Smallville Legends: Kara and the Chronicles of Krypton

To coincide with season 7 of Smallville, the CW released a series of 6 short animations that were initially released and made available through Sprint phones and on the CW website. This is the 5th such series of shorts, all that have “chronicles” in the title, released like this alongside seasons of Smallville. The first 3 focus on Chloe Sullivan and are filmed in live action using the existing sets and telling short inconsequential stories that take place during the larger events of the show. The 4 chronicles series is a 3D animated telling of Oliver Queen’s origin and growth into Green Arrow. The Chronicles of Krypton is more similar to the Oliver Queen Cronicles as opposed to the earlier series. It is also animated, however as 2D animation this time, and explores Kara and her life on Krypton just before getting rocketed to earth.

While this series is notable for exploring Krypton in a way that wasn’t done much in the main Smallville show, it doesn’t do anything groundbreaking. Each of the 6 episodes are only 4 minutes long making the series have a full runtime of less than half an hour, which only allows for a very brief story arc. The story follows Kara and her father, Zor-El. The series attempts to expand on Zod’s attacks on Krypton and explore Kara’s life on Krypton and how she came to earth.

While I really enjoyed seeing some of the visuals of Kryptonian cities and dress and the introduction of a classmate to Kara (Augo), I felt like the short nature of the show didn’t allow for much to be shown and mostly focused on references to the main show such as showing the scene of Lara putting Kal in the rocket, and the scene of Kara getting into her rocket. It also had references to the Brain Interactive Construct who would become Brainiac and later Brainiac 5, and also briefly showed Aethyr and Nam-Ek from season 5. Because of how little actual story is told, I think my favorite part of this series is actually the outfit Kara is shown wearing. She has a white and blue dress that is asymmetrical and off one shoulder and feels both cute and alien representing the character of Supergirl well as someone who was raised on Krypton for many years of her life before coming to earth. Both Kara and Zor-El have the iconic House of El symbol on their costumes, but it is inverted with a yellow S and red background. The attention to detail of including her silver bracelet from the show was also a nice thing to see and helped The Chronicles of Krypton feel connected to Smallville.

I don’t know if I would recommend this for watching, nor would I any of the Chronicles series that ran alongside Smallville. However, the show is fairly easily accessible and if you’re a fan of Smallville it could be a good way to kill a half hour if you go in with pretty low expectations. While the show initially had a very odd release, these “Mobisodes” have been bundled with the Smallville Season 7 box set and are also uploaded on YouTube (in very low quality and unofficially).

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