Non (Superman): the third Kryptonian of the Phantom Zone and his brute strength

Non (Superman): who is the third Kryptonian of the Phantom Zone

The trio of Kryptonian criminals locked inside Krypton’s dimensional prison comes down to three names: Zod, Ursa and Non. The first one commands, the second one carries out, the third one hits. Non, the mute Kryptonian, is the sheer mass of the group: a colossus who does not talk, does not negotiate, and keeps moving forward until something gives way.

His name comes down to a single word. The character carries no Kryptonian House suffix — neither -El like Superman’s real name, nor -Zod, nor -Ur — and not one of the sources consulted credits him with any other identity.

A rare detail in the DC universe: Non was born on screen, not on a page. He appears first in the 1978 film Superman, where Superman’s father sits on the court that sentences him. Nearly thirty years would pass before he entered comics continuity, which went on to invert his origin.

A character created for the 1978 Superman film

The film Superman had its premiere at the Kennedy Center in Washington on 10 December 1978, then opened in the United Kingdom on 14 December and in the United States on 15 December. Non holds only one scene in it, the opening one: a trial on Krypton.

Three defendants stand trial for an attempted coup. The court, on which Jor-El sits, sentences them to the Phantom Zone. Jor-El describes the third one as a mindless aberration who expresses himself only through violence and destruction. The line pins the character down: he has no plan, he has a function.

Non was created for the 1978 film: Wikipedia credits Mario Puzo, who wrote the story, while no other source confirms who came up with the character. The screenplay is signed by Puzo, David Newman, Leslie Newman and Robert Benton. The trial sets up a stage that Krypton’s ruling class would go on to occupy.

Superman II: the Man of Steel frees the trio himself

Superman II opened in Australia on 4 December 1980, in the United Kingdom on 9 April 1981 and in the United States on 19 June 1981. The film rests on an irony: it is Superman who sets the prisoners free. A hydrogen bomb he had sent off into space explodes, and the shockwave shatters their prison near Earth.

Under the light of a yellow sun, the three Kryptonians acquire the same powers he has. They kill astronauts on the Moon, reach Earth, take the White House, then ally themselves with the Man of Steel’s sworn enemy. Non does not say a word during the whole operation.

The defeat happens at the Fortress of Solitude: exposure to red light strips the trio of their powers, and the giant falls into a crevasse while trying to fly over it. The shoot was a troubled one: Richard Donner was removed on 15 March 1979 after roughly 75 % of the takes, and Richard Lester took over in September 1979. A re-edit released on 28 November 2006 redistributes the final confrontation.

The mute giant: Jack O’Halloran behind the role

Non is played by Jack O’Halloran, born on 8 April 1943 in Philadelphia, who later lived in Runnemede, New Jersey. Before the movies, he was a professional heavyweight boxer.

His record: 57 fights between 1966 and 1974, for 34 wins, 21 losses and 2 draws, standing 1.98 m tall. He faced George Foreman and Ken Norton, was California heavyweight champion in 1972, and stopped in 1974 to turn to the movies. That build explains the physical presence of the role opposite the actor who played Superman at the time.

O’Halloran has said that the idea came from him: playing Non like a child discovering his powers and making sounds for lack of a voice. That choice sets the giant apart from the coldness of the general played by Terence Stamp and from Ursa’s cruelty.

In the comics: an entrance in 2007, and nothing before

Non’s entrance into the comics came late: Action Comics #845, cover-dated January 2007. The “Last Son” arc, by Geoff Johns and Richard Donner — the director of the first film — drawn by Adam Kubert, runs across Action Comics #844-846 and #851, then closes in the Annual #11 in 2008. Issue #844 opens the arc, but it is #845 that is documented.

Action Comics Annual #10, dated March 2007, contains the segment “The Criminals of Krypton”. There Non is one of the great scientific minds of Krypton and a close associate of Jor-El. He led a separatist movement, and the Krypton Council had him lobotomised: here the muteness and the brutality are a political punishment, not a nature. The same arc introduces Christopher Kent, the son of Zod and Ursa, towards whom the giant proves protective.

