Superboy Comics - By Michael E. Grost

Classic Comic Books Home Page

Superboy

25 (April-May 1953) The Super-Artist of Smallville
36 (October 1954) The Man Who Knew Superboy's Identity
45 (December 1955) The Secret of the Super Charades
49 (June 1956) The Loneliest Boy in Town; Lana Lang's Secret Identity; Metallo of Krypton
51 (September 1956) The Secret Lives of Superboy
54 (January 1957) The Sixth Clark Kent
55 (March 1957) The Mystery of the Space Trophies
57 (June 1957) The Strong Boys of Smallville; One-Man Baseball Team
58 (July 1957) The 100 New Feats of Superboy
60 (October 1957) The Game of Kriss-Kross Krypton; The Super-Tales of Lana Lang
63 (March 1958) Clark Kent, Cub Reporter
65 (June 1958) The Super-Weakling From Space; The Amazing Adventures of Krypto Mouse
67 (September 1958) The Three Secret Identities of Superboy
69 (December 1958) The Racer in the Leaden Mask; The Indestructible Robot
70 (January 1959) The Super-Brat
71 (March 1959) Bad Boy Clark Kent
72 (April 1959) The Day Superboy Was a Coward
73 (June 1959) Superbaby in Scotland Yard
75 (September 1959) Superboy's First Day at School; How Krypto Made History
76 (October 1959) The Super-Monkey From Krypton
77 (December 1959) The Space Adventures of Krypto; Superboy's Best Friend
78 (January 1960) Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister; The Ghost of Jor-El
79 (March 1960) Life on Krypton
80 (April 1960) The Shyest Boy in Town
81 (June 1960) The Millionaire Pupil
83 (September 1960) The Invasion of Krypton
84 (October 1960) The Rainbow Raider
85 (December 1960) The Mystery of Mighty Boy; Superboy's Lost Friend
86 (January 1961) The Boy Who Betrayed Clark Kent; The Army of Living Kryptonite Men
87 (March 1961) The Scarlet Jungle of Krypton
89 (June 1961) Superboy's Big Brother; The Secret of Mon-El; The Super-Cop of Smallville
90 (July 1961) Pete Ross' Super-Secret
91 (September 1961) The Super-Hungry Super-Heroes
94 (January 1962) The Superboy Revenge Squad
95 (March 1962) The Super-Family From Krypton (3 part story)
96 (April 1962) The New Boy of Steel; The Enemy Superboy
97 (June 1962) The Super-Mischief of Superbaby; The Secret Life of Krypto
98 (July 1962) The Boy With Ultra-Powers
100 (October 1962) The Day Pete Ross Became a Robot
101 (December 1962) The Valhalla of Super-Champions
102 (January 1963) The Secret of Krypton's Scarlet Jungle
105 (June 1963) The Simpleton of Steel
106 (July 1963) The Great Superboy Hoax; The Ordeal of Pete Ross; The Lair of Brainiac
112 (April 1964) The Boy Who Replaced Clark Kent; Superbaby's Super-Pranks
113 (June 1964) The Superboy of 800 Years Ago
116 (October 1964) Superboy, King of the Wolf-Pack; The False Superboy of Smallville
117 (December 1964) Secret of Camp Storm King; Krypto's Superdog Pal; Superboy and the 5 Legion Traitors
118 (January 1965) The Boy Who Unmasked Superboy
119 (March 1965) Superbaby's First Time-Trip; The Millionaire of Smallville; The Duel of the Superboys
120 (April 1965) The Fate of the Future Superman; The Invulnerable Imp
121 (June 1965) Clark Kent's Single Identity
122 (July 1965) Clark Kent's Butler; The Fugitive Krypto
123 (September 1965) When Krypto Was Sold; The Curse of the Superboy Mummy
124 (October 1965) The Insect Queen of Smallville; Superbaby's First Fight; The Toughest Kid in Smallville

Adventure

110 (November 1946) The Farmer Takes it Easy
113 (February 1947) The 33rd Christmas
116 (May 1947) Superboy, Toy-Tester
118 (July 1947) The Quiz Biz Broadcast
120 (September 1947) Perry White, Cub Reporter
123 (December 1947) A Lesson for a Bully
126 (March 1948) Superboy: Crime-Fighting Poet
179 (August 1952) The World's Wackiest Inventions
181 (October 1952) A Mask for a Hero
206 (November 1954) The Impossible Creatures
210 (March 1955) The Super-Dog from Krypton
211 (April 1955) Superboy's Most Amazing Dream
212 (May 1955) Superboy's Robot Twin
214 (July 1955) The Dog of Steel
215 (August 1955) The Super-Hobby of Superboy
216 (September 1955) The Wizard City
221 (February 1956) The Babe of Steel
228 (September 1956) Clark Kent's Bodyguard
229 (October 1956) The End of the Kent Family
230 (November 1956) The Secret of the Flying Horse
231 (December 1956) The Super-Feats of Superbaby
232 (January 1957) The House Where Superboy Was Born
233 (February 1957) Joe Smith, Man of Steel
235 (April 1957) The Confession of Superboy
239 (August 1957) The Super-Tricks of the Dog of Steel
245 (February 1958) The Mystery of Monster X
246 (March 1958) The Girl Who Trapped Superboy
247 (April 1958) The Legion of Super-Heroes
251 (August 1958) Superboy's Last Day
252 (September 1958) The Super-Sentry of Smallville
257 (February 1959) The First Two Supermen
259 (April 1959) The Blind Boy of Steel
262 (July 1959) The Colossal Superdog
265 (October 1959) The First Superman Robot
268 (January 1960) The Week That Clark Kent Lost His Memory
270 (March 1960) The Stolen Identities
272 (May 1960) The Super Star of Hollywood
275 (August 1960) The Origin of the Superman - Batman Team; Champion of the World (CG)
276 (September 1960) The Robinson Crusoe of Space; The Congorilla of Space (CG)
280 (January 1961) Superboy and the Mermaid From Atlantis
285 (June 1961) Gravity Girl of Smallville
286 (July 1961) Bizarro, Private Detective
288 (September 1961) Bizarro's Secret Identity
289 (October 1961) Bizarro's Amazing Buddies
290 (November 1961) The Invasion of the Bizarro World
291 (December 1961) Superboy's Romance with Cleopatra; The Bizarro Perfect Crimes
292 (January 1962) Bizarro Creates a Monster
294 (March 1962) Dial M for Monster; The Halloween Pranks of the Bizarro Supermen
295 (April 1962) The Duel of the Superboys
296 (May 1962) Benjamin Franklin's Super-Reporter; The Case of the Super-Loony Lawyer
297 (June 1962) Lana Lang, Superboy's Sister
298 (July 1962) The Fat Boy of Steel; Bizarro Goes Sane
299 (August 1962) The Unwanted Superbaby; Car 45, Get Lost!
300 (September 1962) The Super-Planet of Clark Kent and Lana Lang
301 (October 1962) Lex Luthor and Clark Kent, Cell-Mates
305 (March 1963) Clark Kent, He-Man
307 (May 1963) The Confession of Superboy
311 (August 1963) Smallville's War against Superboy
313 (October 1963) Father's Day on Planet Krypton
314 (November 1963) My Son, the Boy of Steel
315 (December 1963) The Titanic Boy of Steel

These best stories of the comic books are preceded by their issue number. They were edited by Mort Weisinger.

This article only discusses Superboy stories in Adventure. Such heroes as Green Arrow and Aquaman have their own articles. Stories about The Legion of Super-Heroes are discussed in that article. Stories in other series are marked: Congorilla (CG)

Superboy

The Super-Artist of Smallville (1953). Art: Curt Swan. This is my favorite of the early Superboy tales, although I have only read a few so far. In it, Superboy aids the career of a struggling middle-aged artist who teaches at Smallville High. The artist, Andrew Merton, somehow looks as if he were modeled after a real person. Could Merton be a tribute to a real artist who drew for the comics? The story shows a real feel for art.

The early Superboy stories of 1952 and 1953 show some persistent themes of the Superboy comics. "One Dozen Superboys" (#21, 1952) shows Superboy making it appear that another character has super-powers. So does "Lana Lang, Magician", in the same issue. "The Super Superboy" (#23, 1952) has Clark trying to protect his secret identity after it has been exposed to Lana Lang, trying to come up with a convincing alternate explanation of what she saw. In this case, he does a pretty good job. This sort of plot will come up in 1960's Lois Lane classics in which she gets super-powers and discovers Superman's secret identity, such as "Lois Lane's X-Ray Vision" and "The Invisible Lois Lane". "The Super-Tot of Smallville" (#26, 1953) seems to be the first Superbaby story. In it, as in later tales, there is much concern that Superbaby will inadvertently give away his secret identity. None of these stories are great tales, but they make not bad reading. They are consistently likable and good natured. There are many scenes in them of Superboy flying and carrying large objects; the aerial perspectives often make for exciting art work. Action scenes and super-stunts tend to alternate with scenes that move forward the plot. This is the old pulp magazine formula, from which the Superman writers emerged: first some plot, then some action, then some plot... In the later stories of the 1960's, the scenes of Superman using his powers are much better integrated into the flow of the story, forming one seamless, organic whole.

The Sixth Clark Kent (1957). Writer: ?. When a millionaire leaves his money to "Clark Kent" in gratitude for having saved his life, lawyers and Superboy find various people named Clark Kent from all over the country. This is one of the sweetest and most appealing early Superboy stories. It is unusual in that it has almost no science fiction elements. Instead, its manages to evoke a whole world of 1930's American life. The writers have tried to make the various Clark Kents as different from each other as possible. The story has the "series of episodes" construction familiar in the Superboy family, with the discovery of each Clark Kent forming a separate episode. The story has the mystery aspect also often present in the Superman family, with Superboy having to do detective work to track down the various Clark Kents, and to determine if they could be the Clark who once saved the millionaire's life.

The Superman family always tried to present as many different features of modern life as possible. They did not seem to be oriented to just one type of character, unlike so much modern entertainment. Instead, they tried to take a broad look at different kinds of people. The writers always seemed to be on the lookout for anybody whose interesting life could add some color and complexity to their plots.

The Mystery of the Space Trophies (1957). Writer: Otto Binder. Dangerous space trophies from another world wind up on sale in a Smallville gift shop. This story relates to Binder's theme of First Contact: these alien artifacts are humanity's first encounter with another planet's culture. The story also demonstrates another aspect of such Binder tales: the difficulty one culture has in understanding another during First Contact: here the alien artifacts are full of surprises.

Binder also works mystery and crime elements into this hard-to-classify tale. Like many of his transformation stories, this one is full of numerous episodes, each one of which integrates the central plot into some new and interesting feature of daily life.

Lana Lang's Secret Identities

The Girl of Steel (Adventure #189, June 1953). Based on a cover by Win Mortimer. Lana Lang gets super-powers from a belt Prof. Lang obtains on a scientific expedition, becoming the masked super-heroine Sky-Girl. She also keeps her identity as Lana Lang secret.

Lana Lang's Secret Identity (1956). In this role-reversal story, Lana Lang innocently acquires a secret identity of her own, as part of a contest. Lana has no super-powers here; she is merely trying to keep her participation in a cooking contest secret. The story does enable comic role reversals, with Clark trying to penetrate Lana's identity, just as she has so often tried with him.

The focus on Lana Lang's secret id relates this story to "The Girl of Steel" (1953). This tale's good spirits and ingenious plot link it to a number of early, ingenious stories about secret identities: see the article on Lois Lane for a discussion.

