Action Comics #871: A Medical Review
Action Comics #871 “New Krypton, part 2: Beyond Doomsday”
Geoff Johns, writer
Pete Woods, penciler
Geoff Johns is usually one of the better writers at incorporating science — or at least decent pseudo-science — into his stories. But in this scene from a recent Action Comics I have to call his bluff:
Superman: You know of Doomsday, Zor?Zor-El: We know of him.
He was scientifically created on ancient Krypton through the the violent and vile process of Forced-Evolution.A child was sent into the wild, killed and then cloned from the remains and the process was repeated……until that child had evolved to withstand the harsh environment and bloodthirsty creatures of our primordial world.
Here are three good reasons that this “forced-evolution” is utter nonsense and could not have worked:
1. Evolution requires change, particularly change at the genetic level. In the process Zor is describing, there is no change. Cloned individuals have identical genetic codes. Since each generation is a clone of the previous generation, their genetics are identical and the scientists are essentially sending the same kid out again and again and again. This is not evolution; it’s stagnation.
2. Zor seems to imply that the child abandoned in wilderness develops some new skills or abilities to help him survive and this is what leads to evolution. The child may certainly have acquired what he needed to survive the wilds (but not, apparently, survive the scientists), but it’s all a moot point: acquired abilities cannot be inherited.
3. Finally, species evolve, not individuals.
If the Kryptonian’s grasp of geology is as good as their understanding of biology, it’s no wonder nobody but Jor-El noticed the planet was going to explode.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:27 am
Maybe Kryptonian biolgy is different? For all we know, if you cut off the tail of a Kryptonian mouse, it will give birth to tailless mice.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:31 am
“Biology”. Stupid typos…
May 7th, 2009 at 1:50 am
I think Johns is just repeating Doomsday’s “secret origin” from the three- (or was it four- ?) issue mini from the Nineties.
Didn’t make a lot of sense then, either…
May 7th, 2009 at 1:51 am
Young Doomsday wasn’t a Kryptonian, though — he was brought there from someplace else. So who knows?
May 7th, 2009 at 3:13 am
Actually, he’s half remembering Doomsday’s origin. The point wasn’t that the clones inherited anything like this: the scientist responsible for the project would make a subject and release it on the surface, where it would be hunted down and slaughtered by the native creatures. Then he would retrieve the remains, genetically redesign a new clone based on what had killed the previous one, and release THAT into the kryptonian environment to be hunted down and killed.
He repeated the prcess over and over, constantly tweaking and modifying new clones to be able to endure and eventually overcome the surface environment. It wasn’t some kind of pseudo-Lamarckian evolution, it was deliberate design and refinement.
May 7th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Yeah, that is pretty much a repeat of Doomsday’s origin as given in the SUPERMAN/DOOMSDAY: HUNTER/PREY miniseries.
May 7th, 2009 at 8:35 am
So, would including a psuedo-science addition that Doomsday’s genetic structure isn’t stable help that any?
May 7th, 2009 at 8:47 am
Clearly the Kryptonians kidnapped a young Time Lord to create the first Time Lord. Think about that!
May 7th, 2009 at 8:47 am
*to create the first Doomsday
Its way too early and I’ve been watching way too much Doctor Who.
May 7th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Official Comment
Matthew,
So it’s basically animal husbandry + genetic manipulation — that makes more sense.
So then the ancient Kryptonians had a decent (if unethical) understanding of evolution; it’s the modern Kryptonians who don’t.
May 7th, 2009 at 11:19 am
I think Matthew’s wrong — I remember that in the HUNTER/PREY thing, they specifically said they took in the remains and cloned a new baby from the cells that survived, since those few cells had been able to withstand the harsh environment/predators, not that they had done any genetic manipulation. The scientists themselves added nothing, they just kept shooting babies out into prehistoric Kryptonian wilderness. What Zor-El said is, if I’m recalling correctly, exactly what that minisieries said.
