“In [Superman] issue #239, a two-page map showed that Kryptonians Of Color had an island all to themselves, which is pretty embarrassing… I cringe to tell you this, but the Kryptonians of Color were all on ‘Vathlo Island, Home of a Highly Advanced Black Race.’ It wasn’t until the mid-70s, when more ‘World of Krypton’ back-up stories ran more regularly, that we really saw any ethnicity whatsoever on the planet.”

Apparently in the current Superman titles, there’s a bunch of (presumably) undiscovered Kryptonians who survived the planet’s destruction who are now living on Earth – and surprise! Some of them are ethnically diverse. I doubt I ever gave Krypton’s previous lack of diversity a second thought. Krypton was an alien planet, with a society and biological distinctiveness different from that of Earth. I don’t believe it was ever intended to be an analogue, or stand-in, for Earth in any way, so why should one expect Kryptonians to be completely like Earthlings? In the CrossGen universe, for example, the alien worlds may have resembled Earth in a superficial way, but the in-story explanation was that Earthlings had colonized these planets millenia ago, so I could buy black and Asian-looking characters in that context. When Star Trek: Voyager first aired, I remember thinking that there probably should be a lot more black Vulcans besides Tuvok, since Vulcan is an arid, hot world. But we know that Vulcan biology is quite different from humans – besides the pointy ears, they have green blood and inner eyelids, and are generally stronger – so who’s to say their skin would react to sunlight the same way as humans?

I certainly have no objection to creating Kryptonians of color – though why there should be so many more Kryptonians at all when Supes is supposed to be the last of his kind is another matter – but from my perspective, I never saw it as much of an issue at all.