Gravity Girl of Smallville (1961). In this story, Lana Lang herself gets superpowers. She behaves with complete dignity and idealism in the story, and acquits herself really well. The story also features many ingenious plot twists. Everything she does to preserve her secret identity unconsciously imitates the behavior and dilemmas of Superboy, with delightful results. Lana and Superboy serve as doubles in this story, with many role reversals switching their conventional behaviors.

As is pointed out in "DarkMark's Comics Indexing Domain", this story is a re-make of "The Girl of Steel" (1953). Lana is re-dubbed Gravity Girl here.

The Game Stories

The Impossible Creatures (1954). Writer: Otto Binder. Prof. Lang is ridiculed as a scientific fraud, when he unearths the fossils of some very strange creatures. This science fiction tale shows Binder's interest in educating his young readers in science. It presents, in a vivid and entertaining way, a complete course in paleontology, showing how scientists excavate and restore fossil skeletons of animals. It also contains a chart, showing different geological strata, and the time periods that produce them. It recalls in its approach the many educational stories Binder wrote about the Solar System for the sf comic books.

This story makes a pair with Binder's "The Super-Hobby of Superboy" (1955). Both involve their hero is a scientific pursuit: paleontology here, geology and rock collecting in "The Super-Hobby of Superboy". Both start out on Earth, then in their second half, show Superboy exploring other worlds of the universe in a quest for further information. Superboy's ability to travel easily from planet to planet is fully exploited by Binder to construct these tales.

This tale involves an astronomical mystery, in which Superboy searches for a planet with certain properties. Such Cosmic mysteries were sometimes created by Binder for his Mystery in Space tales. Binder liked to write such stories, in which the characters search for some planet or geographical feature through a huge astronomical region.

The planet with an advanced civilization which Superboy visits anticipates the world in Binder's "The Mystery of Mighty Boy" (1960). Both planets contain huge, high tech libraries, which Superboy uses to master the language and customs of the planet. The library here is based on microfilm. This was the last word in high tech in 1954, but today it has largely been superseded by computerized media, such as the Internet. How times change!

The Super-Hobby of Superboy (1955). Writer: Otto Binder. Like other boys, Superboy develops a hobby: collecting rare mineral specimens from all over the universe. Each of the minerals in the collection has its own special property. These rather resemble the planets with special properties Binder wrote about in "Parade of the Planets" (Mystery in Space #52, June 1959). The collection also resembles the Legion of Super-Heroes, being a group all of whose members have some special capability.

This tale is strongly science fictional. Apart from the use of Kryptonite, it has little to do with Superboy per se. It could easily have been written by Binder as a Tommy Tomorrow story, or as one of Binder's non-series sf tales for Mystery in Space. The other planets that Superboy explores, each with its own special characteristics, recall the asteroids that Tommy loved to visit. Binder liked such "wonders of other planets" tales. Superboy's use of the rocks to alter an Earth landscape echoes on a more Earth-like scale the Cosmic sf stories Binder sometimes wrote, tales in which humans manipulate and change astronomical features.

Ma and Pa Kent encourage Superboy to develop a hobby like other kids; they want him to have some fun. This theme echoes the Krypto tales, in which they want him to have a pet dog, like other boys. Later, the Kents will encourage Superboy to develop friends with other boys, in the great series of Friendship tales in the early 1960's.

The Secret of the Super Charades (1955). Writer: Otto Binder. While performing some super feats, Superboy tries to send a message to Pa Kent through a series of charades. Each of the three charades is set up as a mini-mystery for the reader, with solutions at the end of the tale. During the mid 1950's, Binder wrote several stories in which Superboy becomes involved with various games. These tales tend to be happy and upbeat. The rules of the game are often interwoven with various super-feats the hero performs. One recalls such Lewis Carroll works as the chess based Through the Looking Glass and the math puzzle based A Tangled Tale, although Binder's stories are on a much smaller scale. The Binder game stories have an "artificial" quality to be sure, but they also have much warmth and naturalistic charm, showing life in Smallville and in the Kent home. Binder wrote game stories for other magazines as well: for example, "Unwanted Superman Souvenirs" (Jimmy Olsen #15, September 1956).

The Loneliest Boy in Town (1956). Writer: Otto Binder. Superboy tracks down three clues to a gang of crooks, given to him by an observant doorman who is the father of a schoolmate. The three mini-mysteries structurally recall the three charade puzzles in "The Secret of the Super Charades" (1955).

The doorman framework of this tale was re-used for a later Superboy story, "The Saddest Boy in Smallville" (#88, April 1961), written by Leo Dorfman, although the clues and the mystery element have been changed.

The Strong Boys of Smallville (1957). Writer: Otto Binder. Superboy tries to expose a crooked gym that misleads boys into thinking they are getting spectacularly fast results in their athletic training.

One-Man Baseball Team (1957). Writer: Otto Binder. Superboy plays a baseball game against an all-star team for charity. This is one of the happiest of all Superboy stories. It is like a ray of sunshine.

Baseball is played against a landscape: the complex, people and activity filled arena of the baseball diamond and stadium. This landscape orientation reminds one of the Tommy Tomorrow stories Binder was writing at the same time, such as "The Space Hall of Fame" (Action #209, October 1955).

The story comes to a typical finale for Binder: Superboy is challenged to preserve his secret identity, under difficult circumstances. This is similar to the secret ID finales Binder often incorporated into his Jimmy Olsen transformation tales.

The 100 New Feats of Superboy (1957). Writer: Otto Binder. Superboy tries to perform 100 new super deeds he has never done before, as part of a book published for charity. This "series of deeds, linked by an arbitrary, externally imposed rule", is a paradigm for many of the stories in the Game series.

The poster advertising the book, "The Encyclopedia of Strength", compares Superboy to Hercules, Samson and Atlas. Samson and Hercules will return in person in Binder's "The First Two Supermen" (Adventure #257, February 1959). And the voice on the phone deed will return in "The Three Secret Identities of Superboy" (1958), where Binder will add some mystery variants to it.

In many ways, these new feats can be considered to be "proposed additions to the Superman mythos", new concepts that Superboy is considering adding to the world of the Superman family comics. Superboy is shown dreaming these events up, then doing them. In many ways, the story treats him as the "author" of these events. This is a familiar paradigm in Binder's fiction: a "new addition to the mythos", and a character in the tale who is the author. In many ways, Superboy here is a stand-in for Binder himself, the real life author of the story.

There are other author figures in the tale, as well: the publisher of the book, and the man who works for him, and who dreamed the book up. This pair can be seen as stand-ins for Weisinger, the editor, and Binder, the author. Such pairs occur regularly in the Superman family: editor Perry White and the reporters who write for him are one example. Perry is quite irascible, as is the publisher here - and as Weisinger was reportedly in real life. In "Superboy Meets William Tell" (1960) by Jerry Siegel, a teacher gives her students, including Clark Kent, an assignment to write an account of William Tell. Don't make it dull, she says, make history come alive with vivid detail and exciting events. One can envision Weisinger giving similar instructions to Siegel when he began writing this tale. The teacher here seems much like the editor Weisinger; Clark Kent and the students seem like Siegel and the other writers.

The Game of Kriss-Kross Krypton (1957). Writer: Otto Binder. A board game uses the life of Superboy as its theme. This story shares some approaches with an earlier Binder tale, "The Super-Money of Smallville" (#51, September 1956). In both stories, Superboy tries to perform super-feats, while limited to certain approaches and uses of his super-powers, something that challenges his ingenuity. In "Super-Money", everything seems a bit awkward, but in "Kriss-Kross Krypton", everything works perfectly. Even before these tales, in "The Secret of the Super Charades" (1955) Superboy tried to perform charades while simultaneously doing needed tasks to save Smallville from a storm, a somewhat similar concept in that he had to combine a super-feat with a certain conceptual approach.

Plot elements in "The Game of Kriss-Kross Krypton" recall Thomas Bailey Aldrich's "Marjorie Daw" (collected in book form in 1873). Weisinger's letter columns often cited classic early short stories as models for the technique of the tales in the Superman family. The surprise finales of the many Superman family mystery tales were modeled on O. Henry, according to Weisinger. He also published with approval a letter comparing a tale to Maupassant's "The Necklace". These are all early stories famed for their clever plotting.

The Super-Tales of Lana Lang (1957). Writer: Otto Binder. Lana tells a series of tales to a jungle tribe.

The Three Secret Identities of Superboy (1958). Writer: Otto Binder. Superboy appears on a TV game show. The rules of the game show, "Unmask the Truth", are very similar to a popular real life TV game show of the period, "To Tell the Truth". Lana has to judge in this tale whether various deeds really belong in the Superman mythos, or not; this is in the Binder tradition of having "gate-keeper" characters in his tales, making similar judgments about adding new elements to the mythos.

The Racer in the Leaden Mask (1958). Writer: Otto Binder. Crooks get involved with auto racing. This is a tale that has a gang of crooks as its villains. This is very 1950's-ish; the Superman TV show often featured such gangs, and they were a standard feature of all 1950's entertainment, including both print mysteries and TV shows. So a tale like this is like the end of an era. The stories in the Superman family books that follow would tend to be much more science fictional in approach. This story has a well constructed plot.

The Unknown Super-Deeds (Superman #131, August 1959). Writer: Otto Binder. Superboy helps three people during an ordinary day in Smallville; the reader is challenged to find a hidden significance to these events. Although it appeared in Superman, this story recalls the Game cycle of stories Binder wrote for Superboy. Much of the story is taken up by a succession of new super-deeds Superboy performs. In this, it recalls "The 100 New Feats of Superboy". As in the earlier tale, these all seem to be unusual, innovative uses of Superboy's powers, feats he has not attempted before. Here Superboy is doing this just to enliven a dull day. There is also a sense of joie-de-vivre here. Superboy is someone who enjoys a challenge. He likes to use his creativity to dream up new things to do. Binder himself was a writer overflowing with creativity, so there is an autobiographical element here. These stories are psychological portraits of people who love imagination, who like to try to do new things. There is a life affirming quality to them. One can see a similar effect in Binder's "One-Man Baseball Team" (1957). There Superboy kept coming up with new things to do during a baseball game.

This story is also a small mystery. Like other Binder mysteries in the Game series, there are three clues. Binder explicitly points these out to the reader, highlighting the structure of the mystery tale. This is typical of the early Binder mysteries: they tell the reader the story is a mystery, challenge the reader to solve the crime, and even tell the reader that there is a clue contained in a certain panel, asking the reader to find it.

Mythos Spoofing Tales

Clark Kent, Cub Reporter (1958). Clark gets a job as cub reporter on the Daily Planet. There are elements of comedy and self satire here, as the teen age Clark unwittingly tries to hold down the same job he will later perform as an adult. I especially liked the encounter with the supply room. This sort of self satire spoofs the whole Superman family mythos, the familiar elements of Clark Kent and Superman and his job at the Daily Planet.

The tale also functions as a normal, ingeniously plotted Superboy work. The story is constructed in typical Superman family style as a series of challenges. In each, Clark tries to use his secret identity as Superboy to get a scoop for himself for the Daily Planet. And each time, events ingeniously interfere causing the attempt to fail. This plot concept is similar to that used by the later Spiderman tales (1962 - ), whose teenage hero uses his Spiderman secret identity to make a living as a newspaper photographer. Both face irascible bosses, with Perry White at his most comically irate in this tale.

The Amazing Adventures of Krypto Mouse (1958). A boy's pet mouse becomes large and develops super powers. This mock heroic story spoofs the saga of Krypto, and other super animals in the Superman family mythos. Our mouse might get super powers, but he never develops his personality beyond that of a little mouse, loving cheese and hating cats, and so on. This is a good natured but sharp little spoof, with a comic charm and a unique personality. The story is also unusual in that Superboy only has a marginal role in it, most of the focus being on the boy and his mouse.

