But first, let's lay down the ground rules as to what I would call the "destruction" of one's planet:

I. If the character's planet explodes, that definitely counts.
II. If the planet in question is rendered instantly uninhabitable (due to, say, nuclear war), that probably counts, assuming the character (and any other survivors) had to then find a new planet on which to live.
III. If the planet's destruction was more gradual (like due to environmental collapse) and there was time to evacuate most of the planet, I'm not going to count that, if only because there's nothing particularly special about the character's survivor status. However...
IV. If the character in question is the only survivor, then whatever the circumstances of the planet's demise, I'm counting that.

With all that in mind, here's the list...

1-11. Superman (and every other alien in DC Comics)

Obviously, Superman is pretty much the originator of this archetype in modern science fiction, what with him being the Last Son of Krypton. That said, the last few years in comics have seen the (re)introductions of a fully Kryptonian Supergirl, a "third Kryptonian" who survived Krypton's brief foray in interstellar warfare, General Zod, Ursa, Lon, a whole gaggle of Phantom Zone criminals, Christopher Kent, and most recently 100,000 Kryptonians released from Brainiac's imprisonment. So for someone who for so long was defined by his cosmic uniqueness, the Man of Steel is now part of a very, very big crowd.

Superman is far from alone in the DC Universe when it comes to surviving the death of his home planet. The Martian Manhunter is one of only a tiny handful of his people, the Green Martians, to survive the destruction of Mars (although there are significantly more of their brother species, the White Martians). Admittedly, J'onn J'onzz is somewhat dead at the moment, but after Superman he's the most iconic survivor of a dead world in all of comic books.

You might also want to count Superboy-Prime and Power Girl as separate cases from the other Kryptonians, as they were first the only survivors of Krypton in their respective universe before the Crisis on Infinite Earths (well, Power Girl also had the Superman of Earth-2, but work with me here) and are now the only survivors of their entire universes, not to mention two of the only people who trace their origins back to the original, infinite multiverse.

The Legion of Superheroes members Element Lad and Blok are the only living members of their respective races, while Kilowog, the lovable Green Lantern with a fondness for calling people "Poozers", is the only survivor of Bolovax Vik. There's also the planet another Green Lantern, John Stewart, accidentally blew up back in Cosmic Odyssey. The destruction of Xanshi turned one of its princesses, who was being educated off-world at the time, into the villain Fatality.

Teen Titans stalwart Starfire was next in line to rule the planet Tamaran before it imploded in a war with the Psions. Recent events also saw the destruction of Throneworld, the home of the other other other Starman, Prince Gavyn, at the hands of Lady Styx. Oh, and then there's always Lobo, last of the Czarnians, who exists pretty much to parody all the other examples on this list, as he blew up his own planet on a whim.

Clearly, the creative types at DC have a thing for blowing up planets, but there at least a few other examples of this in the rest of science fiction. Let's take a look at those now.

12-14. Arthur Dent and company from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Saved from the Vogon constructor fleet's demolition of Earth by the alien travel writer Ford Prefect, Arthur Dent lacks a lot of the internal angst and survivor guilt of most of the people on this list, probably because he's just so easily befuddled. Along with Trillian, a beautiful young woman Arthur was doing a halfway decent job of flirting with before Zaphod Beeblebrox, the only slightly insane President of the Galaxy, whisked her away, he is now one of the only two Earthlings left in the entire universe.

Well, at least until the Magaratheans finish building another one or before he spends a decade stuck in prehistoric Earth with a bunch of hairdressers or until the dolphins do whatever it is they did in So Long and Thanks for All the Fish to restore the planet. But then the Vogons finally finish the jobs through the multiverse (or the whole sort of general mishmash, as Douglas Adams preferred to call it) in Mostly Harmless, finally and completely destroying the Earth, taking Arthur and Trillian along with it. But Eoin Colfer's upcoming continuation of the saga, And Another Thing, will likely resurrect them in some capacity, as otherwise it would be a pretty uneventful book.

Though he never appears in the books themselves, one might also count Ford Prefect's father, who was the only person to survive the mysterious Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758, which probably destroyed the planet of Betelgeuse Seven, although Ford's father was always rather hazy on the details.

