Villain Profile: The Eradicator

A very sad truth about the universe is that one day, there will be no more humans. We shall either be wiped out by some environmental catastrophe, nuclear war, viral outbreak, or by the death of our sun. Even, if by some stroke of luck, we aren’t destroyed, eventually mutations in our DNA may lead us to be something else. Evolution is a slow process, but it’s constantly in motion. So, the question is, if humanity is destined for destruction, what would you save? Would you save the books? The history of our world? There is a character that has had a look into what happens when one tries to safeguard the essence of a culture instead of trying to save the people. Let’s get to it, the Eradicator.

Another pretender to the House of El.

An alien race centuries ago had this issue, they were dying out. Realizing that they’d just about hit the end of their existence, they created a number of specialized containment devices. Within these machines they store their history and as much information on their culture as possible. They sent these containers out in much the same way we launched the Golden Disks “Sounds of Earth” on Voyager 1 and 2, with the intent on meeting other intelligent life and saving their species. They also sent small crews along with each of these containers, just to make sure they arrived on these alien worlds safely. One of these containers and crew landed on wonderful but doomed planet Krypton. Unfortunately for this group, they weren’t discovered by a Jor or Zor-El, or even a Jax-Ur, but by Kem-L, who lands on the General Zod spectrum of crazed would-be tyrants. Kem-L murdered the alien crew, all but one, and stole the container. He hacked into it and altered the machine, corrupting its original program. Kem-L replaced the alien’s history/culture from their container, and uploaded the history/culture of Krypton. And added the additional protocol that the machine was to preserve Kryptonian culture above all else, and destroy anything that isn’t Kryptonian. Thus the Eradicator was born.

The Eradicator worked much like Brainiac did in Superman: The Animated Series back in the 90s. Its designation was to protect Krypton above all else, even protect Kryptonians from themselves. It personally sabotaged several attempts at Kryptonians leaving Krypton and colonizing new worlds. It altered the “birthing matrices” of some Kryptonian explorers to be fatally allergic to Lead, and later altered the DNA of all of Krypton so that its people couldn’t survive off world. Any Mass Effect fans reading this? They basically became the Quarians. The alien that survived, simply known as the Cleric, eventually broke free and takes the Eradicator back. He escapes Krypton with a group of sympathetic Kryptonians, all of which die shortly after leaving their planet, and keeps the Eradicator safe for approximately 200,000 years. Aliens have a tendency to live a very, very long time. Apparently. Years later The Cleric ran into the last son of Krypton, Superman, while he was trapped on Mongul’s Warworld. On Warworld, Superman was forced to compete in Gladiatorial style combat against other aliens. He’s not happy about it, but he was doing a sort of self-imposed exile after executing several rogue Kryptonians from an alternate dimension. Using the Eradicator, The Cleric and Superman share memories. Ol’ Kal-El learned that he was able to escape Krypton because Jor-El underwent several gene treatments to cure his son of the Eradicator’s tinkering. And the Cleric sees a vision of Superman battling Mongul, king of Warworld. The machine seems to alter its programing to protect the last son, and is able to heal Superman’s wounds. The Cleric hands the Eradicator over to Superman, after giving him a pep-talk that convinces him to return to Earth, and then ages into dust. The Eradicator had kept the Cleric alive for centuries. Superman makes the Cleric a grave and flew back to Earth.

One of it's earlier forms. Before it takes on a more Superman-y
look.

That’s when things start to go bad. The Eradicator is compelled to complete its programing, namely safe guarding Kryptonian culture. Superman chucks it into a crevice in the Antarctic after it messes with his buddy Jimmy Olsen. Once in the ice, it alters the ice into a more Kryptonian look and builds the Fortress of Solitude. It also uses its advanced tech to “possess” a pair of scientists and force them to create a portal to the Phantom Zone, so that it could recover some ancient Kryptonian artifacts.  Superman recovers the Eradicator, and this time around, the machine lets him know a pretty big secret. Turns out Kem-L’s family name shifted slightly over the centuries, from L to El. Yeah, Superman’s ancestor was the one that screwed with the machine, and ironically doomed his entire species in the process. It then screws with Superman’s brain to make him forget about the Eradicator so it could continue with its work. Superman’s friend, Professor Hamilton, helps Superman recover his memories and confront the Eradicator. Superman’s able to complete a Kryptonian rite of passage, which gives him command of the Eradicator, and he shuts it down.

