General Zod (Modern Age)

## Summary

**General Zod** is a former Kryptonian military general who was exiled to the Phantom Zone for treason and crimes against Krypton. After surviving the harsh wilds of Krypton alone as a child, as well as being the death of both his parents, Zod grew up and became one of Krypton's most influential military leaders. However, Zod, Non, and Faora (sometimes called Ursa) were eventually imprisoned in the Phantom Zone for rebelling against the Science Council. Twenty-seven years after his planet's destruction, however, Zod escaped the Phantom Zone and attacked the Justice League of America in his confused state on Earth. After later freeing Faora from the Zone as well, they eventually came into conflict with Superman and Wonder Woman, who managed to get them back into the Phantom Zone through desperate means.

Over the years, Zod and Ursa found a place within the Zone that allowed their corporeal bodies to exist and they had a son named Lor-Zod. Seeking a means of escape for his son, Zod found an area of the Phantom Zone that connected to the real world called the Black Vault. However, upon entering it, he was warped both physically and mentally and driven insane. Upon being released from the Black Vault by the Suicide Squad, a crazed Zod almost killed the entire team before being subdued by magic, red sun radiation, and kryptonite. With a kryptonite bomb placed in his brain, Zod worked one mission for Amanda Waller and the Suicide Squad before cutting the bomb out of his own brain with his heat vision and defeating the Squad again with his brain exposed.

After temporarily joining the Superman Revenge Squad in their vengeful bout against Superman, Zod eventually stole Superman's Phantom Zone Projector and released Ursa and Lor-Zod from imprisonment. Together, they traveled to a planet called Jekuul that orbited two yellow suns. There, they became rulers of the resident alien species and began rebuilding Krypton, though with resistance from the Green Lantern Corps.

General Zod was created by Robert Bernstein and George Papp and first appeared in *Adventure Comics* #283 in 1961.

## Powers and Stats

**Key: Rebirth**

**Tier: 4-B**

**Name:** Dru-Zod

**Epithets:** General Zod

**Origin:** DC Comics

**Gender:** Male

**Age:** 50's

**Race:** Kryptonian

**Classification:** Supervillain / General of the Kryptonian Military Guild

**Powers and Abilities:** Stellar Radiation Absorption, Superhuman Physical Characteristics, Flight, Heat Vision, Freeze Breath, Super Breath, Enhanced Senses, Healing Factor, Telepathy

**Attack Potency:** **Solar System level+** (Power scaling to Green Lantern)

**Speed:** **Supremely FTL+** (87.6 quadrillion c. Power scaling to Green Lantern)

**Durability:** **Solar System level+** (Power scaling to Green Lantern)

**Lifting Strength:** **Stellar**

**Range:** Standard melee range normally, Interplanetary with Heat Vision

**Stamina:** **Virtually Inexhaustible** (while under yellow stellar radiation)

**Mental Capacity:** **Educated / Advanced Telepath**

**Fighting Experience:** **Class B-4** (Klurkor, Horu-Kanu, Torquasm Rao, Torquasm Vo / 40+ years)

**Standard Equipment:** Kryptonian Battle Armor

**Weaknesses:** Kryptonite (various kinds), Red Stellar Radiation, Magic, Other Kryptonians

## Skills and Abilities

### **Powers**

**Kryptonian Physiology:** Zod's cellular structure is much denser, more resilient, and biologically more effective than human tissue. However, he does not possess superhuman strength if his cellular structure is not charged with yellow solar energy. Without such charging, his physical capabilities are identical to a human of his height and weight who engages in regular physical activity. As an alien, he possesses several organs whose functions are not yet disclosed or understood, but are believed to be part of or the source of his bio-matrix force field and reclamation aura. Zod's body also stores energy actively within his bio-cellular matrix as an energy pattern that is linked to his body's electromagnetic field.