15-19. Spock (and at least a couple other aliens from Star Trek)

One of less than 10,000 survivors of Nero's destruction of the planet Vulcan in the new Star Trek movie (told you there was a massive spoiler in here), Spock might now be the most famous example of this particular trope. I'd also wager Spock is going to be pretty much the only Vulcan seen in future movies, what with the older, Leonard Nimoy version of Spock keeping all the other survivors busy rebuilding their civilization on New Vulcan.

You can't mention the new Spock without also acknowledging Nero and the crew of the Narada are the only survivors of Romulus. Well, then again, all their time traveling left them dead and the fate of Romulus in the new timeline is now uncertain, so maybe they only count in the original timeline.

There's also Guinan from The Next Generation, who had survived the destruction of her planet El-Auria at the hand of the Borg. There are also a lot of planets, particularly in The Original Series, that seemed to have a single inhabitant (mostly of the godly or energy being variety), but I won't count those as the planets themselves seemed mostly unaffected.

OK, I'll make an exception for Bele and Lokai from the legendary episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", in which the consuming racial hatred of their two peoples (one's skin is black on the left and white on the right, while the other is black on the right and white on the left) has left those two the last survivors of a war that has destroyed their planet Cheron. Admittedly, they don't survive for very long, not when there's an opportunity to finally kill each other.

20-26. The Doctor from Doctor Who (and maybe a couple others)

Spock isn't the only famous alien to get the Superman treatment in recent years; Russell T. Davies and company blew up Gallifrey before the new Star Trek movie was still in the earliest planning stages. Actually, between the Doctor and Spock both losing their planets in recent revivals of their series, you'd maybe think there's some sort of trend in modern science fiction that finds lone aliens more interesting than entire alien cultures. And I'm not sure they're entirely wrong.

Anyway, The Doctor is one of the most angst-ridden survivors you could imagine, which I suppose is understandable considered he kind of was the one responsible for destroying Gallifrey. Of course, it also turned out The Master survived (at least for a little bit, pending an inevitable resurrection) by running away to the end of the universe, and there are ever so slightly more credible than usual rumors that the Rani will return in the next series played by Gillian Anderson. But either way, the Doctor is for now the Last of the Time Lords, and he'll be the first one to tell you that. (No, seriously - he really could tone down how much he mentions that, as it's kind of a downer.)

Still, the Doctor wasn't the first person to occupy the TARDIS who had survived the destruction of an entire people. That tragic distinction goes to Nyssa, who watched her planet Traken be destroyed by the bizarrely universe-spanning threat in Logopolis. To her credit, she's much more stoic about this than the Doctor, although that might have been because the show's writers never really bothered to come up with a cohesive character for her.

Gallifrey also isn't the only planet the Doctor blew up, as he quite decisively destroyed the Dalek homeworld of Skaro back in the unspeakably awesome seventh Doctor story Remembrance of the Daleks. Although new series Daleks like the one in Dalek or Dalek Sec might plausibly claim to be "the last of the Daleks", probably the best candidate to call a "survivor" of Skaro's destruction is the lone black Dalek at the end of Remembrance, left all alone in the entire universe after the destruction of all his comrades on Earth and the rest of his race back on Skaro. Of course, the Doctor then uses the overwhelming despair of fact to literally talk him to death, but for a good five minutes there he was indisputably the Last of the Daleks, at least until they came back. Again. And again. And again...

The classic City of Death, written by Douglas Adams, introduced Scaroth, last of the Jaggaroth. Four billion years ago, he and a few other last refugees of his warlike race fled the destruction of his planet and came to primordial Earth. He then proceeded to accidentally kill of the rest of his race when his spaceship exploded. The decidedly less class The Hand of Fear showed Eldrad, a genocidal outcast of his silicon-based race, who had survived the extinction of his species by being encased in rock for 150 million years (well, that is one way to do it). And let's not forget The Cybermen - the original versions, anyway - who survived the destruction of their planet Mondas in The Tenth Planet and became the marauding terrors of the galaxy (or, if not exactly terrors, then certainly minor annoyances, depending on how well the particular story was written).

27. Princess Leia

The full impact of this gets lost in the shuffle of all the action in the original Star Wars, but Princess Leia is forced to watch her entire planet be destroyed, leaving her quite possibly the only survivor of Alderaan in the entire universe. (Well, there are probably a few diplomats on Coruscant and elsewhere, but the movies don't give any evidence to support this. The Expanded Universe says there were about 60,000 Alderaanians off-world at the time of its destruction.) Admittedly, she's technically not from Alderaan at all, as she was born in space to a mother from Naboo and a father from Tatooine, but she spent all but the first twelve or so hours of her life as the daughter of the Organas, rulers of Alderaan, so there's no way she doesn't count.

