My apologies if this is weird or has been done before, but this idea just occurred to me, so I thought I'd post it.

Suppose Jor-El had built a spaceship big enough for him and Lara? And suppose Lara was pregnant when they left Krypton (or became pregnant later)?

Assuming that the spaceship still lands in Kansas (and they stay there, or someplace else in the U.S.), their son, Kal-El, would be born in the United States. Now, according to U.S. law, all children born in the United States are automatically citizens. The question is--would this still apply to the son of aliens? Kryptonians look human, they act human (aside from the superpowers), but whether or not they are actually human is debatable.

Ooooooh. What if the El's were part of a NK colonization party, searching for a home for the NK colony? The party could include Lara, Jor-El, and Nor's father (as security / military attache?). Shortly after landing / crashing, B39 captures Nor's father, but Lara and Jor-El escape and hide out with the Kents. Perhaps it takes a while for our yellow sun to give Kryptonians their super powers.

Lara gives birth to Kal, attended by the country doctor of Smallville, so he writes up the birth certificate. Martha is babysitting Kal one day, while Lara and Jor-el are out near Shuster's Field. They are exposed to Kryptonite when Trask's team finds and kills them. (Or maybe Lara dies in childbirth and Jor-El is killed / disappears due to B39 and never returns for Baby Kal).

When Lara and Jor-El don't return, Martha and Jonathan don't know what to do and they raise baby Kal as their own and rename him Clark, so that B39 can't find him.

It would explain Trask's theory that the aliens came to earth to take over the planet, and his life-long search for the more Kryptonians. It would also explain why he thinks there some kind of rock or something out there which can weaken the Kryptonians. Perhaps he used up the one sample he had while torturing / experimenting on Nor's father (ala Female Hawk's "Trusting Me, Trusting You"). It would also explain why Nor hates Earth and Kal-El, especially, because he blames him for the "death" of his father.

Great idea! Lots of possibilities.

In the comics in the Byrne era and later (for about two decades following 1986), Clark's origin story went as follows: Jor-El placed a birthing matrix into the rocket. The matrix only opened after Kal-El arrived on earth. In a 1991 comic book, Superman was deemed by the Supreme Court (albeit in a possible-future universe, rather than in regular continuity) to have been born when he left the matrix, and therefore he was eligible to run for the presidency. In this possible-future, he did, in fact, do just that. Here's the cover of Actions Comics Annual #3:




Joy,
Lynn

Ooooh! Virginia is giving me ideas! Evil ideas that I can't entertain at the moment...(she said as one of the babies started to wail...)

Lynn, what a creepy looking Superman. He almost looks like Bizarro! Armageddon indeed!

Also, this Superman must have revealed himself and his history as Clark Kent for the Birthing Matrix to be considered legit birth.

Do you really want me to address this? I tried to balance the line between being informative without spoiling too much. I fear the answer to this might cross that line.

Joy,
Lynn

Probably best to leave it without spoilers, Lynn. I was just airing my thoughts.

What if New Krypton became the 51st State?

Michael

In Silver Age comics, it was publicly known that Superman came to Earth as a baby and that he had a secret identity. If they had had the birthing matrix origin back then, I think he would have been accepted as a natural-born citizen without giving Clark any problems. I agree that it probably wouldn't go as smoothly for him in more recent times, though.

I've read that when John Byrne was re-doing Superman's origin in the 80's, he wanted Lara to travel to Earth with Kal-El and die from Kryptonite exposure before the Kents found them in order to establish that kryptonite would actually kill a Kryptonian. We'd seen it hurt them, but it hadn't actually been demonstrated to be lethal. This plot idea was, thankfully, shot down.

I think "Lois and Clark" started out with the right balance of where people like Lois assumed that Superman had just arrived. That is why what Luthor learned in "Foundling" was so disturbing.

However later on we had Mindy Church knowing that Superman had come to earth as a baby. How exactly did she learn that from the space ship?

That's actually an interesting story - as I remember it, the basic premise is that a time traveller is trying to find out which superhero caused a catastrophe and became the evil overlord of earth (in an all-covering costume so they have no idea what he or she really looks like), doing so by touching the character and then travelling along that person's time-line into the character's future. Superman is one of the possibilities, but whenever he looks at Superman's future he sees something different; the reason being that Clark picks up a little of the time traveller's thoughts telepathically, and without consciously realising it, does something different!

For example, in that particular part Jonathan's accidental death is the first of several incidents; another is a terrorist attack that Clark stops but in doing so reveals he's Superman. These events lead to Clark becoming President; he then has the opportunity to become the evil overlord, but instead resists temptation and brings about world peace, proving that he is not the evil overlord. But when the time traveller returns to the present Clark suddenly has a premonition that Jonathan might be in danger, and flies to Smallville just in time to save him and prevent that sequence of events from ever happening.

If I remember it correctly, the time traveller ends up having to try again to make sure that the change hasn't somehow led to Clark turning to the dark side... Which ends up revealing who the Evil Overlord really is, not Clark but someone else in the JLA, and the time traveller can then fix things.

Well, the ship *was* rather infant-sized. And, who knows, maybe she had some kind of contacts with one or two of Trask's old B39 members?

Or maybe she was one of Luthor's "friends". He knew because he saw some of the messages from the globe.

Jason Trask's Estate sale?
B39 Rummage sale?

Every so often there is a news story where someone bought a used computer and the hard drive wasn't erased. Even ones from government surplus auctions that have classified data. There could be several good fics in that.

Well, she had to get the ship from *somewhere.*