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Warning! Contains Spoilers For Action Comics #1072!
There are tons of powerful villains in the DC Universe and Superman doesn’t always have the strength to defeat them. Sometimes, he has to resort to other methods of winning, such as trapping them in the Phantom Zone. While Superman always did this as a last resort, he might have to abandon it entirely now, as the Phantom Zone just got way more dangerous.
While most fans know that being in the Phantom Zone isn’t a pleasant experience, it just got upgraded to a whole new level of misery in Action Comics #1072 by Mark Waid and Clayton Henry. The Phantom Zone has always been a miserable place because of how it freezes the prisoners in time, never letting them feel hunger or the temperature or anything, they can’t even age.
If that sounds like a miserable experience, the mysterious Aethyr agrees and arrived to try and make the Phantom Zone more livable. He started by removing intangibility from the people trapped within, but he quickly learned that allowing a bunch of homicidal and violent criminals to physically interact with one another doesn’t end well.
The Horrifying Truth of Superman’s Phantom Zone Has Been Revealed
DC Comics’ Phantom Zone has been a staple of the Superman series for many years, and now its horrifying true nature has been revealed.
Aethyr Made The Phantom Zone Far More Miserable
Action Comics #1072 by Mark Waid, Clayton Henry, Michael Shelfer, Matt Herms, and Dave Sharpe.
The Phantom Zone is one of the darkest legacies of Superman’s father, Jor-El. Originally, Krypton would either use regular jails or just fire off their criminals into space to be rid of them. Eventually, Jor-El was able to discover the Phantom Zone, which he hoped would be a more humane answer. Using the Phantom Zone, criminals could serve out their sentences and simply think about what they’d done and reflect on their crimes. When their sentence was up, they wouldn’t have aged a day, allowing them to return to society without losing out on their life span. It was a noble idea.
There’s no temperature or weather, no physical touch or smell. There’s just nothing there, it could easily count as mental torture.
While the Phantom Zone has the benefits of preventing people from aging, as well as unintentionally saving them from the destruction of Krypton, there are also some serious drawbacks. The Phantom Zone is essentially a giant sensory deprivation chamber. There’s no temperature or weather, no physical touch or smell. There’s just nothing there, it could easily count as mental torture. Because of this, Aethyr changed the Phantom Zone, so the Phantom Zoners were no longer intangible, but they immediately began murdering one another, leading Aethyr to summon destructive weather and monsters to populate the Phantom Zone instead.
The Phantom Zone Is Now DC’s Worst Prison
No One Deserves To Be Sent Here
While Aethyr’s goals were noble, there’s simply nothing for a group of criminals to do in a realm with no need for food or water that’s just an empty zone. Quite literally their only option is to start fighting and killing one another to assert dominance. While Aethyr was trying to make their lives easier, he eventually just made the Phantom Zone even more of a hellish prison, with tons of dangerous hazards, made even worse by the fact the prisoners can die now. While Superman always used the Phantom Zone as a last resort, he might never be able to use it again in good consciousness.
Action Comics #1072 is on sale now from DC Comics!
“}]] The Phantom Zone is a truly miserable place. Read More