Also, Princess Leia is probably the best example of the kind of cognitive dissonance Douglas Adams talked about when he described Arthur Dent's reaction to losing his planet - it's too big a tragedy to really comprehend, and thus impossible to properly grieve. Leia never really seems to deal with her Alderaan's destruction, although I suppose she could have worked through her emotions during the year or so between the events of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Honestly, it's sort of weird how Alderaan is just completely forgotten in the later movies. You might think "Remember Alderaan!" would be an effective battle cry for a rebellion trying to remind people of the Empire's monstrous crimes. Bit of a lost marketing opportunity there. But I digress.

28-29. The Survivors of the Twelve Colonies and the Final Five on Battlestar Galactica

OK, it might be a bit of a stretch to count the Galactica and the rest of the fleet as quite the same thing as the others on this list. After all, none of the Twelve Colonies were exactly destroyed, but the Cylon-launched nuclear bombardment did make then uninhabitable to humans in very short order (and thus my reasons for Rule II become obvious). Sure, Helo, Anders, and a bunch of other survivors managed to live on the charred remains of Caprica for a few months, but it was clear they had no long-term future on that world, even if they did manage to escape the Cylons indefinitely. Perhaps a stronger case can be made for The Final Five, who used an orbiting satellite outfitted with their recently rediscovered resurrection technology to survive the destruction of Cylon Earth some 2000 years before the events of the series.

30. Cale Tucker and the rest of humanity from Titan A.E.

And finally, we have this somewhat forgotten 2000 animated film (co-written by Joss Whedon!), which considers the fate of humanity in the year 3028. The race of energy beings known as the Drej have destroyed Earth in retaliation for whatever the humans discovered in the mysterious Project Titan. The survivors are now nomads who are generally ignored or looked down upon by the rest of the galaxy. Ultimately, Cale Tucker, the son of one of the scientists responsible for Project Titan, helps lead humanity back from the brink of extinction and comes up with a plan to create a new Earth. I mean, of course he does - after all, he's voiced by Matt Damon, and that guy can do anything.

In any event, that's more than enough to get this list started. Who else is out there in science fiction nursing the unimaginable pain and survivor's guilt of being the last of one's kind and without a planet to call one's own?

Secret identities are sort of a messy idea. The definition is apparently a "persona developed in order to keep the true identity secret," which, okay, is a workable definition until you start asking questions like, "If Clark Kent developed Superman to protect his loved ones, is Supes the secret identity?" And, "After Ralph Dibny told the world he was Elongated Man, does that make his secret identity just an identity? And does that mean it's okay for his foes to call him Ralph when he's in costume?" Because as bad as it is being taken down by a guy who goes by "Elongated Man," it's probably even worse being brought to justice by some guy named Ralph.

So I was going to talk about why certain heroes use certain identities, but the more I thought about it, the more I feel that the real question how a superhero finds a way to make his hero identity and his everyman identity (because sometimes it's hard to tell which is really the secret one) work in tandem with each other.

(I'd like to apologize in advance if this list takes a decidedly DC-centric bent; I'm afraid I'm not as much of a Marvel person as I'd like to be yet.)

Exhibit A: Where the Two Identities are Essentially the Same Person
Let's start with the obvious, and look at Clark Kent and Superman. Whereas the opposite may have once held true, since the '80's or so, it's been generally accepted that Superman is the mask and Clark the real person, to simplify it a bit. At the same time, they're both fundamentally the same person, body language and projected self-confidence aside. And as to why Clark Kent chose to be a reporter, some people explain it away as being the natural choice, because it's easy to write stories about yourself. (This also being the general explanation for Peter Parker's chosen profession as well.) I think that's selling Clark (and Peter) a bit short, though. I much prefer the explanation that states that in his quest for Truth, Justice, and the American Way, Clark/Superman feels the need to do more than just punch things. Off an on, Superman will mention the fact that he wants to be more than just a blunt instrument, and perhaps working in a more investigative field as Clark Kent helps him feel he's reached this balance between brawn and brains.

