My friend Earl and I had running a commentary about the fate of the planet Krypton, Superman's birthplace. Going by the maps of the planet intended for Silver Age comic books, Kryptonian society was split between "Old World" and "New World" populations. Not only did the Old World and New World thinkers remain philosophically distant, each civilization remained physically distant: each society occupied separate continents on opposite hemispheres of the planet. Tucked into the corner of the Old World Hemisphere was Vathlo Island, which no word of a lie was a reserve intended for all of Krypton's black people. At least the mapmakers conceded that Vathlo Islanders were considered to be highly advanced.
All of this information came as an uncomfortable surprise to my friend Earl, who is the biggest fan of Superman. Earl surveyed his massive collection of Superman comics and found very few references to any black citizens of Krypton, let alone any who would have been powerful enough to influence cut-throat Kryptonian politics. Now Earl is suffering from white guilt, and given the starkness of the Krypton map I agree with him.
I can't say if Superman's artists were being racist. Likely, they were used to dealing with a roster of white characters that had been established for decades, and simply tacked on Vathlo as a means of being complete with their maps. Comic books of that age were entertaining, but not particularly enlightened. The focus would be on cranking out as many original stories as possible while remaining on time and under budget for publication.
Looking at Vathlo Island another way, Kryptonian civilization would have become so advanced that heterogeny - a mixing of cultures - would give way to a reverse feudalism, in that people would naturally cluster together in mutually-supportive groups of super-scholars. Krypton's science and politics seems to be composed of powerful yet isolated special-interest groups.
Kryptonian technology is well advanced from ours. In their ancient past, Kryptonians were spacefaring explorers, discovering and colonizing distant planets. Deciding that imperialism demeaned their values, and after the inadvertent obliteration of their moon, the people of Krypton decided to remain exclusively on their home world. Still, it should be no problem for any citizen to travel from any of the major cities on the New World Continent to the wilderness of the Old Continent in moments. Despite the physical distance between them, the New World and Old World peoples should have been able to communicate easily. I figure they chose not to, however.
Since Vathlo was so advanced, they could have provided early warnings that Kryptonian industry was out of control, that the core of their planet was poisoned, and that an erratic orbit would vault Krypton into the sun. Superman's father, Jor-El, was a leading member of the Science Council on the New World side of the planet, and nobody listened to him either. All that would be left for the people of Vathlo would be to ride Krypton into oblivion. Even then, it seems to have been the New World side of the planet that led the way into the afterlife.
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