Super-Infants and Super-Animals

The Super-Dog from Krypton (1955). Writer:?. Superboy's dog Krypto comes to Earth for the first time. The origin of Krypto.

This tale contains the full mythos of Krypto. It shows that he is a native of Krypton, that he was Kal-El's dog as a baby, how he came to Earth, that he now has Superboy's full powers on Earth. This story is an early precursor of the Superman mythos to come: Krypto is the first of many other Kryptonian beings that will eventually populate the Superman mythos. It is very imaginative. The parts that emphasize that Krypto's super-powers are identical to Superboy's are especially logical. They make the Superman mythos self-consistent. Krypto is not just a fantasy dog with whatever powers the authors wish to give him. Instead, this is a science fiction story, operating under rules of logic. Since both Krypto and Superboy are Kryptonians, they should have the same powers, and that is that. The creators of the Superman mythos stuck to this identical principle over the next dozen years.

The story also shows imagination about to what uses a dog might put these powers. The authors have tried to imagine what sort of activities might engage in. With this, Krypto becomes a genuine character. He operates autonomously, under his own needs and feelings. He is both a super-being and a dog. This is the start of a genuine new personality for the Superman family, someone who will operate according to his own inner logic. These aspects of Krypto will become greatly extended in tales to come. But they already begin here.

We do not see into Krypto's mind here. This will only come with the second Krypto tale, "The Dog of Steel" (1955). We instead see Krypto from Superboy's point of view, in which he gradually discovers Krypto's full powers, and his origin. Right from the start, Krypto is a somewhat humorous figure. We see that a super-powered dog, even one as good-natured as Krypto, can inadvertently cause a lot of mischief.

The Dog of Steel (1955). Writer:?. Krypto returns, and Superboy finds a non-super dog double for him, to allay Lana Lang's suspicions. The second Krypto story.

This is one of the best of the early Superboy tales. It has features that strongly anticipate the Silver Age to come. For one thing, it is based on a mythos: the addition of Krypto to the Superman saga. The introduction of Krypto is perhaps the first element to be put into place of the gigantic Superman family mythos. The story also shows the intricate, beautifully constructed plotting of the best Silver Age tales. It is related to the tradition of "ingenious stories about secret identity" that also popped up in such early Silver Age classics as Otto Binder's "Jimmy Olsen, Superman's Ex-Pal" (Jimmy Olsen #2, November-December 1954) and Robert Bernstein's "Superman's Greatest Sacrifice" (Lois Lane #5, November-December 1958). Please see the article on Lois Lane for a discussion of these. The story has other gambits anticipating the Silver Age: a finale in which characters manage to explain away events they have witnessed, and scenes in which Superboy tries to hoax people into believing a non-super-powered character is super. Many Superman family tales to come will be built out of such concepts.

Right from the start, the story includes plenty of comedy involving Krypto. He is a good hearted but awkward pooch, smashing through walls and windows. Krypto also lets his feelings run away with him. He gets feisty and jealous of other animals, just as he later will with Streaky the Cat. He is a sympathetic and richly comic character.

The Secret of the Flying Horse (1956). Writer: Otto Binder. A telepathic flying horse from another planet arrives on Earth. This is one of Binder's favorite themes: First Contact between humans and aliens. Binder wrote many First Contact stories for such science fiction comic books as Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures.

This story also anticipates one of the continuing characters to come in the Superman mythos: Supergirl's horse Comet. Like Comet, the hero of this tale is a flying, intelligent horse with telepathic powers. Comet first appears in Jerry Siegel's Legion story "The Legion of Super-Traitors" (Adventure #293, February 1962).

The Super-Brat (1959). Writer: Otto Binder. Superboy baby-sits an infant who temporarily develops super-powers, and who wreaks comic havoc. Many of the best Superboy stories of 1959 have either super-infants or super-animals as protagonists. Most of these stories were written by Otto Binder. These stories are similar, in that the lead has great powers, but no real intelligence or control. So they tend to be comic tales of good natured but silly super-beings running amok. Such Superbaby tales were particularly unfashionable among comics fans of the 1970's, being viewed with scorn as unheroic and infantile. Honesty compels me to admit that I enjoy reading them, and that the best such tales are a lot of fun. Anyone who has ever had a hard time baby-sitting will enjoy "The Super-Brat", for example.

The Colossal Superdog (1959). Writer: Otto Binder. This story from Adventure Comics tells how Krypto turned into a giant. It has more pathos than most of the early super-animal stories.

Superbaby in Scotland Yard (1959). Writer: Otto Binder. When Superboy visits Scotland Yard, flashbacks reveal how he visited it for the first time years ago as Superbaby. Charming story in which Superbaby helps a Yard inspector round up a gang of crooks.

Superboy's First Day at School (1959). Writer: Otto Binder. At first glance this looks like another Superbaby tale. It is not, however. Its 5 year old protagonist is much more mature, and is forced to think and reason. In fact, the story says that he is being made to do this for the first time in his life, so the tale is about a major zone of transition in Superboy's life: entering the Age of Reason, and entering society. Everyone can identify with this. In this simple story, everything works. The serial incidents out of which Superman stories are constructed all seem to flow together naturally here, and make one piece of storytelling. There is a persistent look at preserving Superboy's secret identity here, another favorite theme.

"Superboy's First Day at School" is what the editors billed as an Untold Tale. During 1959 the Superman family featured many Untold Tales. These were stories that filled in major events in the lives of the characters. Examples include "Superboy Meets Lois Lane" (Adventure #261, June 1959) and "The Secret of Superboy's Spectacles" (Superboy #70, January 1959), this latter story being the first of the Untold Tales. These stories were inoffensive, but they tended not to be very good. They have an aura of being written to specifications. The writer had a goal to cover certain events, and duly dealt with them in the tale. "Superboy's First Day at School" is the exception here: a major story in the series.

The concept of the Untold Tale shows that the writers were beginning to be conscious of the process of mythos building. The stories seem deliberately designed to fill in missing histories of key events in the Superman mythos. On a meta level, the Untold Tales also show that the writers were interested in experimenting with different kinds of fiction, fictions based on unusual structural premises. This is the era of the Imaginary Tale, an extremely innovative kind of story, and the Untold Tale is a different kind of innovative, non-standard fiction. Both the Imaginary and the Untold tales began in 1959.

How Krypto Made History (1959). Writer: Otto Binder. Krypto has a series of brief adventures in time travel, in this episodic tale.

The Super-Monkey From Krypton (1959). Writer: Otto Binder. The origin story of Beppo, a super-powered monkey from the planet Krypton. Good natured fun.

The Space Adventures of Krypto (1959). Writer: Jerry Siegel. A short, episodic tale in which Krypto has a series of brief adventures on other planets. The tale is similar in format to Binder's "How Krypto Made History". This is typical of the relationship between Binder and Siegel: Siegel was always following behind Binder's plow, trying to cultivate the ground Binder had just plowed up.

Leo Dorfman's first work

The Day Superboy Was a Coward (1959). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Superboy's belief that he has harmed people with his powers makes him afraid to use them. This is apparently writer Leo Dorfman's first script for Superboy. Never a prolific contributor to the magazine, he specialized in tales which probed Superboy's emotions. These are some of the key works of the series. "Coward" deals with Superboy's anguish over accidentally killing a criminal. It deals very seriously indeed with the issues of life and death. Its pacifist convictions are the start of many Superman family stories which deal with the sanctity of life. This is typical of Dorfman's work: his tales often opened doors for other writers. Dorfman would tend to explore the emotions of the basic situation, while the authors that follow would write ingenious, plot rich stories, developing the concepts. Dorfman would go on to write a very different, comic tale "Jimmy Olsen, Coward" (Jimmy Olsen #61, June 1962), which still emphasizes Jimmy Olsen's normal bravery as a key personality characteristic of him.

Superboy's Best Friend (1959). Writer: Leo Dorfman. This is apparently the first of all tales in which Superboy's need for a friend was introduced. It shows Dorfman's typical emotionalism. Other writers would take this theme up: there are successively stories about Superboy's friendships with other superkids: Supergirl, Mighty Boy, and Mon-El. The last two are some of the best Superboy stories. These would be followed by the Pete Ross stories. These would be like "Friend", in that they were about an non-superpowered youth who becomes friends with Clark Kent.

The Didactic Stories

The Three Magic Wishes (Action Comics #257, October 1959). Writer: Otto Binder. Supergirl pretends to be a Fairy Godmother to a group of young kids at the orphanage, making three traditional fairy tale wishes come true. She does this counter a young boy who scoffs at fairy stories. This tale is in the Superman family tradition of faked super beings, stories in which Superman or Supergirl use their powers to create the illusion of a super being, in this case a Fairy Godmother. Supergirl's comic entrance recalls a similar entrance of another faked being, the Earth Creature in Binder's "Riddle of the Counterfeit Earthmen" (Mystery in Space #54, September 1959), and also the sudden arrival of Jor-El's space ship right on Ma and Pa Kent's front lawn in "The Return of Jor-El and Lara" (Superboy #74, July 1959), also by Binder.

This is one of the gentlest of Superman family tales. Supergirl's rivalry with an unpleasant young boy who does not believe in fairies brings in imagery of a war between men and women, however. It seems related in meaning to the didactic tales in Superboy around this time. All of these didactic tales take place primarily among a group of young children. All have a powerful grown woman intervening in the kids' lives. The woman focuses on one small boy, who is her antagonist. She causes a transformation in his life, trying to change his value system and his attitudes. In "The Three Magic Wishes" and "Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister", the woman is basically sympathetic, and the young boy's value system is seen as incorrect. In both of these tales, the woman has powers that seem magical: here Supergirl is posing as a Fairy Godmother; in "Super-Sister", the woman is an alien space traveler who has near magic seeming powers. In "The Shyest Boy in Town", this pattern is somewhat changed. Here it is the young boy whose values ultimately prove better. And the woman in that tale, while being a powerful psychiatrist, has no magical or super powers.

All three of the stories invoke gender issues. Here the boy's scoffing at Supergirl's telling of fairy stories seems like a rejection by a male of female culture. Supergirl intervenes partly to hold up female power. By appearing as a Fairy Godmother, she literalizes a traditional image of woman power. Supergirl's magic wand in this tale, part of the traditional equipment of Fairy Godmothers, is also a male symbol, one expressing magical power. And her punishment of the boy, giving him a Pinocchio nose, also contains gender imagery. Later, in "The Ten Feats of Elastic Lass" (Lois Lane #23, February 1961), Binder will evoke similar nose imagery, also in a context of gender symbolism.

Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister (1960). Writer: Otto Binder. This is a tale in which Superboy meets a woman visitor from a planet in which women rule over men. After Superboy makes a sexist remark, he is transformed by her into a girl, so that he can experience first hand what it is like to be female. Super-Sister's encounter with discrimination and prejudice against females is a memorable work. It is astonishingly feminist, not just for its own time, but for any time. This story seems to have been reprinted only once, and today seems to be completely forgotten. It appeared at a time in which there was not yet a massive, organized feminist movement in the USA, and seems to have made little impression on anyone's consciousness.

Binder wrote many stories in which Jimmy Olsen was transformed, into a giant or Elastic Lad. Here he is trying something similar with Superboy. This story is more serious in tone than the comic Jimmy stories, however.

