Bottle City of Kandor

Q: What does the Bottle City of Kandor mean to you? -- @SpaceCrook A: Never before in the history of this column has there been a question that made me feel like I was about to write an essay for a fifth-grade civics lesson. Level with me here, Crook: If I do really well on this week's column, is there a chance I could win a competition and get to meet the Superman Emergency Squad? Even if I don't have the chance to get a selfie with Van-Zee, though, Kandor makes for a pretty interesting topic. It's one of the only elements of superhero comics I can think of that's interesting and distracting, a source of fun adventure and a constant reminder of failure, a plot point that a universe had to get rid of, and that everyone seemed to want to bring back as soon as they could, all in equal measure. In other words, well, it's complicated.