Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Comic Book Chemistry

Watching an old Superman/Batman cartoon, there was a scene in which hydrochloric acid was poured on kryptonite, turning it into a harmless gas. This got me wondering what the chemical formula of that reaction would look like... probably only feasible under the laws of comic book chemistry...?

However, it led to a search for the molecular formula of kryptonite - which turns out to be an element (not a mineral as I had thought).

Obviously, we need a comic book periodic table. A few interesting accumulations of information to date:

Fictional chemical substances
Elements from the LSH series

If Kryptonite is, as presented, radioactive, no chemical reaction could render it harmless (you could, perhaps, create a gaseous kryptonite chloride or somesuch, but that would still be radioactive).

But -ite is specifically reserved for oxygenated negative ions, so...

-ite is a chemical suffix reserved fore ions. For Chlorine the hierarchy of oxygenated ions is.

(Cl O)- Hypochlorite
(Cl O2)- Chlorite
(Cl 03)- Chorate
(Cl 04)- PerChlorate

What about all the multicoloured Kryptonite? Why do they have all sorts of different effects if the effect is only elemental? To get a a different colour those forms must have a different chemical/crystal structure. (Think diamonds versus charcoal both elemental forms of carbon)

Different radioactive isotopes have identical chemical properties, differing only in radioactive half-life and type of radioactive decay (alpha, beta or gamma).


There's some very bad comic-pseudoscience on Kryptonite. Kryp has even been depicted in many different ways, as amorphous rocks, crystals, even as a gas. So who knows. It has never been consistent by any sort of real world chemistry over the years. So whatever Kryptonite is, it isn't defined well enough to prevent it's use as a plot device. Conversely this allows Superman/girl to get out of any hairy situation. Unlike those Daxamites who suffer from "theres no way you not die from my shotgun blast."

At least some of the different forms of Kryptonite originated from different substances to begin with. Jewel Kryptonite, for example, was formed from the remnants of the Jewel Mountains.

I've always suspected Red Kryptonite actually had magical properties.

Well, of course, since it's the radioactive properties that are important, that makes a difference.

There's no reason for the isotopes and their effects to be linked to colour if it was a badly-named element though.

For the elements we already know: The Periodic Table of Comic Books

Well if Kryptonite is 126 it should have chemical (not nuclear) properties/reactivities comparable to Plutonium which it would be under on the table.

Physical Properties of Plutonium

Standard state: solid at 298 K
Colour: silvery white
Classification: Metallic


Not enough adequate pseudoscience to explain anything. I'll go with the pseudoscience that post-crisis it's an element that emits deadly radiation (deadly to all people) but that it exists in a unique green crystalline structure that renders Superman's invulnerability inert making him succeptable to the radiation.

Done science reconciled with comic book plot devices.

It's interesting that both in the case of suns and kryptonite, different colors affect Superman differently. Could there be a connection?

Remind me not to inhale too much pure oxygen!

So why can't kryptonite be Krypton + Oxygen = KrO2?

Well, the most obvious reason is that Krypton is inert, and thus doesn't form compounds (usually).

Noble gases, yep

In current continuity it's element 126. On the next row of the table under plutonium.

What an educational forum! I might have aced chemistry if they'd used comic books.

Who said you could never learn anything new on a message board?
I found this very interesting. Really I did!!

And now, can someone solve the mystery of technobabble in relation to the time-space continuum?

The -ite suffix is not just for ions... it's also a common suffix for minerals. This, of course, would mean that kryptonite is a mineral ore, rather than an element... but it would be easier to explain why it exists in various forms, each with different properties.