Views of an Imaginary City 20: A Street in the Najirèh District
20. A Street in Najirèh
The outer district of Najirèh (“Empress”) is so named in honour of the empress Aritokèh, during whose reign the area’s first streets were laid out. It is located on a raised plateau surrounded by rice fields to the north, south, and east, and by the Golu Canal (See n. 38) to the west. The unnamed avenue presented here is typical of streets in this part of the city, with…
Well, I have flights tomorrow and Monday. Not sure if I'll manage, but I'm hoping to write on the trip! I even have a little notebook and post-it notes for ✨planning✨. But... what should I write?? Abson is done. LBFD is almost done... I shouldn't (and don't think I'm capable) of writing smut out in the open. So...
September 1983. Although not credited in the digest on whose cover this version was published (BEST OF DC #40, SUPERMAN: THE FABULOUS WORLD OF KRYPTON), this map of Krypton was drawn by Albert de Guzman and originally appeared in THE KRYPTON CHRONICLES #2 (October 1981). Many of the locales shown on the map had appeared in previous Superman stories, in particular the Scarlet Jungle.
A different map of Krypton, drawn by Howard Bender and Joe DelBeato, appeared in the Krypton entry in WHO'S WHO about three years later:
This version of the map is broadly similar to the De Guzman map above, although the captions for Kandor and Argo City seem to have been transposed: The vignette identified as Kandor appears to be Argo City — Argo had an environmental dome (which is how it survived the destruction of Krypton), while Kandor did not — and the vignette identified as Argo City looks a lot more like Kandor. My guess that someone switched the captions during production, seeing the dome over Argo and mistakenly assuming someone had mislabeled Kandor (which of course is best known as the Bottle City of Kandor).
Video of "Views of an Imaginary City: The Krokuta Burial Pits"
Jim Avis’s sensitive video interpretation of my admittedly quite bizarre imagining of an alternative funeral rite (though one inspired by traditional practices in East Africa). The pohutukawa is a real tree, btw, native to New Zealand. It’s bright red flowers blossom in December, and for this reason it is also known as a New Zealand Christmas tree.