- "You're wasting your efforts. The strength you derived from your exposure to the Earth's sun has been neutralized on our ship. Here, in this environment, you're as weak as a human."
- ―Jax-Ur to Kal-El[src]
Jax-Ur is a Kryptonian scientist, war criminal, and member of the Sword of Rao under General Dru-Zod, being one of the first great enemies of the hero Superman.
Together with General Zod, Jax-Ur attempted to re-establish Krypton on Earth by bringing about a terraformation apocalypse (in the Black Zero Event), but he was ultimately defeated by Lois Lane and the United States Armed Forces and sucked back into the Phantom Zone.
Biography[]
Prior to joining the Sword of Rao, Jax-Ur was known as a geneticist working within the Thinker Guild to shape the destinies of Krypton's future members.[1]
After Krypton was destroyed, Jax-Ur and all the other prisoners in the Phantom Zone were freed. He subsequently joined together with General Dru-Zod and his forces. They then used the ship they were aboard and travelled across space searching for other Kryptonian survivors, before finding Kal-El on planet Earth.
After Superman and Lois Lane were brought aboard Zod's flagship, the Kryptonian atmosphere inside negated his powers. Superman was strapped down and General Zod had Jax-Ur conduct mind probing for information, before General Zod proceeded to Smallville to retrieve the codex.
After General Zod and his forces returned to the ship from battling Superman and the US military, Jax-Ur notified General Zod that he had located the codex, telling him that Jor-El had disintegrated it and combined it into Superman's DNA. He also boasted that he could extract it from Superman, dead or alive.[2]
Jax-Ur was later sucked back into the Phantom Zone (along with Faora-Ul, Dev-Em II, Nam-Ek, Tor-An, and Car-Vex) after Nathan Hardy crashed a plane containing Superman's ship into the Black Zero, causing a temporary singularity into the Phantom Zone (due to the collision of both phantom drives). Jax was the only member of the Sword of Rao to realize the humans' plan and understand what would be his undoing.[2][3]
Personality[]
Genetically engineered into the Kryptonian Thinker Guild as a scientist, Jax-Ur is extremely intelligent, but unlike his compassionate fellow scientist Jor-El, Jax-Ur is cold and cruel, as he had no qualms about experimenting on a restrained and helpless, weakened Superman, due to his determination to discover the growth codex for General Zod.
Powers and Abilities[]
Powers[]
- Kryptonian physiology: As a Kryptonian, Jax-Ur's bone structure is almost identical to that of a human. On a planet near a red class M main-sequence star, like his native Krypton with its sun Rao, Jax-Ur has physical attributes nearly identical to those of humans. However, if he were to travel to a planet near a yellow G-type main-sequence star, like Earth, he would gain many incredible superpowers, identical to those of Superman, which would have made Jax-Ur also appear godlike. However, since he was never exposed to the radiation of Earth's sun, Jax-Ur did not get the chance to gain his full potential superpowers before being sucked back into the Phantom Zone.
Abilities[]
- Genius-level intellect: Jax-Ur, while not on par with Jor-El, is nonetheless exceptionally intelligent, as a member of the Kryptonian Thinker Guild, with his intellect mainly extending to his scientific expertise. He occasionally offered crucial insights to General Zod, which helped the Sword of Rao survive for so long after Krypton's destruction. However, the thinking boundaries programmed into Jax-Ur's engineered DNA occasionally make him imperfect in utilizing these skills, being therefore notably less intelligent than the more free willed Jor-El.
- Expert scientist: Jax-Ur, as an illustrious member of the Kryptonian Thinker Guild, was one of Krypton's foremost scientists, almost on par with Jor-El. It was under Jax-Ur's instructions that General Zod was able to retrofit the Phantom Zone Projector into a phantom drive to use for searching the universe for other Kryptonian survivors. After examining Superman's blood, Jax-Ur was also the one to discover that the growth codex had, in fact, been fused with all of Kal-El's cells. He also swiftly understood how the Earth's sun granted Superman his superpowers. Finally, Jax-Ur was the only member of the Sword of Rao to understand that the Phantom Zone energy singularity had been opened due to the collision of both phantom drives.[3]
- Multilingualism: Jax-Ur, apart from his native Kryptonian, was able to quickly learn how to fluently understand and speak English (and possibly other Earth languages), as seen during his brief interaction with Superman.
Weaknesses[]
- Limited Free Will: Jax-Ur's greatest psychological weakness stems from the fact that it was genetically engineered in a genesis chamber, with the boundaries of thought programmed into its engineered DNA. Indeed, Jax-Ur induced a poor command of free will and a tendency to dogmatic tunnel vision and was completely unable to live a different lifestyle from which he was born. Jax-Ur's lack of free will led him to demonstrate a complete lack of empathy and coldness for humans, unlike Jor-El, who had compassion for humans and wanted to do so, through his son Kal-El, that they continued to live, but, above all, for the latter, who had a complete and more superior free will than his, not hesitating to experiment on him to discover the code of his cells and almost pull it out, if had not been imprisoned in the Phantom Zone.
Equipment[]
- Space suit: Jax-Ur wears this protective suit in airless or otherwise dangerous space environments, notably when on the Daxam colonial outpost.
- Syringe: Jax-Ur's syringe of Kryptonian design, used to extract Superman's blood.
Relationships[]
Allies[] |
Enemies[]
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Trivia[]
- In the DC Comics universe, Jax-Ur was a scientist imprisoned in the Phantom Zone for destroying Wegthor, an inhabited moon of Krypton.
- Jax-Ur is the only known member of the Sword of Rao not to have been from the Kryptonian Warrior Guild, as he was from the Thinker Guild instead.
- In Smallville continuity, Dax-Ur (also from the House of Ur) was a kryptonian scientist that came to Earth in order to explore the effect the yellow sun has on kryptonian minerals, coincidentally discovering its effect on kryptonians. Decades later, the 22 year old Clark Kent tracked him down and asked for his help in defeating Bizzaro (a mutated kryptonian experiment that metabolized kryptonite and was weakened by yellow sunlight). Dax-Ur gave him Blue Kryptonite (that painlessly suppresses the kryptonian ability to metabolize solar radiation, practically rendering them human) that he used to overload Bizzaro's body and caused him to explode.
- In the DC Animated Universe, a character named Jax-Ur is the primary antagonist of the episodes "Blasts From the Past" and "Absolute Power"; in that continuity, he is a rogue Kryptonian general, more closely modeled on Zod than a scientist.
