Dev-Em, a familiar face from the comics who appeared in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, gets his close-up in one of a new round of promotional photos in support of Krypton, Syfy‘s forthcoming Superman prequel.
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In the most recent iteration from the comics, Dev-Em was a criminal who became a follower of General Zod. The TV series takes place a generation before Zod was born, which leaves open the question of whether they will embrace adifferent take on Dev-Em altogether, or simply use the show to establish him as a criminal.
In the image above, he appears to be working in an official capacity, with a uniform and a uniformed support staff (robot?) at his side.
Besides appearing as one of Zod’s troops in Man of Steel, Dev-Em was also the name of a character who appeared in a Man of Steel prequel comic — written by Krypton executive producer David S. Goyer — which took place thousands of years before the destruction of Krypton and set the stage for the Kryptonian scout ship/Fortress of Solitude to come to Earth. In that story, he was a villain who targeted Kara Zor-El, an ancestor of Superman’s.
There have various takes on the character in the comics throughout the years. Created in 1961 by Jerry Siegel and George Papp, the original was a bit of a jerk and a juvenile delinquent but not an entirely bad guy. After being defeated by Superboy, the Kryptonian fled to the future where he would become an occasional ally to the Legion of Super-Heroes. Later, when Superboy and other Kryptonians were removed from DC’s continuity following the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Dev-Em would be reinvented as a Daxamite — and more overtly evil.
[Start Gallery Call-to-Action Key=7100]During the “Time and Time Again” storyline, Dev-Em was responsible for the destruction of Earth’s moon during a battle with Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 30th Century. He would not have a significant role in the comics again for more than ten years, by which time Infinite Crisis and 52 had restored a multiverse and much of the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity, which allowed Dev-Em to be Kryptonian again. It was during this time that the “criminal with ties to Zod” version was introduced.
You can check out the rest of the new photos in the attached image gallery.
Krypton premieres on March 21 on Syfy.