* **Solar Radiation Absorption:** As a Kryptonian, Zod's cells function like a super battery, hyper-metabolizing specific wavelengths of radiation as fuel to enable living functions and/or superhuman abilities. Different wavelengths of radiation have different effects on Zod's physiology and well-being, but his cells can only absorb and utilize radiation from stars. Radiation from a red sun enables his body to function identically to a peak human male of his home planet. A yellow star's solar radiation, however, acts as fuel to enable all of his powers. His cellular structure has the ability to absorb and hyper-metabolize an unlimited amount of yellow sunlight, but due to his being only temporarily released from places like the Phantom Zone, Zod rarely ever becomes as powerful as Superman. This is due to the fact that Superman has lived under a yellow sun since his childhood, absorbing more of its radiation over time, and Zod has only lived under it for days at a time. However, recently, Zod has taken to living in a star system with two yellow suns with his wife Ursa and son Lor-Zod. According to the Green Lantern Corp, this has allowed him to absorb enough energy to become as powerful as Superman. As a side note, as a Kryptonian, the radiation of a blue star increases his known abilities to an even higher level, enabling him additional abilities as well.

* **Superhuman Durability:** Zod is impervious to almost all forms of harm and physical ailments. This includes toxins, disease, blunt force trauma, extreme pressures, and extremely high temperatures. He has brushed off bullets, bombs, nuclear detonations, blows from Green Lanterns and Superman. His invulnerability is enough that it grants him the ability to survive in any environment without aid, including underwater, in the vacuum of space, and within the cores of planets and stars. Partially, this invincibility is due to his Kryptonian physiology, which provides him a much denser molecular structure than any normal human while under a yellow sun. But also, Zod's body produces a very thin bio-electric force field around his entire body. This force field protects him from most damage. Zod's innards are composed of the same super dense and nigh invincible molecules that make up his skin.

* **Superhuman Endurance:** While under a yellow sun, Zod's energy reserves are nigh-infinite. Only by exerting extreme amounts of effort will he drain his solar power faster than it can replenish itself.
	+ **Self-Sustenance:** Zod's cells act as millions of tiny solar batteries. So long as they are charged, Zod does not need to eat, drink, or sleep and can survive in the most inhospitable of environment unaided.
	+ **Healing Factor:** In the event that Zod is injured, he has the ability to heal almost instantaneously from any wound, provided the process is not impeded by some outside factor (Kryptonite, Red Solar Radiation, etc.) This "healing factor" is supplemented by his stores of solar energy and is completely involuntary. Much like a human’s immune system and healing rate, Zod cannot choose when he heals and when he doesn’t, though his body will instinctively use whatever little solar power it has to keep him alive.

* **Superhuman Strength:** Zod has shown that he is easily capable of competing against beings like Mongul, Green Lantern, and Superman in terms of sheer strength. His striking force has been shown powerful enough to send Mongul into space. Zod restraining Superman is arguably his strongest feat, as the Man of Steel has moved objects dwarfing the size of the Earth like the Mageddon Machine and Brainiac's ship, his strength sometimes appearing to be infinite, as he’s also lifted a Book of Infinite Pages.

* **Superhuman Speed:** Zod is capable of moving, reacting, running, and flying at speeds far exceeding light. Casually, Zod can break the light barrier and travel to other galaxies with ease. His speed is nigh instantaneous, as he is able to increase his perception and movement speed within fractions of a second. His brain also reacts and perceives things at the attosecond. He has been shown fighting multiple Green Lanterns at once, a heavily empowered Hal Jordan, and even Superman to a standstill in speed alone.

* **Flight:** Zod's ability to fly comes from his being from a planet with a much higher gravity than that of Earth’s and due to his body’s ability to produce its own gravitons while empowered by a yellow sun. This allows Zod to produce his own personalized flight field and move himself through the air very quickly and with perfect control. He has been shown casually flying upside down, backwards, and even under extremely heavy gravitational forces such as black holes. Superman is also at his fastest whenever he is flying, being capable of traveling several quadrillions of times the speed of light while in space.