Unfortunately it doesn’t power down completely. It’s able to influence Superman’s psyche, and alter him into Kem-L’s ideal of Kryptonian perfection. He alienates his friends and family, and nearly kills a friend of his from Warworld, Draaga. But, when that crazed computer sets its sights on the Kent’s, Superman won’t have it. He breaks free of its control and hurls the Eradicator into the sun. This didn’t stop the Eradicator, however, as it was able to transform into an energy form. In this new form it attempted to transform our sun, Sol, into a red dwarf similar to Krypton’s sun, a star they called Rao. Superman is able to stop this terraforming…er solar-forming, and traps the Eradicator in some quasi-magical crystals. He then shatters the Crystal, presumable destroying the Eradicator.

Looks like Brainiac, obsessed with Krypton like the Eradicator.
Mixing characters is always interesting, isn't it?

We all know how well killing bad guys in comics work by now, right? What kills ‘em makes ‘em stronger. Superman is supposedly killed in a battle with Doomsday. After the death of the most powerful hero in the DC Universe, a lot of folks tried to fill the power vacuum. Four beings came up as the best candidates for the new Superman. We have Cyborg Superman, a robotic clone of Superman; Superboy, an actual clone of Superman; Steel, a man utilizing a Superman themed Iron Man suit; and the Eradicator. How? Well, Superman has an army of Kryptonian robots that tend to the Fortress in his absence. They gathered the residual energy of the Eradicator, and it’s able to create a semi-organic duplication of Superman’s body through some complicated sci-fi rigmarole.

The Eradicator uses Superman’s body like a battery, having the Kryptonian absorb yellow sunlight, which it can’t absorb on its own, to feed it. It set itself up as a brutal new Superman, much like Cyborg Superman. It was forced to relocate after a battle with Steel, to reconsider things. It moved to Coast City to reevaluate the role of itself and Superman. This is just about when the insane Cyborg Superman and Mongul destroy Coast City. Cyborg Superman tries to kill the Eradicator to frame it for destroying Coast City, but it is able to escape. It flies back to the Fortress of Solitude to recharge, but to its shock, it finds Superman alive again. Apparently, using Superman’s body as a battery helped resurrect the nearly dead Kryptonian. The Eradicator sucks the power from the Fortress, changing its appearance and absorbing some of Kal’s more empathetic qualities. Superman and the Eradicator team-up with Supergirl, Superboy, Steel, and Green Lantern to stop Cyborg Superman and Mongul from destroying Metropolis. They put up a good fight, despite the fact their Superman was still weakened from the whole being basically dead for a few months. In the end, the Eradicator uses its body to protect Superman from a lethal blast of Kryptonite radiation fired from Warworld. The Eradicator’s body alters the Kryptonite radiation into pure Krypton radiation, which recharges Superman and fully restores his powers. The Eradicator is destroyed, but our heroes are able to beat Warworld and Cyborg Superman back. This isn’t the end of the Eradicator, however, it returns to do some morally grey things, as it tends to do.

It's an amazing simulation

The Eradicator is one of the most advanced pieces of technology in the known universe. It basically controlled everything about the day to day lives of Krypton, even manipulating Kryptonian DNA to keep them “pure.” It can manipulate vast amounts of energy, manipulate the minds of other organisms, and keep beings alive for millennia. As the machine has evolved, it’s developed a more Kryptonian form. After Superman’s apparent death, it fashioned a semi-organic clone body of Kal-El. In this new form it gets about 90% of Kryptonian powers. Super-strength, speed, durability, near invulnerability, and flight. It has super acute senses, seeing outside the visible spectrum, and hear even better than Superman. It can also absorb and convert a variety of energies/radiation. The one thing it can’t do is use heat vision, but it can shoot beams of energy from its hands, so it finds ways around that.

The Eradicator hasn’t appeared outside the comics as itself. But, elements of the character have been mixed into Brainiac for both Superman: The Animated Series, and Smallville. In both these series, Brainiac is an advanced Kryptonian computer obsessed with protecting the “essence” of Krypton. Superman hits on it a bit more, as we see how much the Brainiac/Eradicator program controls Krypton. As a matter of fact, in this universe, it’s Brainiac’s fault that Kryptonians died with their world. The machine chose to safeguard itself, and by extension Kryptonian Culture, as that was more important than saving those silly living Kryptonians.

I find the Eradicator to be an interesting concept. A machine designed to protect the culture of a species, but loses the ability to care about who it’s supposed to look after. Over the years it seems to have learned that the people that have the culture are as worth protecting as the culture itself, but Krypton will always be first in its mind. It is rather ironic that in Kem-L’s attempt to save the “culture” of Krypton, he doomed his race to die with their home world. Maybe take this as a lesson folks, holding on too close to an ideal can lead to the end of their people. Just something to ponder. It is the safeguard of Krypton, the machine guiding one of the most advanced races in the DC Universe, the coldly logical Eradicator. Next time, the anti-social Mogo.

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