Before the 1986 reboot, on the other hand, Non does not exist. The historical criminals of the Kryptonian prison are called Jax-Ur, Quex-Ul or Faora Hu-Ul. The miniseries The Phantom Zone, four issues published from January to April 1982, nevertheless came out a few months after Superman II — and features neither Non nor Ursa. For nearly thirty years he remained a film figure that the comics did not pick up, while the history of Krypton was being rewritten elsewhere.

Powers and weaknesses of Non (Superman)

Non’s toolkit is that of any Kryptonian exposed to a yellow sun: boundless strength, speed, flight, skin that almost nothing can break, the various visions and amplified hearing. Not one ability is his own: the character does not need to be special in order to be a problem.

The weaknesses are the same ones as well: kryptonite and the radiation of a red sun. It is the second one that puts him out of action in Superman II. On top of that comes a flaw exploited without any detour, his low intelligence: Non does not go around a trap, he walks straight through it.

That leaves the muteness, which is not a power but weighs just as much. In both films, the giant does not speak a single line; in the comics, he stays almost non-verbal — an opponent with whom nothing can be negotiated. Set against the list of the Man of Steel’s abilities, his profile has nothing original about it.

Non against Superman: brute strength settles nothing between them

The link between Non and Superman does not run through Superman: it runs through his father. The giant is sentenced by the court on which Jor-El sits and, in the comics, he kept company with the latter before his lobotomy. He is an inherited enemy.

Superman, on the other hand, is the direct cause of his release: the shockwave from his own bomb blows the prison apart. The trio is a mistake made by the Man of Steel, and the rivalry with Zod opens on that reversal.

Same species, same sun, same powers: brute strength decides nothing between them. In the second film of the saga, the victory comes from a stratagem — the molecule chamber and the red light — not from a fight actually won. That is what brings Non close to the brute who killed Superman and separates him from the manipulators in the ranking of the Man of Steel’s adversaries: Zod decides, Ursa relays, Non hits.

Non in the Supergirl series: a version that speaks

The Supergirl series lends the character a very different face. Chris Vance holds the role in season 1: the casting was announced in October 2015, and Non appears on 14 December 2015 in “Hostile Takeover”. That Non talks, gives orders and plots.

He is the husband of Astra In-Ze, played by Laura Benanti, the twin sister of Alura and the aunt of Kara Zor-El. Astra is not Ursa: she is a character created for the series, absent from the comics, and the two must not be confused. The series does keep the idea of the scientist turned soldier, an echo of the 2007 comics origin, but without the lobotomy.

On 18 April 2016, in “Better Angels”, the Myriad plan inherited from Astra is already running and Non pushes it to its conclusion. The heroine of the series faces him by walking straight into his heat vision beam and burns his eyes. The sources diverge on what follows: one episode recap describes him knocked out and blinded, a fan wiki lists him among the dead. Defeated, then, and no more than that.

Games, animation and New Krypton: the other appearances

In 2009, Superman: World of New Krypton drafts Non into the army of the new Krypton: punished for having rescued Christopher Kent in the Phantom Zone, he is assigned as a cadet to the Red Shard unit, which Superman commands on behalf of the Military Guild. The other cadets force him to face a wild animal as a hazing ritual; Superman interrupts the scene, and the giant has stayed loyal to him ever since. This vast crossover remains his most developed setting.

Non even featured in a licensed DC product twenty years before his first comic page. Kemco’s Superman game, released on the NES in Japan on 26 December 1987 and in North America in December 1988, makes him a final boss, after Lex Luthor and alongside Ursa and Zod, among the hero’s video games.

In animation, Non appears among the Phantom Zone Kryptonians in season 4 of Young Justice, subtitled Phantoms.

One confusion keeps coming back: the tall, silent, armoured Kryptonian in Man of Steel is not Non, but Nam-Ek. The character is absent from Zack Snyder’s film, where the escort of the Zod of that version counts other soldiers, among them the warrior Faora.

Conclusion

Non, the mute Kryptonian, is the simplest of the trio and yet the hardest one to tell on his own. He has no plan, no line of dialogue, and his origin changes completely depending on whether you watch the film or read the comic. That is what makes him useful: he shows what Superman is up against when nothing can be negotiated any more.

If you want to go further, two doors open: the prison that held him for decades, and the rivalry with the general, who gives him his orders.