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Cron, also known as Father Nature, is the main antagonist of "Father Nature's Folly!", the first story of Superman volume 1 #358, which was published in 1981. He is an extragalactic life-seeding Precambrian alien with a vast array of powers, whose wife, Nutra, seeded all life on Earth. However, Cron's ideal life was different, and he sough to destroy Earth's biosphere in order to rebuild it in his image. For most of the story, Cron takes the appearance of a tall, four-fingered, orange-skinned, yellow-haired humanoid in green armor, although his true form is a purple gas cloud with electricity crackling through it. His true name has no true English translation, with "Cron" being the closest possible pronunciation.
On the issue's cover, Cron is depicted with five fingers on his hands.
Several billion years ago, in an unknown galaxy, Cron married a female member of his species, known as Nutra. Together, the two traveled galaxies to seed life, but Cron disliked Nutra's methods and goals of making sapient lifeforms. Eventually, at least 4 billion years ago, they found a forming Earth, and Nutra decided to seed life on the planet, planting a device known as a Power Prong to guide the formation of chemicals and compounds to create life, aiming to make sapient lifeforms. Cron disapproved of Nutra's goals, coming to rather violent disagreements with her, but allowed life on Earth to evolve until 1981 AD, by which time Nutra and Cron appeared to have separated. With Nutra absent from Earth, Cron traveled to the planet to reshape it his way, bringing his own Power Prong, but knew that he first needed to locate and remove Nutra's Power Prong, as the device only works if it is the only one on the planet.
Father Nature's Folly![]
Landing on the Rocky Mountains in humanoid form and keeping his Power Prong in orbit, Cron was soon encountered by Superman, a Kryptonian residing on Earth as a superhero. Cron used his molecular reconstruction powers to turn a group of trees into lifeforms comprised of extragalactic compounds, likely part of his image of what he wanted to do with Earth, before seeing Superman and scanning his mind, learning English and finding that "Cron" was the closest possible translation of his name. Introducing himself, Cron declared that he had not come to ravage, only reshape the planet's environment into something that he believed had more potential for the future. Cron then turned the air around the Kryptonian into argon and methane, which forced Superman to create a vortex via his flight to send the gases into space before they harmed any Earth life. Cron took advantage of the distraction to vanish, but not before implanting a subconscious image of a Power Prong into Superman's brain, aiming to have the Kryptonian find it for him. Under Cron's influence, Superman scoured the Earth for the Power Prong, eventually finding it somewhere in South America due to the radiation emitting from the Prong, which was disguised as a tree.
Superman assumed the Power Prong was Cron's energy source, but when he tried to attack it, he learned of Cron and Nutra's origin and relation to Earth via a telepathic beam shot from the device. Cron then arrived, now explicitly stating that he wished to alter Earth's biosphere to his liking, disregarding the fact that all native life would be killed in the process, something Superman recognized. He then reverted to his true gaseous form, and began attacking Nutra's Power Prong with energy beams to depower its forcefield and remove it, and Superman was unable to stop him, finding that Cron and his Power Prong were protected by a forcefield he couldn't breach. Quickly devising a plan, and seeing how Cron and Nutra's disagreement appeared to be similar to parents arguing how to raise a child, Superman quickly flew back to the Fortress of Solitude and retrieved a Rigellian Plasmo-bomb, a device capable of instantly destroying a planet. Confronting Cron again, Superman revealed the bomb and ordered him to stop, or else he would push the detonator. Cron, sensing the truth in Superman's mind, ceased his hostilities, deciding that an Earth Nutra made was better than no Earth at all, and left the planet with his Power Prong, leaving Nutra's intact. However, in actuality, the filament that would allow the bomb to detonate had been removed by Superman long ago, as all he said was that he would push the detonator, not that the bomb would actually detonate. It is unknown what became of Cron afterwards, but he never menaced Earth again, and his encounter with Superman was later recounted to a group of schoolchildren by Superman's civilian identity, Clark Kent.