Here are several scans and summaries of Doomsday’s creation (as well as pics of his daddy, Bertron)… though it’s in Spanish. http://supermanjaviolivares.iespana.es/EL%20ORIGEN%20DE%20DOOMSDAY.htm
Also, it wasn’t ancient Kryptonians who made Doomsday, they just used prehistoric Krypton as their lab, as prehistoric Krypton was evidently one of the harshest environments & had some of the harshest creatures in the universe at that time. Bertron, the head of the project, definitely was not Kryptonian, he was grey-skinned and had three fingers; the other lab techs (and the original baby itself) all looked very humanoid/Kryptonian. Though it was also said the those experiments kickstarted Kryptonian interest in genetic engineering and cloning, so… yeah, I go nothing.
May 7th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Then again, with all the CRISES re-structuring DC’s history, maybe Doomsday’s origin is now that he was created by ancient Kryptonians on ancient Krypton.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
You see, Doomsday has evolved to the point where he’s able to retroactively change his origin to defy evolution! :-D
…oh, wait, crap. That sounds more like usable comics science, than sarcasm, dammit.
May 7th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
I suppose if epigentics were involved it might work. The clones might have the same DNA sequence but perhaps they retain epigenetic markings like methylation. I think there is some speculation that some epigenetic changes can even influence a mutation rate.
In the real world, of course, inherited epigenetics doesn’t introduce significant lasting change in a species — sorry, Lamarck. And it’s small potatoes compared with the real evolutionary change that occurs in a population due to natural selection.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:26 am
I would go for the “unstable DNA” approach. It’s been used since the 50’s, so why stop now? Earliest mention I’ve seen involved four human children raised in various hostile environments from extreme temperatures to the void of space with the concept that with a certain medication, they could adapt slowly to any condition and they would later be able to survive it as well as pass those traits down to their children. In true golden sci-fi fashion, this results in children who no longer consider themselves human.
I want to say that there was a Japanese manga that more explicitly referenced the “forced evolution through hazardous situations”. Resulted in a worm-like being that eventually gets implanted into a human male who goes on the run. Only part I remember clearly was where a sniper was drawing a bead on him while he was with an innocent, inner monologue indicating that while they knew he could sense and dodge the bullet, he couldn’t do so and protect the person behind him or get them out of the way in time. Solution, he grabs a motorcycle (which I assume can withstand greater acceleration from the super-speed move) and interposes it to take the bullet. I want to say the series started with a J…
May 8th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Yeah, it’s true that the Hunter/Prey material is just being repeated by Johns here. That’s why I gave him a break over it. But now you’ve got me thinking; he retconned Arisia’s age over in GL, attempting to negate that brouhaha. Perhaps a few revisionary words would have been appropriate here, to.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Matthew misremembers the “Official” Doomsday origin, but his explanation is what it SHOULD have been.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Wow, that was unclear.
Rephrase:
…Matthew’s explanation is the one Johns SHOULD have used. It’s got just enough of the Hunter/Prey origin to be consistent with Doomsday’s subsequent appearances, but makes it Not Hurt So Much.
Of course, I think one of Doomsday’s powers is explicitly “can’t be killed the same way twice”.
May 8th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
That is indeed one of his powers. Killed by an Energy Being, he resurrected and was able to absorb/disrupt that being’s energy.
May 8th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
@ Your Obedient Serpent : Hence he develops the ability to retroactively change his origin to defy evolution!
…or maybe that’s only if a time traveler tries to kill him.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Forced-Evolution
Sounds like Father Time sexually assaulted Mother Nature. lol
May 19th, 2009 at 6:31 am
Baoh. That’s the name of the manga series I was thinking of.
July 4th, 2009 at 9:42 am
As a biochemist myself, this may sound embarrassing, but is evolution that horrendously inaccurate a term for what’s going on here if you consider things from a cellular level or from a vantage point of natural selection or adaptive evolution/adaptation?
While Doomsday is an entity and not a species, if Dr. Archeville’s summary is accurate, then Bertran was taking advantage of benevolent mutations in the creature’s genetic material following each death to create a new creature using cells containing that altered genetic material as a template, i.e. the cells that showed the greatest level of adaptation to the ancient Kryptonian environment and the best chance of survival.
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