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While regular green kryptonite can kill Kryptonians, its black variant has transformed Superman, Supergirl and Superboy into dark reflections.
Everyone knows that Kryptonite is Superman’s greatest weakness. While regular green kryptonite can famously incapacitate the Man of Steel, other variants of kryptonite have far stranger effects. Red Kryptonite may be the best-known variant, thanks in part to on-screen Superman adaptations like Superman III and Smallville. However, rare variants such as Gold Kryptonite, capable of taking away a Kryptonian’s powers for good, are as dangerous as they are scarce. However, the worst of all types of kryptonite is Black Kryptonite, which has a range of troublesome effects.
Black Kryptonite first appeared in the classic Superman TV Series Smallville. In the Season 4 premiere “Crusade,” this Kryptonite variant was used by Jor-El to turn his son Clark Kent into Kal-El. Now a more brutal and unrelenting force that fully embraced his Kryptonian father’s troubling ideology, Kal set off on a mission that would ultimately lead him to his destiny. However, with another piece of Black Kryptonite proved by Dr. Virgil Swann, Martha Kent was able to split Clark and Kal into two separate entities, allowing Clark to reabsorb his other personality into the Kryptonite. This wouldn’t be the last time Black Kryptonite appeared on the show, with the substance being used to separate Doomsday’s human and the monster forms, as well as creating a good and evil Lex Luthor on one occasion.
As for how Black Kryptonite made its way to the comics, that happened in 2005, in Supergirl #2 by Jeph Loeb, Ian Churchill, Norm Rapmund, David Moran, Beth Sotelo and Richard Starkings.
In that story, Lex Luthor was encouraged by Darkseid to use Black Kryptonite on the Last Daughter of Krypton. As it did in Smallville, it split Kara into two entities, one good and one evil. Apart from their opposing personalities, the two were identical, something confirmed by Superman himself.
Speaking of the Man of Steel, he once said that when he encountered the black variant, it stripped him of his sanity, essentially revealing an evil version of himself as it did for his cousin, minus the duplication. In the alternate reality of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman, it had the same effect. Rather than split him in two, it made him angrier and angrier, revealing a dark side to Man of Tomorrow and sending him into an uncontrollable rampage. The only thing that stopped him was a suped-up Jimmy Olsen.
Its most recent use was in the Dark Nights: Metal tie-in The Batman Who Laughs #1 by James Tynion IV, Riley Rossmo, Ivan Plascencia, and Tom Napolitano, which showed the origins of the Darkest Knight. In it, the corrupted Bruce Wayne laid waste to his Earth and used a modified version of Black Kryptonite to resign his world’s Kryptonians to a twisted fate.
He first used his Black Kryptonite on Supergirl. Unlike the first time she encountered it, where it split her in two, this time it acted as it did in All-Star Superman, sending her into a rage that made her lose all her senses. In the end, she tore her family apart, before being killed by the Black Kryptonite herself. Then the Batman Who Laughs used the same trick on Superman and his son Jon. As it did with Kara, it made them lose control and tear Lois Lane apart before it killed them too.
From the examples shown, there are two main effects of Black Kryptonite. The first is the separating of one Kryptonian into two identical beings with opposing personalities. The second, and more dangerous, is the ability to remove all morality and reason, before sending them into a fit of uninhibited rage. The more common effect is the first, and that’s the one shown most outside the realm of comics. Both the cartoon series Justice League Action and the CW’s Supergirl have used it in that way, harking back to its most common use in Smallville. One thing’s for sure though, whatever effect it has, Black Kryptonite is one of the most dangerous variants of Superman’s weakness.
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