* **Superhuman Senses:**
	+ **Super Smell:** As a Kryptonian, Zod's sense of smell should increase proportionately to Superman's under a yellow sun. Superman has demonstrated that his olfactory senses are just as acute as any other sense he possess, being able to discern odors that would be odorless to normal human beings. He’s also demonstrated the ability to identify smells clear across the planet.
	+ **Super Hearing:** As a Kryptonian, Zod's sense of hearing should increase proportionately to Superman's under a yellow sun. Superman has incredible hearing, allowing him to detect sounds and frequencies from across the globe. He has shown enough control to block out ambient noise to focus on a specific source and can even hear every heartbeat and every transmitted signal on the entire planet. He can detect an individual by their heartbeat alone and can tell when someone’s lying based on the irregularities of that heartbeat. Superman can even ignore the laws of a vacuum and hear a cry for help while in space, even billions of miles away from the Earth.
	+ **Super Vision:** More commonly known as his X-Ray Vision, Zod possesses the ability to see far more than just the visible light spectrum. By focusing the muscles in his eyes, he can choose to perceive the entire electromagnetic spectrum: radio waves, microwaves, infrared radiation, ultraviolet light, gamma rays, and x-rays.
	+ **Telescopic/Microscopic Vision:** He also possesses Telescopic Vision and Microscopic Vision, the former allowing him to see clearly across vast distances (even to other galaxies) and the latter allowing him to see at the sub-atomic level. He can presumably use both in battle to deduce his enemy’s weaknesses and exploit them.

* **Super Scream:** Zod can project devastating frequencies from his vocal cords, the upper limit of which has never been shown. However, Zod was able to deafen a blind Superman who was using his super hearing to compensate for his lack of sight. This exploitation of Superman's weakened state demonstrates Zod's merciless tactics in battle.

* **Super Breath:** Like Superman, Zod can create hurricane force winds by expelling air from his lungs. He can use this in battle to blow opponents down, redirect attacks, or even cause actual destruction.
	+ **Freeze Breath:** Also known as Arctic Breath, Zod can chill the air leaving his lungs in order to freeze a target in place. He regularly employs this in combat to freeze and cripple opponents. When Zod takes air into his lungs, they compress the incoming gas. When this gas expands upon exhalation, in a fashion analogous to the operation of an air conditioner's compressor, the sudden increase in volume of the gas causes its temperature to drop proportionally to the size of this expansion. Zod has frozen the limbs of his opponents in battle and then broken them off immediately afterward.

* **Heat Vision:** Zod has the ability to project twin beams of intense heat onto a target by consciously activating the solar energy behind his eyes. Visually, the power is typically depicted as two beams of red light being fired from his eyes, though the beams can be made invisible to allow Zod to work undetected. The effective range of Zod's heat vision is interplanetary. He can widen these beams to dozens or even thousands of miles in width. He has instantly incinerated human beings, even while in a heavily weakened state. He has harmed Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Green Lanterns, and even other supervillains with this power. However, heat vision is the power that drains Zod of his solar energy reserves the fastest, though it only really shows when he amps it up to planetary levels.

### **Techniques:**

**Klurkor:** Essentially the Kryptonian equivalent to Karate, it was the most prevalent martial art taught on Krypton, especially in Kandor. Being raised in the Military Guild and becoming a general of entire armies, Zod is a master of the style and has used it in the past to defeat physically superior opponents like Superman by outmatching their skill.

**Horu-Kanu:** A martial arts style dedicated to chaotic and unpredictable attacks. Using various hand strikes, the style is known by both Zod and Faora (or Ursa) and used to overwhelm opponents with sheer attack ferocity.

**Torquasm Vo:** A Kryptonian martial arts discipline very similar to Yoga or some other meditative art. The martial art is a means of focusing one’s mental discipline to nullify mental attacks such as forced telepathy and mind control, making both useless against the user. Zod has shown that he is completely immune to mental attack through this discipline. Mastered, one can also use the fighting style to manipulate someone else's mind and project illusions into their psyche, but Zod has never shown mastery over this aspect of the form.

**Torquasm Rao:** A Kryptonian martial art that acts as an extension to Torquasm Vo. It allows the user to tap into their instincts and enter the theta state of being, allowing his body to perfectly react to and defend against attacks instinctively while they are free to mentally attack their opponent or roam the psychic plane. It is unknown whether Zod has mastered this martial art.

