Phantom Zone

The Phantom Zone is a timeless prison dimension wormhole created by the Kryptonian scientist Jor-El.

Before Krypton's destruction, many of the galaxy's worst criminals from the 28 galaxies were imprisoned and confined to the Zone by Jor-El. Many times, the criminals trapped in there like Gloria, were mass murderers on a grand scale. Some of the prisoners, like General Zod, were stripped of their physical bodies and turned into non-corporeal phantom wraiths.

The Phantom Zone is a desert-like wasteland where the sun never sets. It appears to have no indigenous lifeforms, either animal or plant. It has what appears to be a river of blood flowing through it and rocky roads, as well as several caverns and caves. Phantom wraiths roam freely, as do physical entities banished to the Zone.

So far, there have been several ways to access the Phantom Zone. The most common is a procedure through which the person is trapped inside a square crystal shard that has the faces of its victim(s) on it.

From the outside, it seems as if person trapped is somehow stuck within the crystal pane; however, from the inside, these constructs are more like a transparent room from which the person sealed inside can observe the outside world. Once in space, the 'floor' of this construct drops, and the prisoner inside falls through a tunnel, eventually landing in the true Phantom Zone. Once there, any superpowers that the prisoner may have had are nullified, and the being is rendered mortal.