The Shyest Boy in Town (1960). This is also a didactic work. It contains a heartfelt plea to leave "different" youths alone, and to respect their individuality. Such works in the 1950's and 1960's were often coded pleas to not discriminate against gay people; they also were general looks at nonconformism. This makes a story like this ambiguous, but just this once it seems to gain resonance from its ambiguity. The antagonist in this tale is a psychologist, Dr. Wiles, who has schemes for making Clark Kent less shy. Wiles has as many schemes as her "wily" name suggests. She is not a villain - she is sincerely trying to "help" Clark Kent - and the story has no bad people or villains at all. In fact in some ways, the eagerness of everyone to help Clark is an impressive display of goodness. Still, it is clear that such attempts to make Clark less shy will hurt Clark, and his need to lead a secret life, in this case as Superboy. The 1950's and 1960's were the high point of Freudian psychology's prestige in the US. This pseudo-science played a major role in oppressing both women and gay people during that time, and forcing women and gays into submissive social roles. This fable suggests in a profound way the need for resistance to such schemes. It is very haunting and powerful. Its ending, which suggests that it is better to leave people alone than to try to influence/coerce them into changing, seems Taoist in its philosophy. Its plea for stillness and non-action has a religious, as well as a social and political dimension.

The Legion of Superheroes stories also promoted individuality. Each character had a unique set of superpowers, different from any others. This was a metaphor for the uniqueness of each human's personality. The Superman tales were relentlessly non-macho. They were widely criticized for this by comics fans in the 1970's, who preferred the violent Marvel comics of their day. The Marvel comics have outstanding virtue of their own, especially great art, but I strongly disagree with using them as a club against the Superman tales.

It is clear that the Superman stories have been undervalued by people who are upset by their gender portrayal. Anyone who believes men should be mainly violent or aggressive is going to have trouble with these works. Despite the rise of feminism in recent years, substantial portions of fandom strongly believe in violent manhood. It is behind much of the cult of "hard-boiled" mystery fiction and film.

Science Fiction and George Papp

Life on Krypton (1960). Writer: Jerry Siegel. This is the first tale in Superboy to focus entirely on another planet. The Superboy writers loved advanced civilizations, and civilization in general. They had no interest in the warfare of much modern sf. I love the title of this story: it conveys the impression that the story will describe the entire life style of another world. Despite being very short, it does succeed in this ambitious program to a remarkable degree. It looks at a key moment in one family's life, and shows much about daily living and colorful events on Krypton in the process. It is full of vivid detail.

Artist George Papp was always called on to illustrate stories set on Krypton, and other worlds in general. Also time travel stories, and stories where Superboy visits other countries. His art is beautiful. He was very good with clothes and costumes. He could create the look of another place and time, such as a historical era that Superboy visited, or the clothes of another planet. These clothes always followed uniform design principles. If people on another world wore clothes that mixed 17th Century Dutch costume with sf elements, as in the Mighty Boy planet's clothes, then everybody on the planet will be dressed in some logical variant of this. This systematic design conveys immediately that one is in another culture, one that follows its own inner rules. Papp's Krypton tales show a consistent use of architecture, as well. Houses on Krypton had a "futuristic" look. Papp's houses seem to follow Art Deco design concepts, such as pure geometric forms such as hemispheres, and irregularly spaced windows, mixed in with some sf elements, especially flat, projecting roofs. While the various Kryptonian houses he illustrated over the years were all different, they all looked as if they were the product of a single culture, one that followed internally consistent design principles.

The Superboy stories themselves were set in the past, apparently in the late 1930's or early 1940's, and Papp never faltered in his depiction of old, out of date clothes and cars. There was always a pathos to this. Smallville was just a small town in the first place, and its inhabitants dressed in the formal styles of a bygone era. They were very small potatoes in the cosmic scheme of things, and already obsolescent. Despite this, the Smallville inhabitants were never scruffy. Everyone aspired to be neatly dressed in a suit, and even the teen age boys often wore ties with their sweaters. Papp was faithful to a time and place where people tried to be decently, formally dressed, as a sign of politeness to others. The clothes always had a cheery, upbeat look to them. The characters always looked as if they knew exactly how they wished to be dressed, and succeeded in their goals. They always looked happy in what they were wearing. This is because Papp himself had very clear design principles in mind for the 1930's clothes. The characters are always dressed appropriately for every event, whether in work clothes, or dressed up for some civic occasion. The Smallville stories were set in the time of my parents' youth. This era had a great fascination to me, and I suspect to the creators of the magazine as well.

The Boy of Steel's Super Initiation (1962). When a fraternity is mistreating its inductees, Superboy joins to teach them a lesson. This tale recalls the Superman story, "Superman Joins the Army" (1959), where Superman's basic training deeds constantly backfire on a military martinet. This story is most interesting for a scene in which Superboy, as part of his initiation into a fraternity, is required to build a model of a Kryptonian house. Artist George Papp stayed strong here. While the house is built out of rough wood, and is clearly only a model, it follows the same Kryptonian design principles as in Papp's tales set on the planet Krypton itself.

The Invasion of Krypton (1960). Writer: Otto Binder. This short comic tale of how a super baby Kal-El foiled an invasion of Krypton is delightful. Despite its light tone, it shows real science fiction imagination. It has a number of writer Otto Binder's themes that will recur later in his Mighty Boy classic. These include the encounter between two planets' inhabitants. Also, a systematic look at the origin and cause of Superboy's superpowers. Here, Kal-El gets the powers due to low gravity, but not Earth's yellow sun light - an interesting concept. This gives Binder's work an interesting science fictional intelligence to serve as the hard skeleton propping up his light hearted adventure.

The Secret Life of Krypto (1962). The authors wanted to make a series of stories about the superdog, Krypto. Here they have him involved in intrigue in a Balkan kingdom. Such stories, reminiscent of Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), were fairly common in the Superman family. After all, Hope's novel was one of the inventors of the story of the hero with a double identity (although not quite a secret identity), so his work was a natural for the authors of Superboy. These kingdom stories have the aspect of fairy tales. However, there is also some realistic starch in these tales, with corrupt politicians struggling for power. George Papp had a field day here with the spectacular red "comic opera" style uniforms, and the other details of the Ruritanian kingdom. Even when Papp went to another planet, his art often has this sort of Balkan kingdom kind of feel. Papp's stories often showed unusual uniforms. Sometimes these were worn by the bad guys - see the orange Superboy Revenge Squad uniforms in "The Raid From the Phantom Zone" (114, July 1964), or the Uniform Gang in "The Day Superboy Was A Coward" (1959). But the latter story also has uniformed police, who were good guys, and a non-villainous gym teacher. Papp had a standard uniform for the Smallville police, and used it consistently in all the tales. It had a vaguely old fashioned look about it, of traditional harness bulls, but it was also very macho. Like everything else, it conveyed the atmosphere of a past era in American life.

The Superboy of 800 Years Ago (1964). Superboy also often went to medieval kingdoms through time travel stories. These tales have the same feel as the Balkan kingdom tales. This story, like "The Secret Life of Krypto", has an orphan boy whom Superboy helps.

Secret of Camp Storm King (1964). Writer: ?. Art: George Papp. Clark's uncle insists that Clark spend the summer at a camp for student athletes. As in "Clark Kent, He-Man" (Adventure #305, March 1963), older men put pressure on the Kents to make their mild-mannered son more macho and athletic. Such pressure seems hard for Jonathan Kent to resist. Both "Clark Kent, He-Man" and "Secret of Camp Storm King" also show Clark Kent wanting to get public recognition for the athletic skills he possesses as Superboy. He takes active steps to see this happens in both stories. But it threatens either his secret identity or his ability to perform his Superboy job in these stories.

Papp liked to show athletes in sweatshirts. Here he has a whole camp full of men in uniform sweatshirts. As in the Green Arrow tale "The Decoy Archer" (Adventure #223, April 1956), he has a neat logo on these uniforms, made up out of letters: here SK, for Camp Storm King. These athletes often seem to be antagonistic to Superboy, putting him through his paces, and dominating him athletically. See "The Boy Who Was Stronger Than Superboy" (Superboy #273, June 1960). Such a character also shows up in the splash of "The Millionaire of Smallville" (Superboy #119, March 1965).

Superbaby's First Time-Trip (1965). Writer: Edmond Hamilton. Art: George Papp. Superbaby accidentally travels to the far future. Imaginatively plotted sf story. Hamilton always had a flair for stories of the future, and this tale is one of his gems. It starts out with a complete lack of pretension, but its solid qualities of logic and storytelling detail make it memorable.

The Fate of the Future Superman (1965). Writer: ?. Art: George Papp. Based on a cover by: Curt Swan. Superboy travels to the far future, where both he and his descendants are the subject of great interest.

Edmond Hamilton wrote some stories in this era about Superman's descendents: see "The Three Generations of Superman" (Action #327, August 1965) and "The Superman of 2965" (Superman #181, November 1965). This story takes a somewhat different approach. Hamilton's stories were strictly about the future descendents. Here, Superboy has traveled to the future, and is the principal character in the story, while his descendent is largely off stage. The story also deals with how the far future sees Superboy, and the interest it takes in him. In this, it somewhat resembles the Legion origin story, Otto Binder's "The Legion of Super-Heroes" (Adventure #247, April 1958).

The Invulnerable Imp (1965). Writer: Edmond Hamilton, based on an idea by Cary Bates. This Mr. Mxyzptlk tale has Smallville as a collective protagonist. Papp captures the "look" of the town, with its small, old fashioned store fronts and vacant lots. It is a look that has been consistent throughout the entire Superboy series, with Pa Kent's general store, and other Smallville locations. Papp also gets to present the town under various weather conditions, so this tale is a sort of "universal atlas" of Smallville. The Depression era furniture in the rooms is also a Smallville tradition. Papp also creates numerous inhabitants of the city. He uses a great variety of models; one wonders if they are based on real people, or whether Papp made up his denizens out of his head. Most of his male characters are quite macho looking: the sweating guy in this story, for instance.

The Fugitive Krypto (1965). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Art: George Papp. On a planet of the Dog Star Sirius, Krypto discovers an advanced race of alien dog-men who revere dogs and Krypto. Siegel liked to show strange other worlds. These places are often poetic, comic, and filled with bizarre inhabitants. They are genuinely different from our Earth. This story also shows the Superman family's flair for creating tales about doubles and impersonation. Many ingenious twists are wrung from the plot developments here.

Papp has interesting uniforms for the dog police. They are fancy science fiction equivalents of Earth cops, with two rows of V arranged buttons on the double-breasted uniforms, black belts, boots and white gloves. The also have fancy flanges on their hoods, like the Golden Age Starman. All of this is very macho, but they also have holes in their hoods, so that their dog ears can stick out, a comic touch!

The 13 Superstition Arrows (1958). Art: George Papp. Adventure magazine also published tales about characters not part of the Superman family, strictly speaking. This Green Arrow story shows George Papp in a modern setting. Even here, he evokes a traditional New York, with shots of alleys, Central Park, jeweler's windows, and a mansion of the rich. Even his burglars tend to be in coat and tie, just like his 1930's Smallville inhabitants.

Papp's compositional skill is powerful. He likes geometric patterns, such as straight lines and circles. He gets endless mileage out of the Arrow Car, a yellow car driven by our hero, which is a mass of circular arcs and triangles. It has a huge triangular fin in the back shaped like an arrow. Papp shows the Arrow Car from every possible angle. Each different shot allows it contribute a wealth of lines, triangles and circles to the composition. The car is often at the center of the composition, the place where the eye is drawn. The composition is at two levels: there is the large, overall picture, where the architecture of the background makes a geometric pattern. Within this, at some key point, lies the Arrow Car, making an equally complex pattern, but one a smaller dimension of scale. This pattern within a pattern is often deeply satisfying, as a visual experience. The smaller pattern seems to make a climax. It carries out the logic of the large pattern, finishing it off, expressing its inner logic in a series of detailed forms. It is a like the logic in a piece of classical music: the large background pattern is like the development of a music movement, the small inner pattern like the climax, taking the ideas of the large pattern and bringing them to a finish and a climax.