### **Equipment**

**Kryptonian Armor:** Fashioned by the House of Zod, Zod's Kryptonian Armor is a symbol of his lost homeworld. As durable as he is, the armor acts as a second layer of impenetrable defense under his bio-electric aura and over his super dense molecular structure. The armor has been stated to be just as durable as Kryptonians themselves under a yellow sun and the cape of the armor has the same impenetrable textile structure as any other part of the suit.

### **Weaknesses**

**Kryptonite:** Kryptonite is a radioactive piece of Zod's homeworld of Krypton. After his planet exploded, the debris from its destruction passed through several different nebulae, becoming radioactive and harmful to Kryptonians in various ways.

* **Green Kryptonite** is lethal to a Kryptonian’s physiology. The radiation it gives off gradually weakens Kryptonians and causes them excruciating physical pain. Superman has likened it to every cell in his body being on fire.
* **Red Kryptonite** is an anomaly of the Kryptonite family, as it has caused various ill-effects over the years. However, its effects have generally been suggested to be random depending on the universe it resides in. However, most commonly, it causes some kind of mental change in Kryptonians, from a shift in personality to hallucinatory effects of various kind.
* **Blue Kryptonite** is another that has been changed from writer to writer. Recently, it has been shown to rob Kryptonians of their powers for as long as they are in contact with it. It also hurts Bizarro forms of Kryptonians just like Green Kryptonite hurts normal Kryptonians.
* **Silver Kryptonite** has been shown to cause Kryptonians to become overly paranoid and have hallucinations of their worst fears and nightmares.
* **Black Kryptonite** splits a Kryptonian's good identity from their evil identity until they can merge back together as one. Whichever side wins the battle between them is the one who claims full control over the body.
* **Gold Kryptonite** will rob any Kryptonian of their powers permanently, only able to regain them through still unspecified means.

**Lead:** Zod cannot use his X-Ray Vision to see through lead.

**Magic:** Magic is a force that bypasses the bio-electric force field around a Kryptonian's skin to hit their epidermis directly. However, Zod's dense molecular structure is still durable enough to shrug off magical attacks in the past.

**Red Solar Radiation:** While a yellow sun imbues a Kryptonian with their abilities, red solar radiation will gradually take them away. This is why Kryptonians living on Krypton didn’t have superhuman abilities. Because their sun, Rao, was a red giant star. However, red solar radiation does not immediately drain a Kryptonian of their power. Instead, it only gradually takes them away over time. In Infinite Crisis, three Supermans fly through Rao while surrounded by Kryptonite before crash landing on a deserted planet and continuing their battle. Zod and Superman have also fought many beings who casually wield red solar radiation in their arsenal. To calculate how much red solar radiation would weaken a Kryptonian by would be to measure the wavelengths of each star. A main sequence yellow star has an effective temperature of approximately 6,000 K while a red star has anywhere between 2,400 - 3700 K, around half a yellow sun. Their luminosity is about the same ratio, with a main sequence yellow star having a maximum of 1.5 L and a red star having a maximum of 0.8 L. Thus, it can be theorized that a red sun would weaken a Kryptonian proportionately to the amount of time a yellow sun strengthens them.

**Kryptonians:** Zod's final weakness is to other Kryptonians. As shown throughout the comics, Kryptonians have a much easier time dealing damage to one another than someone like Darkseid does to Superman. When two Kryptonians fight, they begin to bleed from blows much faster due to a negation flaw in their inherent genetic structures. As stated previously, Kryptonians achieve a good portion of their invulnerability due to a bio-electric field surrounding their bodies. However, when two Kryptonians fight, their fields negate one another and allow their attacks to pass right through to the skin itself. This is also the primary reason Superman and Doomsday were able to kill one another. Technically a Kryptonian, Doomsday’s attacks and bone protrusions were capable of tearing right past Superman’s bio-electric force field and digging into his dense molecular structure.

## Gallery

Post-CrisisZod and Ursa fighting Superman and Wonder WomanZod and the Suicide SquadZod defeating the Suicide SquadZod fighting Hal JordanZod on his throne on JekuulZod fighting the Green Lantern CorpsZod defeating Hal Jordan