You may know that Superman owns a menagerie of superpowered sentient pets. But did you know that these animals have a long history of behaving like lunatics? Let's remember the time Krypto got Space Rabies.


10.) Krypto's Family Tree

Chances are you have a passing familiarity with Superboy's mutt Krypto. But you may not know that Superboy would make his dog wear a psychic goblet for laughs. On one occasion, Clark Kent forced Krypto to don this undignified chapeau to learn the secrets of his pedigree. I love this panel because it looks like Krypto is snarking on that hayseed Superboy.


Who were Krypto's relatives? There was his father Zypto, who sprouted wings to evade the Dog Extermination Squad (which is Krypton's equivalent of the dogcatcher, Kryptonian's not a subtle tongue). Zypto mutated thanks to a kindly mad scientist, who fed him the "distillation from the glands of a thousand birds." I imagine that scientist spent many a mirthful evening in the lab, grinding puffin parts with a mortar and pestle, chortling to no one in particular.

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But the madness doesn't stop there. Krypto's grandfather was Nypto, a blue Dalmatian who was almost a blue plate special...


...and his great-grandfather was Vypto, whose exploits are too dull to mention here. Side note: I desperately hope the youth of today become enamored of skimmer hats and banjos again. You can more read about Krypto's wonderfully convoluted heritage at Atomic Surgery.


9.) Supergirl Meets Comet The Superhorse In A Series Of Erotic Visions

Supergirl's introduction to her steed Comet was a needlessly drawn-out affair. Before their first encounter, Supergirl was bedazzled with the nightly phantasmagoria of a handsome, crime-stopping horse. Some of these dreams involved light bondage.


8.) Comet the Super-Horse Is A Stalker

After the boring yet titillating dreams kept a-coming, Supergirl finally met her stallion at a dude ranch. It would make too much sense for Supergirl's steed to be some random dumb horse who survived the destruction of Krypton.


No, Comet was once an ancient Greek centaur named Biron. When the sorceress Circe accidentally changed Biron into a horse, she added insult to injury by making him immortal and telepathic, forever condemning him to be an undying, all-seeing abomination. An evil wizard then exiled Comet to deep space, where he sat trapped for centuries, until Supergirl's Kryptonian rocket accidentally freed him from his cosmic panopticon. Comet became obsessed with Supergirl and snuck into her slumber like an equine Freddy Krueger.


7.) Comet Makes Out With Supergirl

Being straddled by Supergirl day-in day-out wasn't enough for Comet. Soon yet another wizard transformed Comet into a human. Comet took this brief opportunity to pose as a rodeo superstar, and our hoofed Lothario put the moves on Supergirl.


As you can see in the final panel, Comet never attended seventh-grade health class and is thus confused why his pants are growing tight.


6.) Supergirl Creates Streaky The Supercat By Improperly Disposing Of Toxic Waste

While trying to devise a Kryptonite antidote, Supergirl threw her botched chemistry project into the woods, where it mutated a cat who just so happened to be wearing a Superman cape. In the Silver Age of Comics, there were no coincidences — only stupid coincidences.


5.) Krypto Gets In A Fight With Superboy And Contemplates Suicide




4.) Comet Loses His Memory

Once Comet and Supergirl were recruited to work on one of those newfangled moving pictures. Supergirl did the grunt labor while Comet got hopped up on memory-erasing lilies. I appreciate that your run-of-the-mill Hollywood potboiler has easy access to the mineral that can kill Superman.


Frankly, this story isn't all that interesting. I just like seeing Superman brag about his collection of obscure narcotics.


3.) Beppo Enforces Monkey Law

Beppo was a Kryptonian monkey who stowed away on the baby Superman's escape capsule. In an alternate DC Universe, a hungry Beppo ate the infant Kal-El en route to Earth and became our planet's Xenoprimate President For Life.


2.) Krypto Becomes The King Of An Alien World

During one of his many space walkabouts, Krypto became the monarch of a singularly dumb planet. The crown soon went to his head, and King Krypto was quickly unamused by his peons' Philistine monkeyshines.


1.) Krypto Gets Space-Rabies

Thanks to the vagaries of cosmic radiation and Kryptonite, Krypto once came down with a nasty case of Space-Rabies. I'm not making this up.


See?

SPAAACE RAAABIES.






In addition to transforming Krypto into a skyscraper-sized Cujo, the Space Rabies paralyzed the dog while his heat vision was on full blast. That's mighty inconvenient, no?


Superboy built a monument to his doomed monolith of a pet (seemingly unconcerned by the threat he posed to the world's satellites)...


...until he wiped his bottom with the laws of physics and storytelling. As you can see in the upper-right, even Krypto's frozen death mask is incredulous of this turn of events.