Other superheroes who fit the category of essentially being the same person both in and out of their tights include people like both Green Arrows (especially Oliver Queen, who might just be the worst out there at keeping his secret identity plausibly secret). Actually, a very high proportion of the costumed crime-fighting community can probably be lumped into this category, probably because it's easier to consistently write characters that are a little more consistent with themselves. But if we choose to ignore the man behind the curtain, so to speak, we could probably say it's because they all want to protect their friends and loved ones by putting on a mask, thereby preserving their own identity, which, nine times out of ten, they had long before they took up superheroics.

Exhibit B: Where the Secret Identity Isn't All That Secret, After All
As previously mentioned, Ralph Dibny could be said to be the poster boy for the Public Secret Identity, being the first Silver Age superhero to go public with his civilian identity. To take a step like this puts him firmly into the category of guys whose two identities are the same person, but now that that's literally true, it's near impossible to draw any sort of line between Elongated Man and Ralph, since everyone knows they're the same person anyway. Maybe this is the most dangerous way for a superhero to go on the secret identity path, but you have to admit, it takes real guts. Take John Stewart, for example, the Green Lantern who chooses not to wear a mask because he feels he doesn't have anything to hide. Plus we've got Tony Stark. And the only people who don't know he's Iron Man are pretty much either dead or . . . Actually, you might have to be dead not to know.

Exhibit C: Where the Secret Identity Isn't Actually Anything Like You
This is where Batman comes in. About the same time that the world decided that Clark is more real than Superman, they also decided that Batman was more real than Bruce Wayne, which is probably a good thing, because I don't trust Bruce Wayne, flaky playboy extraordinaire, to do a very convincing job at pretending to be Batman. Meanwhile, Batman, crafty genius that he is, can do a very good job at faking playboy billionaire. (Perhaps the only Batman and Bruce really have in common is the billionaire part. Bruce is very good at making sure Wayne Enterprises keeps making money in order to continue funding Batman's very expensive hobbies.) In this case, of course, Bruce is the mask adapted to keep those closest to Batman safe from his veritable legion of certifiable foes. This delineation gets a little messy, though, when you think about the fact that those closest to Batman mostly all know he's Bruce Wayne, but the Bruce Wayne that they know can be described more as "Batman when he's actually being nice to people and not trying to scare them half to death."

At the moment I'm hard pressed to think of another superhero who does what Batman does to the extent he does it, but on a totally different note, Billy Batson is absolutely nothing like Captain Marvel, in that he's a kid and Captain Marvel is the man he becomes, making Billy's life pretty much my childhood dream. (Although I guess I didn't want to spontaneously turn into a man.) In this case, however, he's a completely different person physically when he's a superhero than when he's a kid. And in terms of superheroes whose super identity is the guise, I can't help but always want to bring up the Blue Raja from Mystery Men (who was not, as far as I can tell, part of the original Mystery Men from the Flaming Carrot comics), because he adopts a British accent while in costume, despite being American-And I'm sure for a fact that there are less ridiculous examples out there, but I love Hank Azaria.

Exhibit D: When You Become a Superhero First and Get the Identity Later
It's the Superclan that has the best track record of doing this, I feel. For someone whose home planet is supposed to have been destroyed, Superman sure ends up with a lot of wayward Kryptonians who turn up on Earth, being all flashy and super, and have to retroactively have civilian identities created for them. Power Girl (Kara Zor-L) created Karen Starr, Supergirl (Kara Zor-El) became Kara Kent, Nightwing (Lor-Zod, not Dick Grayson) acquired the name Chris Kent, and the latest guy to become an honorary Kent, Mon-El, took up the name Jonathan Kent in last month's Superman. At this rate, Clark Kent has a ridiculous number of surprise cousins, all orchestrated on paper in order for their pre-existing superheroics to continue.

More interestingly, though, is John Jones, secret identity of J'onn J'onzz, secret identity of the Martian Manhunter. Because he can shapeshift, he's able to pose as John Jones, a human detective, which doesn't seem like so much of a break from his usual line of work, but doing this is probably mostly a case of having somewhere to blend in and get out of the Manhunter costume. (And who can blame him? It's an awkward costume.)

