Now that Krypto the Super Dog has finally appeared in James Gunn’s 2025 Superman, we have finally recognized a character older than me in the DC Cinematic Universe. Krypto sort of joins Cosmo the Space Dog from the Marvel Cinematic Universe as fallout from the Space Race.
I used to think that Krypto – a dog sent into space by Jor-el to test out the satellite he intended to use to save the infant Kal-el – was pretty clearly modeled on Laika, the dog the Soviet Union sent into orbit as a test of the reactions of living things to spaceflight. (And whose exploits they showed to us as kids. I had a child’s book on space flight that showed her, ensconced in her claustrophobic capsule. They didn’t mention that she died in orbit, and was never meant to return to earth.)
But Krypto actually beat Laika into orbit. Krypto appeared in 1955, while Laika went up in 1957. But the Russians had already sent up several dogs into sub-orbital flights for testing in 1951. They also sent up mice. Krypto turned out to be incredibly popular, and went on to a long career in DC comics, only relatively recently breaking out into animated series and movies before a live action/CGI Krypto finally showed up in a “real” movie.
Cosmo the Space Dog is a Marvel comics creation that pretty clearly is based on Laika, but who didn’t appear in comics until 2008, and who has thus far been in all three Guardians of the Galaxy movies and the Holiday Special, as well as the series “What If…”
It makes you wonder if other Space Race-inspired super-pets will show up onscreen. The US space program used apes (going back to sub-orbital flights in 1948 through 1952, then 1958-1961 before Ham was shot into orbit in 1961. Beppo the Space Monkey (he’s got a tail, so he’s no ape) stowed away aboard Kal-el’s satellite in a story first told in 1959, so he beat Ham into orbit. The same year gave us a super-powered ape from an American space launch, with Titano the Super-Ape, who started out as a chimpanzee who gets irradiated by meteors and grows to King Kong size, with Kryptonite vision. Titano showed up multiple times later, but they pruned his ears so he ended up looking more like a gorilla than a chimp in subsequent appearances.
Marvel gave us Ivan Kragoff, the Red Ghost, and his Super-Apes Mikhlo, Igor, and Peotr in 1963. They got their powers from exposure to Cosmic Rays , as the Fantastic Four did, while en route to the moon.