George Papp and Steve Ditko often seem to show similar paradigms as artists. Both are strongly composition oriented. Both are architectural: buildings in the background form a visual pattern which is at the core of their art. The positioning and body postures of the characters also contribute to the geometric pattern. Both tend to show long shots, which include both a background, and the characters at full or nearly full figure. Both use compositional patterns for faces, which convey both facial features and emotional expressions. While this is not fine grained portraiture, of the kind we see in Infantino or Gil Kane, it successfully conveys both emotions, and individual personal modeling. Both often include inner designs which tend to complete the large pattern: in Ditko's art these tend to intricate hand gestures. Both artists architectural work in keyed at a similar point along the realistic - abstraction continuum. Rarely does either artists use the sort of blank space frequently employed by Infantino as a background, an abstract stylistic device in his work. Their backgrounds instead always seem to look like real buildings, roads, trees, and so on. But both Papp's and Ditko's backgrounds tend to have a linear quality, a sense that they make up a pattern of lines. This approach enables both artists to make their backgrounds into a geometrical compositional pattern. This linearity is a form of mild stylization. It is accepted by most mid Twentieth Century readers as "realistic", partly because it is a convention frequently found in magazine illustration, as well as the comics. But is far less detailed than a painting by Vermeer, for instance. There is little attempt at tactile modeling. Ditko's art is more anguished, more paranoid. It seems to explode off the page. Papp attempts more to achieve perfect harmony. Papp's art is like Mozart's; Ditko's is more like Beethoven's.

Mystery Tales

The Man Who Knew Superboy's Identity (1954). A mysterious figure called The Mask in a lead mask knows Superboy's secret identity, and orders him to do various non-criminal but puzzling tasks. This is a well constructed mystery tale. It features multiple mysteries: who is the figure? how did he learn Superboy's ID? what is the point of the assignments he is giving Superboy? All of these are given ingenious answers at the story's finale. Although this tale was published before the start of the Silver Age, it has the Silver Age emphasis on clever plotting, often using the formal traditions of the mystery tale. Throughout 1955, Superboy's companion magazine Adventure Comics would be publishing stories directly ancestral to the Silver Age. This tale could be part of the same trend.

There is a good illustration of a naval officer in a white uniform (p7).

The Rainbow Raider (1960). Writer: Jerry Siegel. This story is somewhat unusual in the Superboy magazine, in that it is a mystery story. Mystery tales were extremely common, even paradigmatic, in Lois Lane, but not in Superboy. This follows the same approach as Lois Lane's mysteries. The central character is the detective - here Superboy, just as Lois is the detective in her tales. The protagonist has to track down a gang of crooks. Much of the mystery involves a secret identity - in this case, that of the masked super-criminal, The Rainbow Raider. There are clever plot twists, and considerable formal ingenuity. All of this is in the Lois Lane tradition.

The Simpleton of Steel (1963). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Superboy becomes naive and gullible after exposure to Red Kryptonite. This story also has elements of mystery about it. It is close to those Lois Lane stories where she discovers Superman's secret identity, and he has to cover up his traces. Here Lana Lang has a similar role.

Krypto's Superdog Pal (1964). Writer: ?. Art: George Papp. Krypto helps Superboy rescue a super-powered, flying dog, who becomes Krypto's pal. This story has an ingenious, complex plot. It keeps trying to explain the origin and life history of the super-dog, and winds up deeply interweaving these explanations into the Superman mythos. The explanations come in layers: we learn some interesting facts about the dog, then we learn a deeper set of facts that lie behind these, and then a deeper set of facts. Each sets of facts is imaginative in its own right. And it then also logically relates to both a deeper explanation, and the existing history of Krypton embedded in the Superman mythos. Eventually, this unpretentious looking story becomes quite complex.

In the 1950's, Otto Binder added a whole series of new concepts to the Superman mythos, embedding each in the known history of Krypton. These include Krypto, the bottled city of Kandor, Beppo and Supergirl. This story has something of the same feel: an ingenious addition to the mythos. However, the story is set-up so that no permanent addition to the mythos takes place, which seems a bit of a pity.

The Boy Who Unmasked Superboy (1965). Writer: ?. Art: Curt Swan. An obnoxious boy starts blackmailing the Kents with his knowledge of Superboy's secret identity. This story has elements of mystery: how did this teenager learn all these secrets of Clark Kent's life? Eventually, the story builds up a detailed explanation. The explanation is both logical, and also furnishes a loony and loopy plot.

The boy here looks like the unpleasant juvenile delinquents that sometimes appeared in Swan's Superman tales. He also resembles a bit a juvenile version of Swan's mobsters and hoods. Yet, in some ways he is just a kid, and his ideas of blackmail are strictly two-bit: he wants ten whole dollars at one point! There is something comic about this character. He is not at all sympathetic, but he seems humorously low key and small potatoes all the same.

Challenges

The Boy Who Replaced Clark Kent (1964). This story appeared simultaneously (April 1964) with the Lois Lane three part story, in which Superman took on three new secret identities throughout history, and challenged Lois to discover them. It was a sort of super-game or riddle. Here Superboy does something similar - and yet different. He temporarily takes on a new secret identity, "Hank Harris", but he shares that identity with Lana Lang. Here he challenges her to see if she can keep that identity secret from others, for a whole weekend. Also, unlike the Lois Lane stories, the tale is not set in historical times, but in Smallville - in fact right in Lana's house, where Superboy stays as a guest. The tale is pleasantly ingenious. It is constructed in the same serial episode fashion as the majority of Superman family tales, with a series of incidents that challenge Lana. Such challenges have later shown up in other media as well - one thinks of the Starsky and Hutch episode called "The Game" (9-19-78) written by Tim Maschler, in which Hutch challenges Starsky to find him.

Curt Swan

The Super-Cop of Smallville (1961). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Art: Curt Swan. In this tale, Superboy gets deputized as a policeman. It has good art by Curt Swan, who commonly did the covers of Superboy, but much less frequently the actual stories. Most guys have fantasies about being cops - there is a huge film and TV industry providing such tales - and this story involves some pleasant wish fulfillment. This story is also one that features Smallville's Police Chief Parker, a continuing character in the magazine.

The Super-Cop of Metropolis (Superman #160, April 1963). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Art: Curt Swan. A later enjoyable story in Superman, this tale will use a similar plot, but ring some interesting changes on this theme. The two stories might best be read in sequence.

The Curse of the Superboy Mummy (1965). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Art: Curt Swan. Based on a cover by: Curt Swan. Ancient Egyptian mummies are discovered, which look just like Superboy and Lana. It's hard to resist a story with a title like this! The tale itself is well put together. It is one of many Superman family tales, which draw parallels between Superman, and another super-powered character from a different planet or era. Here characters in Ancient Egypt parallel Superboy and Lana. These parallels take up the first half of the tale; the second half is a modern story, showing the effects on the contemporary characters.

The story shows Leo Dorfman's fondness for tales involving magic. He frequently incorporated magic in his Supergirl tales. I always felt that such magic was out of place in a science fiction saga like the Superman mythos. However, the magic aspects of this tale do work as storytelling.

Jerry Siegel and Color

The Dreams of Doom (1960) and The Kryptonite Kid (1962). Writer: Jerry Siegel. This story, and its sequel two years later, were both written by Jerry Siegel. They star the "Kryptonite Kid", an youth who could radiate Green Kryptonite rays. Writer Jerry Siegel created Superman in the 1930's, and spent much of his career in the comic book field. Siegel loved color imagery, and Red and Green Kryptonite play an important part in the tales. Of all storytelling mediums, comics were the first to emphasize bright color. They were in full color right from the start, while in 1938 most films were still in black and white. Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes also used brilliantly colored costumes in the 1910's, as did other stage works sporadically, but comics were the first systematic employers of color in the narrative arts. Color in the Superboy series was radiant. It often seems to have been systematically planned by the writers of the stories, as well as the artists. The art in both tales is by George Papp. The second story received the cover of Superboy #99. This cover, drawn by Curt Swan, is a classic. Green light is radiating from every possible source. It is delirious, and very beautiful.

The Army of Living Kryptonite Men (1961). Writer: Jerry Siegel. This sf tale has some memorable imagery.

The Scarlet Jungle of Krypton (1961); The Secret of Krypton's Scarlet Jungle (1963). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Both of these stories show Krypton's Scarlet Jungle, a place full of science fictional animals, especially the Kryptonian thought-beast. The stories display Siegel's interest in science fiction, and his love for characters with different kinds of superpowers. Here the characters are animals. The second tale was a sequel, written two years after the first one. It offers a satisfying extension of the first story. It is logically consistent with the first tale's world, yet it moves the plot in new directions.

The Ghost of Jor-El (1960). Writer: Jerry Siegel. This little tale shows how Superboy first met Mr. Mxyzptlk. It is fun, especially the scene with the giant egg. The script turns on a clue involving colors - another example of how closely the writers of the magazine "thought in color".

Superboy and the 5 Legion Traitors (1964). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Art: Curt Swan. Based on a cover by: Curt Swan. Five members of the Legion travel back in time to Smallville, where they threaten to expose Superboy's secret identity. This tale is one of several that Siegel wrote, that created unusual variations on the Legion's history. These include "The Legion of Super-Villains" (Superman #147, August 1961) and "Superman's Super-Courtship" (Action #289, June 1962). These tend to be formal, science fictional transformations of the Legion concept.

The tale is rich in incident. However, it is not quite a plot in the traditional sense, with one event following causally from the preceding. Instead, it often gives us disconnected science fictional ideas. Some of these are very imaginative: the portrait of the three cities on other planets is wonderful. It conveys the sense of mystery and strangeness that Siegel sometimes foresaw in the future. The device near the end, that freezes the Legionnaires in mid-flight, is also good. Swan's art here is a fine illustration of this.

Swan's cover echoes his cover for "The Boy With Ultra-Powers" (Superboy #98, July 1962). Both show Ultra-Boy using his penetra vision to see Superboy's costume under his Clark Kent clothes. Both are set in 1930's Smallville, in everyday settings. Both have Lana Lang standing by, with a context of ordinary life among Smallville teenagers.

The Duel of the Superboys (1965). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Art: George Papp. Based on a cover by: Curt Swan. The evil scientist Dr. Diablo transfers some of Superboy's powers into an android double of Superboy. Siegel had written an earlier story about villains who try to train a double of Superboy to be evil: "The Super-Brat From Krypton" (Superman #137, May 1960). This story has plot developments in common with that earlier tale, including aspects of the characterization of the double. They are more richly developed in this story, however, and I prefer this second version of the story. This version is more emotionally satisfying, as well, and takes a more optimistic view of human nature.

This story shows some of Siegel's trademark biting, sarcastic, satirical humor, which is quite funny here. It is especially turned on Siegel's own creation, Superman - there are signs Siegel is satirizing himself here. Yet Siegel combines this humor with great respect for his plot, which is developed imaginatively, and with a concern for logic in its detail. The sharing of the super powers here is developed carefully, with each character having a specific group of powers.

The Tales of Friendship

The friendship tales are the highlights of the Superboy magazine. They center around an emotionally profound subject. As discussed above, the tales begin with "Superboy's Best Friend" (1959), written by Leo Dorfman.