I don't want to blanket-statement here, but I can help but feel that they're mostly right when they explain the necessity of keeping a secret identity as a safeguard against total insanity. After all, nobody can be super all the time. (Even if Batman would really like to try.) Sometimes you just need to be the girl who spends her lunch break balancing her checkbook. Or the guy who plays Scrabble in the park. Besides, there's always gotta be more to a person than their job. Just because you're a Green Lantern doesn't mean you can't also be an artist or architect, and just because you're Black Canary doesn't mean you can't do a stint as a florist. So while the invention of the "secret identity" is an interesting side effect of the superhero genre, it's pretty much unavoidable.

Besides, Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel did it far before these guys, and it worked for them.

Besides the Justice gang, Souders also confirmed the return of Cyborg from the Teen Titans. Will he be a new addition to DC's Super Friends?

Souders also spilled what we've all been been expecting since featured characters have been jumping off the Smallville Titanic one after the other: this season will focus on the relationship between Lois and Clark. Clark gets a job at the Daily Planet (which was hinted at in the season finale). "The camaraderie as they work side-by-side that everyone loves from the DC Comics and all the Superman lore is going to come to fruition this year," Souders told TV Guide. "The two of them are thrown together in some unfortunate situations for Clark. She becomes a little bit of an obstacle to him saving the world, when he's on a deadline."

Sounds like a predictable year. Let's hope they switch things up and let Doomsday murder the doe-eyed Clark Kent and then have his way with feisty Lois.

[TV Guide]

The above clip also showcases one of the biggest challenges of doing a super-team movie or TV show properly: shoehorning in everybody's origins and explaining how all these random people got together. Justice League gets around this problem by making the Martian Manhunter into the Charlie, and all of the other Leaguers into his Angels. Sadly, J'onn J'onnz, Manhunter from Mars, is also kind of a dick, judging from the way he introduces himself to Tori disguised as her creepy coworker who's actually a supervillain.

I wanted to find a clip of the League doing something superheroic and using their powers in an awesome way, but sadly that doesn't really happen in Justice League. The TV movie's big final set piece consists of Green Lantern incompetently confronting the arch-villain, the Weatherman, and failing to prevent him from activating his weather disaster machine. And then the Flash incompetently carries a few kids to safety, but fails to take them far enough. And Tori, who's been pretty useless up until this point, finally stops the Weather Man's destructive tidal wave by freezing it with her ice powers. And Green Lantern, maybe overcompensating for his total failure a few moments earlier, makes a dumb crack about how the Weatherman is always wrong.

As dull as many superhero movies have been since Sam Raimi and Chris Nolan made the genre viable again, it's good to remember how dire they really were, back in the nadir of the Joel Schumacher era.

The New Frontier DVD follows Hal Jordan from the Korean War to the Kennedy era, and he becomes Green Lantern along the way. Jordan and the Martian Manhunter are the stars of the new DVD film, according to the screenwriter. Putting "Silver Age" characters back into the 1950s and 1960s makes them seem less dated, and also lets Cooke comment on issues like racism and McCarthyism. The movie hits multiple DVD formats on February 26th, 2008.

But The New Frontier isn't the only classic graphic novel to use this technique. James (Starman) Robinson won plaudits for The Golden Age, a graphic novel which followed a group of classic 1940s heroes as they coped with (once again) McCarthyism in the early 1950s. His comic starred Starman, Robotman, the original Atom and Johnny Thunder.

And then there's John Byrne's underrated Superman & Batman: Generations, which showed both heroes starting their careers in 1939, the year they originally appeared. Byrne placed the heroes in a classic setting (at the 1939 World's Fair), then showed them aging in real time. Both Superman and Batman deal with aging and handing over their responsibilities to their kids and sidekicks. (Later installments follow them into the present day and beyond.)

DC has also published several "Elseworlds" stories taking place in alternate universes, featuring Batman in the 1930s and 1940s. These include Detective 27, Citizen Wayne (a Citizen Kane riff), and Gotham Noir.

It features the seven founding JLA members, including John Stewart as Green Lantern and Barry Allen as the Flash. We get to see how the A-list and B-list supers founded the League. Superman has "epic battles" with both Batman and Wonder Woman. Rich bastard Max Lord turns up. So does the One Man Army Corps, which transforms regular people into killer cyborgs. It sounds as though we won't have to wait for JLA 3 to see subplot overload rivaling Spider-Man 3 and X-Men 3.

More Justice League Plot Details [/film] Image by AbbyNormy