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The Phantom Zone
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Notable Residents
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General Zod, Prometheus (for a time)
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First Appearance
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Adventure Comics #283 (April, 1961)
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Location
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Another dimension
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Points of Interest
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Prometheus' Crooked House
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The Phantom Zone is a dimension in the DC Universe where the criminals of Krypton (and generally Superman) were kept.
History
Kryptonian Use
An interdimensional realm outside of the space/time continuum, the Phantom Zone is a space that originally contained no physical material. One entity, Aethyr, had lived in the Phantom Zone for an unknown amount of time and is believed to be its only native resident. The Phantom Zone was otherwise empty until it was discovered by the Kryptionian scientist Jor-El. Afterwards Jor-El created a projector to send people into the Phantom Zone and decided that it may make an alternative form of imprisonment, believing that it might be more humane than conventional forms, as people who are within the area need neither food nor sleep. Furthermore, those imprisoned in the Phantom Zone are capable of seeing into the regular world, though are unable to interact with it in any way. This form of imprisonment eventually replaced an earlier one, in which criminals were sent into suspended animation in a capsule orbiting Krypton with special crystals being used to destroy criminal behaviour within their minds. To send criminals to the into the Phantom Zone, Jor-El created the Phantom Zone Projector, a device that could send people into the Phantom Zone and retreive them with the flick of a switch. Soon, all of Kryptons most dangerous criminals were held captive in the Phantom Zone and Jor-El was responsible for putting such Kryptonian criminals Jax-Ur (a renegade scientist) and General Zod (a military insurrectionist) into the Phantom Zone.
The End of Krypton
When Jor-El later predicted that Krypton would be destroyed by a natural event, Jor-El suggested that the population could be saved by evacuating into the Phantom Zone, but such a plan was never brought to fruition. Krypton was destroyed by a natural disaster and as Jor-El predicted the Phantom Zone criminals survived due to being in another dimension. Being cut-off from their home dimension, it would be many years before the residents would learn what happened to Krypton.
Years later, a number of Kryptonian artifacts, including a phantom zone projector, landed on Earth.