Man of Steel Further Complicates the Name Black Zero

Entertainment Weekly

have published an analysis of the most recent trailer for Zack Snyder's hugely-anticipated Superman reboot Man of Steel and, along the way, spoiled a plot point...and thrown yet more confusion into one of the most already-confusing elements of Kryptonian culture. Read no further if you don't want to be spoiled. In the course of the last trailer, there was a brief glimpse of something that ComicBook.com (and a number of readers) had speculated might be Starro, perhaps setting up for a future Justice League movie. The tentacled creature, appearing in the sky above Metropolis, is actually Black Zero, according to Entertainment Weekly. "It was prison ship that he retrofits,and  that's what he comes to Earth in," says producer Deborah Snyder, with the article hinting that the Phantom Zone either doesn't exist or at least doesn't work the same way fans remember from the Richard Donner films. The most likely scenario seems to be that Zod's Black Zero ship is an iteration of the prison from the Superman: Last Son of Krypton trade paperback, which saw Zod attack the Man of Steel with an army of Kryptonian criminals freed from a floating prison in the Phantom Zone. An exerpt from Superman: Last Son of Krypton will be included in DC Comics's Free Comic Book Day offering this year, which also features some of Scott Snyder and Jim Lee's Superman Unchained #1. So--who's Black Zero in the comic books? That depends on who you ask. Personally, I asked the DC Wiki, who could help me separate the various iterations in my head.

The first Black Zero, created in 1968, was a supervillain who was directly responsible for the destruction of Krypton (that responsibility has been passed off to Brainiac in the New 52). This Black Zero told Superman that he was a space saboteur who destroyed planets. He had been hired to destroy Krypton, and realized the internal stresses that would have destroyed it in any case were dying down, necessitating his involvement to ensure it exploded, a tweak that's widely regarded as somewhat denigrating Jor-El as the world's greatest scientist, since it suggests that the Science Council was actually right and Jor-El was wrong about those pressures, and that Krypton was only in danger after the fact due to outside interference. There was also The Black Zero Organization, a Kryptonian terrorist organization responsible for designing and unleashing the Black Zero Virus, which attacked the technology in Superman's Fortress of Solitude. An intelligent computer virus, Black Zero was dormant in the Kryptonian technology used to create the Fortress of Solitude. After being inadvertently activated, Black Zero ran Superman and the Legion through a warped version of Kryptonian history, intended to finish with the destruction of Earth. The organization itself was a group opposed to the common Kryptonian practice of keeping clones as slaves; this began the War of Clone Rights, which lasted for a millennium. In their final act, Black Zero detonated a device that would later become known as the Destroyer. In essence, this device functioned as a giant nuclear gun, that fired a concentrated, sustained burst of nuclear energy directly into Krypton's core. Though subsequently destroyed by an ancestor of Jor-El himself, the Destroyer's effect would later be fully realized; It would cause a chain reaction deep within Krypton that would later obliterate the planet (a recurring motif).

There was also a Black Zero (one also tied to clones) related to the '90s version of Superboy. An evil clone of Superboy himself, Black Zero appeared a handful of times, terrorizing Superboy and the people he was protecting. Most recently, the name "Black Zero" was used by an elite Kryptonian military force, under the command of Ursa. The unit, except for Ursa, was killed attempting to defend Kandor from Brainiac. A version of this iteration appeared on the long-running CW series Smallville, as well. In the show, Black Zero was a Kryptonian rebel group that started a civil war with the Ruling Council of the planet Krypton. In one of their most famous battles, Black Zero held their battlefield at the city of Kandor, with Major Zod leading the charge (Alia, Basqat, Coats, Faora, and Vala) against the rebellion. The rebellion managed to destroy the entire city of Kandor, with the wife and son of Zod being caught in the catastrophe. For his loss, it gave Zod the strength to win the war, by 'driven them back to the ice and decimated their ranks' as he might say. And to work with Brainiac to destroy Krypton.