The stories in the friendship also have the most brilliant, complex plots in the magazine. Many of these plots center on Superboy's secret identity, which his friends either struggle to discover, or do ingenious things to preserve. Similarly, a major font of plots in the Lois Lane magazine stem from her attempt to discover Superman's secret identity. This whole theme stems from such mystery writers as Israel Zangwill, Baroness Orczy and Frank L. Packard. Its history is discussed in the article on Rogue fiction.

The Origin of the Superman - Batman Team (1960). Writer: Jerry Coleman. This story is one of a series in Adventure (not Superboy) in which Superboy meets people, as youths, who will later be part of his world as grownups. Here Superboy meets the young Bruce Wayne, who will later become Batman. This tale is also related to the series of "friendship" tales in Superboy, in which Superboy meets talented young men with whom he can share a friendship. It is a very good story, and an important addition to the friendship series. Several of the plot elements in it will later reappear in the Pete Ross tales, for instance, that began the next year (1961). These include Wayne's attempt to discover Superboy's secret identity, the methods he uses to tackle this problem, and the characterization of Wayne as a young future detective, excelling at both science and sports, a characterization that will appear in Pete Ross. Pete Ross and Bruce Wayne also resemble each other in that neither has any super powers whatsoever, being completely non powered mortals who excel through sheer will power and determination, including plenty of hard work and study. Like Pete Ross, Bruce Wayne is pictured as a wholly good person. They have none of the ambiguity that sometimes afflicts the super-powered youths whom Superboy encounters. Both are generous and giving, a very important virtue in the Superman world. Being selflessly concerned with other people's welfare always ranks very high in the comics' values.

To determine Superboy's secret identity, young Bruce Wayne collects measurements of Superboy, such as height, weight, fingerprints and so on, just like police trying to identify a suspect. This approach goes back at least to "The Betrayal of Superman" (Jimmy Olsen #8, October 1955), written by Otto Binder. In that tale, it was Jimmy Olsen who tried to find Superman's identity with these techniques. Later Pete Ross will do a similar thing in "The Boy Who Betrayed Clark Kent" (1961), and so will Perry White in "The Man Who Betrayed Superman's Identity" (Action #297, February 1963). In all of the stories, the word "betrayal" refers to the fact that one of Superman's friends is trying to reveal his secret identity, a betrayal of their friendship.

The Mystery of Mighty Boy; Superboy's Lost Friend (1960). Writer: Otto Binder. This two part story was one of many works in which the authors present a character in another place or time who functions just like Superman. Here Superboy travels to another planet, where he meets Mighty Boy, whose life echoes that of Superboy's on Earth. These kind of stories often stress the startling coincidence in detail between Superman's life and the new character's; for example, while Superboy has many people in his life with the initials L.L., Mighty Boy has many friends with the initials C.K. The authors clearly showed a good deal of ingenuity in coming up with such parallels. This tale, like many in the Superman family, also contains a mystery element: strange events are happening to Mighty Boy, and the reader is challenged to come up with an explanation. As in all good mysteries, the solution is both logical and surprising. The letters column of Superboy #104 (April 1963) says the editors were working on a sequel to the Mighty Boy story, but as far as I know this unfortunately never appeared.

"Mighty Boy" has some precedents among Binder's earlier work. Much of its basic plot framework occurred in an earlier Binder tale, "The Power Boy from Earth" (Superboy #52, October 1956). This tale is only half as long as "Mighty Boy", and much less interesting. When Binder expanded it into "Mighty Boy", he included much more detail about life on the planet, and about the personal life of Mighty Boy.

The mystery elements have also been strengthened. Whereas Power Boy simply became weak in the earlier story, here Mighty Boy undergoes a series of mysterious transformations. Transformations were always a Binder specialty. Binder had improved his ideas about transformations between 1956 and 1960. He had created Red Kryptonite, which had "institutionalized" transformations in Superboy's life, and given Binder a systematic framework to think about transformations in general. All of this benefits the second story greatly. Binder has also embedded a series of clues to the mystery in the second story, allowing readers to logically deduce the solution. The mystery, as in some of Binder's other sf mysteries, is one of causality: what is causing the events in the story?

One of the transformations in the tale derives from an earlier Binder story, "The Super-Brain of Jimmy Olsen" (Jimmy Olsen #22, August 1957). This transformation is just a brief episode in the "Mighty Boy" tale, but was the basis of an entire story in Jimmy Olsen. Binder's version in "Mighty Boy" shows greater artistic economy. Binder has also made the consequences of the super-brain more logical in "Mighty Boy" than in the Jimmy Olsen story.

All of this allows us to see Binder's creative mind in action. His ideas did not always spring into existence full blown, but were the result of creative development and expansion. The shining beauty of "The Mystery of Mighty Boy" is the ultimate result. This story is one of the most imaginative and emotionally involving of all Superboy tales.

Superboy's Big Brother; The Secret of Mon-El (1961). Writer: Robert Bernstein. Based on a cover by: Curt Swan. This two part story paired Superboy with another young superhero. Mon-El arrives on Earth, and is apparently Superboy's big brother. It is the key transitional work about Superboy's friendships, between the Mighty Boy tales, and the Pete Ross saga. The story is rich in sf elements, including an early use of the Phantom Zone. The interesting time travel episode seems practically like another story. I also like the secret identity the family comes up with for Mon-El, as a good natured, outgoing but two-bit traveling salesman. What could be more 1930-ish? The cheap flashy suit he wears is completely in character, and evokes an era in American life. Mon-El is fated to have only a single outing in this secret identity, but the care in which the artists and writers have bestowed on it is worthy of a series of stories. It shows how character-driven the Superman family stories are: thinking up a life, a personality and a secret identity for Mon-El is of central importance to everyone involved.

The Boy Who Betrayed Clark Kent (1961). Writer: Robert Bernstein. A new boy, Pete Ross, moves to Smallville; he starts collecting information on Superboy which could reveal his secret identity. This is the first Pete Ross story. The first Pete Ross story appeared before the Mon-El tale, the second after. The first story is seen from the point of view of Superboy, and focuses on his need for friendship. It is one of the most emotional of all Superboy tales. Superboy has terrible trouble learning to trust other people, and the story concentrates on his difficulties and attempt to overcome this. He learns some good lessons here: many Superboy stories concluded with morals, and lessons, in the time honored tradition of didactic children's fiction.

Pete Ross' Super-Secret (1961). Writer: Robert Bernstein. Pete Ross accidentally learns that Superboy and Clark Kent are the same person. The second Pete Ross story. It opens with Superboy's point of view again, where he learns more about what a good friend Pete Ross is. This too is a memorable piece on friendship, and something that people can learn from. The previous tales about Superboy's friends focused on Superboy's friendships, and with a super-powered youth. The Pete Ross stories give Clark Kent a friend, who is a non superpowered youth in Smallville.

At this point, the story introduces a new plot element. Pete Ross learns Superboy's secret identity. But Superboy does not know that he knows it. Pete Ross will use this knowledge to secretly aid Superboy on his missions. This complex piece of plot development is just the start of a new series of stories in the Superboy magazine. Each will develop new, highly complex stories developing these ideas. They are some of the most virtuosically plotted tales in the Superman family.

When Pete Ross learns Superboy's identity, the storytelling shifts to Pete Ross' point of view. Pete will continue to be the POV character for most of the subsequent Pete Ross stories. Occasionally the POV will briefly shift back to Superboy, to depict the situations in the tales and how they appear to him, but mainly the tales will focus on Pete Ross as a protagonist, and his benevolent schemes to aid Superboy with his work.

Tales of Friendship: The Ingenious Pete Ross Stories

The Superboy Revenge Squad (1962). Writer: Robert Bernstein. This is a key work in the development of the Pete Ross series. It is the first that is intricately plotted. It builds on the basic situation established in the previous story - that Pete Ross knows Superboy's secret - and turns it into a truly complex plot. It is also the first story which establishes the themes of Pete Ross and Superboy as doubles. Here Pete needs to take over Superboy's role. He functions as a second Superboy, one who mirrors and doubles the original. Both of these approaches - the intricate plotting, the theme of Pete Ross and Superboy as doubles - appear in later works in the series. In each, the authors come up with some whole new reason for Pete to take over Superboy's role. These reasons make the tales ingenious variations on each other: new plots that all move toward a common theme of doubling. The theme of the double has all sorts of suggestive meanings. It is widely used in literature, in such works as Poe's "William Wilson" and Conrad's "The Secret Sharer". Here, the authors concentrate on the imaginative plot possibilities a subject such as doubling suggests. But the psychological and emotional ideas doubling can trigger are often suggested by the tales.

The New Boy of Steel; The Enemy Superboy (1962). Writer: Robert Bernstein. This two part story is ingenious. There are signs of it being stretched out to meet its length, but it is still an interesting story. Friends in the Superman family often seemed to develop jealousy and turn on each other. Often times, these tales are simply both too raw emotionally, and not very well motivated. Here we have a much more refined and carefully graded work, one that succeeds in running a wide gamut of feelings.

The Boy With Ultra-Powers (1962). Writer: Jerry Siegel. This story has both cover and art by Curt Swan. The story is unusual in that though Pete Ross occurs heavily in it, he is not the protagonist, and the story is not a typical Pete Ross tale, of him aiding Superboy. Instead it focuses on a new super-powered character, Ultra Boy, a youth operating undercover in Smallville, and trying to detect Superboy's secret identity. The scene in the story in which Superboy and Ultra Boy tumble to each other's secret identities is a neat two part switch. Swan's excellent cover offers a condensed version of this scene.

Siegel's story is one of his mystery tales, in which a sinister acting figure shows up and menaces the hero, and in which the reader is challenged to figure out the figure's real identity and nature. Ultra Boy is the sinister figure in this tale. Siegel builds his secret identity in two levels. First, Ultra Boy adopts the secret identity of a Smallville student, a fact known to the reader. Secondly, Swan makes clear immediately, right in the splash panel, that Ultra Boy has a deeper mystery of identity, one that Superboy and the reader are challenged to solve. This gives Siegel's mystery plot a complex, two layer construction. In one level of the mystery tale, the reader sees the whole plot from the inside, knowing about Ultra Boy's secret identity as a Smallville teenager. On the second level, Ultra Boy's deeper identity is an explicitly posed mystery. Similarly, we know something about Ultra Boy's mission to Smallville on the first level of the plot, but its deeper underlying aspects are a mystery in the second level of the plot. This gives Siegel's story a great structure of complexity. It is typical of the deliciously complex plots that the Superman family regularly generated in their best stories.

Swan's art is quite smooth. It focuses on the clothes of the characters. Both Ultra Boy and his adult mentor, Mala, have similar futuristic outfits, with identical colors and forms. Both wear an oddly curved belt, belts which curve roundly up in front and back, and which narrow on the sides. These resemble the complex biomorphic curves in Swan's spaceships. The fact that the belts have small objects stuck on their side also resembles Swan's spaceships, which tend to be full of minute protuberances that seem to stand for high tech machinery. The belt protuberances are slightly different and differently arranged in Ultra Boy's and Mala's belts. One suspects that these are machines as well, but this is never made clear in the story. The art gives a sense of futuristic mystery to the characters, a sense that high tech devices are lurking just outside the fringe of the story.

Both Ultra Boy and Mala wear emblems on their chests. These emblems are different for both characters. However, they have similar design features. Both have vertical piece; both have horizontal extensions which go symmetrically to the left and right. Both designs form complex geometric abstractions, with many jagged straight lines forming polygonal boundaries. Both seem inspired by designs in Native American art, such as the emblems on pottery of the American Southwest. Both figures also seem like phallic symbols, and express their characters' virility.

