detonating a yellow sun grenade, the combined power of the Kryptonians is enough to defeat Amalak. Karsta takes Amalak with her to face the authorities and any consequences for her own crimes. Superman wonders if their paths will ever cross again (they won't) and if there is a real Kandor yet to be found (there is).
Action Comics #860
Superman and the surviving Legion members break into Earth's alien prison camp to free the captured Legionnaires. The trail of Brainiac 5, however, ends at his empty cell, where he apparently teleported to his home planet Colu. Reunited with Polar Boy, the founder of the Legion of Substitute Heroes, the fugitives are led to the Legion's underground clubhouse. Earth Man and his fascist Justice League track the heroes down, and for his protection the now powerless Superman is sent through a teleporter to Colu, where he discovers Brainiac 5 is their hostile new ruler.
Many of these characters hadn't been seen since before Zero Hour, and seeing them decades later was like seeing the original cast of Star Wars together again. Even though horrible things had happened since we last saw them, this story arc made us feel that things were finally being made right again after the last two Legion reboots.
Superman/Batman #44
From a distance, Batman and Superman watch the filming of a movie about their lives that's shooting in Gotham City. Livewire tries to take one of the stars hostage for a ransom, but when Superman tries to stop her he's shocked to find out the movie's Kryptonite prop is the real thing. After stopping Livewire, Batman takes Superman to the Fortress of Solitude where Alfred surgically removes the shards of shattered Krytponite that Livewire had used against him. Taking days to recover, Superman contemplates his loneliness and how the only remaining fragments of his home world are now his primary weakness. After recovering, Superman asks Batman if he would help him rid the world of Kryptonite, which has become even more abundant since the arrival of Supergirl in a Kryptonite meteor. Batman uses JLA tools to locate all the Kryptonite on Earth, and to their unpleasant surprise it turns out to be a lot more than either of them ever imagined.
Just like in the pre-Crisis days, the presence of more Kryptonians correlated with the existence of more Kryptonite. It was fine when Kryptonite was so rare that only somebody like Lex Luthor could possess it, but now that it was everywhere the writers needed to address it. This story's purpose would be similar the Kryptonite Nevermore story in the 70's.
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