Alura

Alura is a leading member of the Science Council within the Bottle City of Kandor and the mother of Kara Zor-El.

Devoted to the memory of Krypton and their way of life, Alura diligently tends to keeping the lives of her fellow refugees running as smooth as possible while loyally adhering to Krypton's past traditions and customs.

Background
Alura In-Zee was born on the planet Krypton. As she grew, she became part of the Science Guild and for many years was a perfect scientist, learning to forgo all emotions as simple primitive instincts and to observe the world in a pure mathematical and physical fashion. She could not, however, escape falling in love with a young artist called Zor-El. Zor-El taught her to watch the world as more than just mathematical equations and to see the beauty in things. They soon married and were blessed with a daughter: Kara Zor-El.

One day, in his never ending voyage for more knowledge to assimilate, the Coluan known as Brainiac arrived to plunder the planet Krypton of its collective knowledge. He used his advanced science to shrink and bottle the entire city of Kandor; adding the Kryptonian metropolis as another specimen to his vast collection of Bottle Cities. Following the taking of Kandor, the people of Krypton ignored the warnings of Jor-El that the planet was unstable and facing destruction. Jor-El's warnings were dismissed by almost all of Krypton, however, Zor-El believed his brother and set into motion his own plans for survival. Zor-El and Alura experimented on one of the Brainiac robots destroyed during the abduction of Kandor and managed to deconstruct Brainiac's force field technology sufficiently enough to create a protective dome over their home, Argo City. Unfortunately, Alura and Zor-El did not have time enough to master this technology enough to protect all of Krypton and when Krypton exploded, only Argo City was protected from the blast and remained intact; floating aimlessly in space for many months.

Alura and her husband began work on an evacuation plan to lead the remaining Kryptonians to Earth where they would be reunited with their nephew, Kal-El. Before this plan could be enacted, however, Brainiac had sensed his technology was being used and discovered the Kryptonian refugees. Knowing that Brainiac would not spare their city, Zor-El and Alura placed their daughter in the only serviceable escape rocket and sent her to Earth. As Kara escaped, Brainiac assimilated Argo City and any additional Kryptonians and information that contained knowledge that had not been learned from Kandor. Those Kryptonians who Brainiac viewed as "redundant" were slaughtered while Zor-El and Alura were transferred to the Bottled City of Kandor and have remained there as prisoners of Brainiac for many years.

Trivia

 * Alura first appeared in the Superman/Batman #9 (June, 2004).
 * Alura used her father's full name (In-Ze) as her last name due to Kryptonian culture dictating that females use their father's full name as their last names before marriage; after which they would simply be referred to by their first name.
 * At first impression Alura is thought to be a cold and uncaring person who has always had some extremist views, while deep down she is actually quite a caring person who has a strong sense of responsibility towards her family, her guild and her people. Her husband, Zor-El, always serves as her voice of love, emotional reason and compassion.