The artists typically gave each kid in Smallville a distinctive look, focusing on a particular style of dress. Ultra Boy, in his secret identity of a typical 1930's Smallville teenager, is no exception. He wears a white shirt and a round necked sweater that covers most of his upper body. He is very similar in appearance to Freddy, the boy to whom Clark Kent sells a hobby kit at the beginning of Swan's "The Super-Hobby of Superboy" (Adventure #215, August 1955). Both youths also look much alike in facial features; both have wavy brown hair. It is interesting to see Swan repeat and expand a visual characterization, seven years later. Ultra Boy is also given a set of striped pants, that look like part of a baseball uniform. His gray clothes contrast Clark Kent's red and blue, and Pete Ross' black and white. His brown hair also contrasts Superboy's black hair and Pete' blond. The striped pants reminds one of Swan's gangsters, who often wear pinstriped suits. However, these gangsters are Swan's menacing grown men, whereas Ultra Boy is a youth. They give Ultra Boy a combination of characteristics of both Swan's young people and grown-ups, two categories that are otherwise usually completely distinct in Swan's work. The way that Ultra Boy hangs out with an older man, Mala, and is a figure of potentially sinister threat, like Swan's gangsters, also links him to these older male figures in Swan's work. So does his extreme seriousness, atypical of Swan's often humorous young males, such as Jimmy Olsen. Swan also includes an actual adult crook in this tale; he reminds one of Charles McGraw, the archetypal 1940's Hollywood tough guy.

The Kryptonite Kid (1962). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Pete Ross has a brief cameo in this story. He stays in character, and helps Superboy preserve his secret identity.

The Day Pete Ross Became a Robot (1962). Writer: Jerry Coleman. In the second Pete Ross story, it was emphasized that Pete knew not just about Superboy's secret identity, but also about his secret tunnel to his house, and his robots. Both of these features were regularly employed by the writers. This is typical of the Superman family approach to plotting - every piece of secret knowledge a character possessed was always exploited to the max in plot construction. The writers were wonderfully alive to the plot opportunities such devices would present. This story concerns the robots. It is more narrowly focused on a specific subject than most Pete Ross tales, and forms a technical exercise on a single theme, one based on Superboy's robots. Within this frame it is surprisingly inventive, however. It shows Pete Ross doubling for Superboy again. At the end of the tale, Pete Ross meets Ultra Boy again. The writers never forgot a connection between characters in the mythos, and used them to generate as many plot ideas as possible.

Ultra Boy and Saturn Girl comment at the end that Pete had shown "amazing ingenuity" in the story. This is archetypal in the Superman family: the highest aspiration for all of the characters is to behave ingeniously during the challenges that confront them. One might note that the word "ingenuity" is also the paradigmatic measure of the genre of mystery fiction: critics like John Dickson Carr measured the success of a puzzle plot mystery story by its quality of ingenuity. This common central use of ingenuity as a yardstick and artistic goal shows the deep relationship between the Superman family stories, and the field of mystery fiction.

Tales of Friendship: The Last Stories

The Secret of the Mystery Legionnaire (1963). Writer: Jerry Siegel. A cocky young applicant applies to join the Legion of Super-Heroes. This tale appeared in Adventure, not in Superboy, but it has much in common with the friendship stories. In it, a new super-powered youth shows up, just as in The Mighty Boy, Mon-El and Ultra Boy tales. He has mysteries in his background too, just like the last two, which are only solved at the end of the story. The friendship stories tend to be tragic in orientation - they are deeply emotional, and their model is such works of doomed relationships as Romeo and Juliet. This story is comic in tone however. The new hero is exuberantly, overwhelmingly confidant, and the whole story is full of joie de vivre. It is one of my favorite works in the series.

The Great Superboy Hoax; The Ordeal of Pete Ross (1963). Writer: Edmond Hamilton. The story is in the Hamilton tradition of one character taking on the role of another: here Pete Ross is given a trial run as Superboy's successor. This is the last major Pete Ross story. It has always been a favorite of mine. Its finale - melodramatic, ingenious, requiring heroic personal and mental effort from a character in service of a cause for which he is passionate - reminds one of the finales of Isaac Asimov's stories, such as Pebble in the Sky (1950). The story has an amplitude of scope that is pleasing.

Other Pete Ross Appearances: Pete has brief cameos in Jerry Siegel's "Dial M for Monster" (Adventure #294, March 1962), "The Fat Boy of Steel" (1962), "The Super-Menace of Smallville" (Adventure #308, May 1963), Leo Dorfman's "Father's Day on Planet Krypton" (1963), "The Titanic Boy of Steel" (1963) and Otto Binder's "The Fists and the Fury" (Superboy #131, July 1966). Superman briefly dreams about Pete Ross' futuristic descendent Pete Ross 5 in Bernstein's "The Jury of Super-Enemies" (Action #286, March 1962). Pete Ross 5 only occurs in this one dream sequence; there is no indication that he is a "real" character in the Superman mythos. The baby Pete Ross, along with other Smallville infants, briefly shows up in a Superbaby tale, Leo Dorfman's "Superbaby Captures the Pumpkin Gang" (Superman #152, April 1962).

The teen age Pete Ross has a small role in a Legion tale written by Jerry Siegel, "The Eight Impossible Missions; The Amazing Winner of the Great Proty Puzzle" (1964). Pete Ross was an honorary member of the Legion. The Legion stories are structured so that each Legionnaire makes a small turn in them, with no central character; Pete Ross' role is equal to the others, and is in the tradition of the tales where he ingeniously exploits his knowledge of Superboy's identity. This is a nice story and appearance. Pete Ross also has a nice cameo in Siegel's Legion tale, "Sunboy's Lost Power" (Adventure #302, November 1962).

Pete Ross is plainly shown on Swan's cover for "Superboy and the 5 Legion Traitors" (1964), sitting next to Lana Lang in the classroom. However, in the actual story, Pete has no dialogue. In fact, the boy to whom Lana talks does not look much like Pete, even though he is wearing Pete's traditional black and white clothes.

Lois Lane appeared in a story about "Plan L", a tale in which she puts a special plan in action to assist Superman. The letters column of Lois Lane #31 (February 1962) says that there will be similar stories about Plan J, with Jimmy Olsen, Plan P, with Perry White, Plan V, with Superman's Kandorian cousin Van-Zee, and Plan PR, with Pete Ross. Both Plan J (written by Jerry Siegel) and Plan P (written by Robert Bernstein) eventually appeared, but I have never seen a Plan V or Plan PR tale. Presumably, they were never written. I would have greatly enjoyed reading about Pete Ross in Plan PR.

Weisinger was very conscious of areas still to be filled in of the Superman mythos. In the letter column of Jimmy Olsen #62 (April, 1962), he pointed out that he'd never yet shown what happened to Pete Ross after he grew up and left Smallville. The grownup Pete Ross has a brief cameo in "The Superman Super-Spectacular" (Action #309, February 1964), written by Edmond Hamilton. This story shows him as still knowing Superman's secret, but now completely out of touch with Superman since his college days. Pete Ross has grown up to be a successful geologist, wealthy from his exploration for oil. It is a terribly inadequate end to the Pete Ross series. It is too bad he did not come back for more! The college age Pete Ross has a role in "Lois Lane's College Scoops" (Lois Lane #55, February 1965), which shows both Pete Ross and Lois going to Raleigh College. Pete Ross is captain of the Raleigh fencing team. He and Superman are still friends, and they are still trading places with each other, just as in the friendship tales. Pete Ross is in just the first of the three brief episodes of this story; his is far and away the best of the three. Pete Ross also plays a major role in Edmond Hamilton's imaginary tale, "Clark Kent's Brother" (Superman #175, February 1965), although he has quite a different personality and role here than in his Superboy series. Different editors brought back Pete Ross many years later in (Superman #270, December 1973).

The False Superboy of Smallville (1964). A teenager pretends to be Superboy. Pete Ross largely dropped out as a Superboy series character after 1963, and his presence was sorely missed. This tale has a little bit of the feel of the Ross stories, however, with a teenage classmate of Clark Kent who pulls off an ingenious scheme. He is a much more pathetic figure than the successful Ross, however, and is one of the many young people with family trouble that Superboy often helped. This tale is sort of a last hurrah for tales involving Superboy's secret identity.

Jerry Coleman and Imaginary Tales

The Super-Family From Krypton (1962). Writer: Jerry Coleman. This 3 part story took up an entire issue of Superboy magazine. It is one of the best works in the Superboy series. It is what the editors called an "imaginary story": one that takes place outside of the main plot line of the Superman series, asking what-if questions. Here Coleman asks what would have happened if Superboy's parents Jor-El and Lara has survived the explosion of Krypton and come to Earth. The prejudice that the Kryptonians face on Earth is clearly reminiscent of racial prejudice, a subject much on the minds of Americans in the Civil Rights era in 1962. The story also has many interesting science fictional elements. Jor-El uses his great knowledge of Kryptonian science to accomplish many feats. These aspects anticipate the great story of Leo Dorfman's "The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue" (Superman #162, July 1963) the following year, and probably influenced that "imaginary" tale. One might also note that it is Lara's scientific skills that save the family at the opening of the story, a quietly feminist plot element that is very different from the treatment of women in print and film of that era. The tale shows strong storytelling throughout.

Hollywood Satire - and Other Comedy

The Super Star of Hollywood (1960). Writer: Jerry Siegel. Krypto becomes a movie star in Hollywood. This is the definitive Hollywood satire in the Superman family. I particularly liked the issue of "Dog's Life" shown.

During 1959-1960 Siegel wrote several tales about the perils of celebrity. Most were pretty grim. This one is light-hearted and hilarious, however.

The Millionaire Pupil (1960). Writer: Jerry Siegel. A spoiled rich kid moves to Smallville and tries to buy his way though school. This is one of Siegel's tales emphasizing comedy and satire. The kid is as cocky and arrogant as Krypto is in many of the comic tales about Krypto written by Siegel. He also resembles Siegel's creation, Mr. Mxyzptlk, in being a comic pest. Like Mr. Mxyzptlk, he has great "powers", in this case deriving from his great wealth.

Siegel also shows some of the way-out things the kid can do with his money. In this, the tale resembles those of other comics characters as Richie Rich and Ernie Bushmiller's Rollo (in the Nancy comic strip).

The story combines both satire and wish-fulfillment fantasy. The kid is not a villain; he is doing what most people would be tempted to do if they had too much money. In some ways, he is as independent as Siegel's heroine, Supergirl, of adult supervision and control. Both young people let their ideas and actions soar, and fly as high as their powers allow. Siegel's Bizarros and Legionnaires also do whatever they please.

Superbaby's Super-Pranks (1964). This Superbaby story satirizes the world of Hollywood actors and producers. The Superman family loved to do stories about this - see Lois Lane's acting tales. These stories were always comic and good natured - the editors plainly felt that Hollywood's flamboyance was suitable for some gentle satire.

Later Stories of Smallville

The Millionaire of Smallville (1965). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Art: George Papp. To humor his seriously ill uncle, Clark Kent temporarily becomes his pampered millionaire ward. There is a lot of pleasant comedy here, reminiscent of such spoofs as Richie Rich and Rollo in the comic strip Nancy. This tale treats ice cream as something kids would want more than anything else. This was a common idea in cartoons, movies and TV shows of the era. There is still a lot of psychological truth in this: today's kids like ice cream, too. The ice cream scenes are fun to read.

The mainly comic story also underscores Clark's close relationship with his parents, and his need for them. Such human needs for affection and relationships were persistent Dorfman themes.

Clark Kent's Single Identity (1965). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: George Papp. When Superboy mysteriously loses all his powers for many weeks, he copes as best he can, exclusively in his Clark Kent identity. This well developed story seems to be in full Binder traditions. It shows how the central premise affects Clark in dozens of aspects of daily life. Binder usually included such episodes in his transformation tales, each one imaginatively showing how the transformation could interact with some part of ordinary life. This story has much of the same feel.

This story can be considered a transformation tale of sorts. However, it shows Superboy transformed into an ordinary person, without super-powers. This is a little different from Binder's true transform tales, in which the protagonist usually becomes something far out of the ordinary, such as a wolf man or a giant. The story also differs from transform tales, in that the events show not just ordinary life, but how Superboy now interfaces with his mythos. We see the powerless Superboy working with his robots, interfacing with Chief Parker, using his indestructible glasses from Krypton, and so on. These are not the daily life experiences that show up when Jimmy Olsen or Lois Lane appear in a Binder transform story. The story is detailed, exploring virtually every aspect of Superboy's life in Smallville. It is thoroughly connected with the mythos. This connection enhances the story's appeal and warmth. It is like a visit to Smallville, and an inside look at Superboy's life. All the familiar aspects of that life are present here, playing a role in the tale.

The tale also is structured as an sf mystery story. Neither Superboy nor the reader has any idea of the cause of Superboy's transform. In fact, Superboy at first attributes it to Red Kryptonite, a false but logical idea. Only gradually is this notion proven false. Binder's treatment here is thoroughly logical. Such a mystery surrounding the transform's cause makes the tale more elaborate than a typical transform tale. Also, for one of the few times in a Binder transform story, we see the distress that such a transform must cause the protagonist. Superboy copes with his new situation with the same grit and determination that Binder's transformed heroes always display, but he also expresses sadness and fear.

Papp does a good job with the baseball coach. He is one of Papp's musclemen in sweatshirts. There are also some good portraits of gangsters later in the story.

Clark Kent's Butler (1965). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: George Papp. The Kent's win a butler for a week as a prize, but his presence in the Kent home threatens Superboy's secret identity. Binder had a flair for stories about protecting Superboy's secret identity. This tale adds some nice ideas to this Binder specialty.

In Leo Dorfman's "The Millionaire of Smallville" (1965), Clark got a sympathetic butler, when he became the ward of his rich uncle. Here he gets a crooked butler. Both characters have their comic side, and both interfere with Superboy's life of crime fighting.

When Krypto Was Sold (1965). Writer: Edmond Hamilton. Art: George Papp. Krypto goes undercover as a non-super powered dog and new pet to boastful rich kid Ronnie Vale, so that he and Superboy can show him the error of his ways. Ronnie Vale is not malicious or a villain. But his constant boasting about his wealth and material possessions makes him understandably unpopular with the other young guys in Smallville. Ronnie Vale is one of Hamilton's outsiders, people who have been rejected by the rest of society. Unlike most such Hamilton characters, Ronnie is not blameless: he has brought his problems on himself by showing off. Still, Hamilton is deeply sympathetic to him. Ronnie, like other such Hamilton heroes, will struggle hard to find a place for himself.

Despite the title, Krypto's role as a non-super dog is only one thread in this story. Ronnie's problems with his bragging is the central theme of the tale. Ronnie and his attitude are treated with seriousness here, while Krypto adds vibrant comedy relief to the story. Krypto stays in character here, as the vain, over-enthused, but decent mutt we all know and love from other tales. Such characterization of Krypto mainly appeared in comedy stories by Jerry Siegel. Hamilton keeps to Siegel's traditions here. However, Krypto's mutterings about being unappreciated here are a bit more justified than in Siegel tales.

Superbaby's First Fight (1965). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: George Papp. Based on a cover by Curt Swan. Superbaby interferes with a boxing match at the Smallville county fair. The Superman magazines loved tales about boxing, and regularly featured them.

This is a tale with a pleasant plot. Many of the ideas in it are far-fetched and comic in tone, but Binder has them all dovetail nicely together. It is clearly developed around Swan's cover. Binder's two main sf ideas here are designed to rationalize and explain away problems developing from the cover situation. Such rationalizations have long been a Binder specialty. Both ideas are inventions of one of the characters Binder contributed to the Superman mythos, Professor Potter; and both involve sf transforms, a favorite Binder plot device.

The two rationalizations can also be seen as a "challenge and response". The boxing situation on the cover offers a challenge; each Binder sf idea forms a response.

Papp does a great job with the boxers. There are good illustrations of Dynamite Dick in his suit; then pictures of both Dick and his opponent Lefty Hooker in their trunks. Dynamite Dick has brown hair and green trunks, while Lefty Hooker has blond hair and wears red trunks. The opposition of red and green is a classic color scheme in the Superman family.

The Toughest Kid in Smallville (1965). Writer: Leo Dorfman. Art: George Papp. This imaginary tale shows what Clark Kent's life might have been like, if instead of pretending to be meek and mild, he had pretended to be a jerk and trouble maker instead. This is the most minimalist idea for an imaginary tale in Superman history. Most imaginary tales deal with massive changes in Superman's life, such as, "What would have happened if Krypton had never exploded?" By contrast, this tale looks only at how Superboy might have conducted himself differently, in his Clark Kent role. This minimalist quality hardly hurts the tale: it is a well developed, interesting look at an alternative role for Clark Kent. It shows an ingenious use of the Imaginary tale format, to explore a different sort of question than the Imaginary tales usually cover.

Other tales sometimes showed different existences for Clark Kent: for example, "Clark Kent, He-Man" (Adventure #305, March 1963) has the Kents moving to a different town, getting new identities, and allowing Superboy to have a secret identity as a star athlete. These stories are not Imaginary: they depict events that actually happened to the Kents. One difference: no one would object to Superboy becoming a star athlete, but a tale that showed Superboy actually experimenting with the identity of a juvenile delinquent and junior hood might have seemed objectionable to many readers and their parents. By making this tale an Imaginary story, the story only shows what would have happened had Superboy done this. The story also points out why this would have been a bad idea, and all the trouble it would have caused. By making the events purely hypothetical, they become less objectionable. The story itself points out that such behavior is not a good plan for Superboy.

Adventure Comics

Each issue of Adventure featured one long story about Superboy, and then one or more stories about other heroes, a whole procession of whom passed through the magazine. The Superboy stories were closely linked to those in Superboy magazine. However, they tended to be less central to the Superboy saga. They also tended to be more comic in tone.

The Superboy stories in Adventure after 1960 are uneven, to say the least. The stories written by Otto Binder or Jerry Siegel range from very good to at least interesting, but those of other writers tend to be Bad with a capital B. Since non-Binder tales make up the overwhelming majority of the magazine's contents during the Silver Age, we are faced with a comic book with a lot of tenth rate material. There are exceptions, good tales such as Jerry Coleman's "The Origin of the Superman - Batman Team" and Jerry Siegel's "The Super Star of Hollywood" and "Superboy and the Mermaid From Atlantis", but most of the non-Binder material is just plain terrible. This is the dark underbelly of the Weisinger world, the homeland of bad fiction.

Early Adventure Tales

The Farmer Takes it Easy (1946). Writer: Don Cameron. Art: John Sikela. Superboy helps a poor, struggling farm kid stay in school. This story is also the Origin of Jack Smart, a reporter from the Daily Planet who comes to Smallville to do stories on Superboy. He appears in a few more Superboy tales, including the next issue's "The Whiz Kid Club" (#111, December 1946), where Sikela's portraits of him are the main good feature in a minor tale. Jack Smart is a typical likable, brash young reporter. He is less established as a reporter than Clark Kent or Lois Lane will be, but a little more advanced in his career than Jimmy Olsen. This is a rank and age group of reporters that was otherwise rarely seen in the Superman family. The Superman family always idolized reporters; so did numerous movies and radio shows of the era.

The Adventure Comics stories of the later 1940's were among the earliest of all stories to feature Superboy; before then, the grown up Superman was the main lead. Like many of the early Superboy tales, this story is quite juvenile in its content, although far from saccharine in tone. It focuses on young kids and their problems. It also is typical of the early Superboy stories in that its characters are quite poor. The young farm boy here is so pressed with duties on his financially stressed farm that it looks like he will have to drop out of school, before Superboy intervenes.

The 33rd Christmas (1947). Writer: Don Cameron. Art: John Sikela. A mysterious figure makes presents every year for the school kids. Sentimental, emotionally involving Christmas story. Adventure regularly published Christmas tales every year; this one is the best. Like many Superboy stories, it focused on the struggles of a poor but nice person.

Superboy, Toy-Tester (1947). Writer: Don Cameron. Art: John Sikela. Related to the cover by Jack Burnley. To raise money to buy a favorite teacher a present, Superboy gets a job testing toys for robustness and avoidance of wear and tear. This simple story has a unique charm. It is not clear why. Possibly because testing toys looks fun. Perhaps because the main characters are not mobsters, but two rival groups of toy manufacturers. One does have an assistant who looks like a muscular mug, however. He wears a green suit, and functions as a crook in the plot. The story also has some nice humor.

In 1947, Superboy was still a small kid; later, he would become the teenager of most 1950's and 1960's Superboy stories. So playing with kid's toys is still natural to him.

The story is perhaps related to the delightful cover, one of my favorites in Adventure. It has some gentle surrealism. The cover can be considered as a form of visual pun.

The Quiz Biz Broadcast (1947). Writer: Don Cameron. Art: John Sikela. Superboy helps a young genius from the slums become a radio quiz kid and raise money for a new playground.

While stories like "The Farmer Takes it Easy" (1946) looked at farm people in financial difficulty, this story examines the urban poor. The genius kid in the tale is treated completely sympathetically. He is the hope of his entire neighborhood, and everyone in it tries to help him. This is typical of the respect for intellect that is always present in DC comic books. The theme of a whole community coming together is also present in the same team's "The 33rd Christmas" (1947). And "Superboy: Crime-Fighting Poet" (1948) has a series of classes whose students make up a collective "protagonist". The group of students as a whole are the "hero", and they have something of the feel of the communities in these tales.

While Superboy performs some ingenious feats in this tale, it mainly has little to do with him or his superpowers. It could almost be a mainstream, non-science fiction tale. Superboy himself points out that the kid hero could have answered these questions without the aid of Superboy's powers. This is an early "reflective" passage in the narration. Superboy looks at the feats he has just performed to collect quiz show answers, then tells the hero how he could have arrived at the same answers independently. It is as if Superboy is offering an alternative history, another path that the story could have taken, to get at the same result. It is like a small Imaginary Story embedded in the dialogue. Such reflective features as Imaginary Stories and Untold Tales will later be major story telling strategies in the Silver Age Superman family.

Perry White, Cub Reporter (1947). Writer: Don Cameron. At age 21, new college journalism grad Perry White applies for his first reporting job with the Daily Planet. Nice story that shows us the early working life of Daily Planet editor Perry White. The splash narration explicitly says that since "we" (Adventure Comics) were showing the readers the early lives of Superboy and Clark Kent, a similar presentation of young Perry White can be made. Later on, during the Silver Age (from 1959 on), there was a systematic attempt to create Untold Tales, that filled in origins of various parts of the Superman mythos. These stories were typically labeled as Untold Tales, and the writers had a systematic rationale for presenting such a story. However, in 1947 no such concept existed. The idea of showing the early life of a continuing character was perhaps a little daring back then. In any case, the writer and editor believed that some sort of rationale was needed on the splash, to justify presenting such a story.

Even in this tale, we see Perry entirely through his job at the Daily Planet. Only rarely over the years do we see Perry in any other role than either doing his newspaper work, or assisting his friend Superman with a mission.

New reporter Perry is dressed in a green jacket and bow tie. This is exactly the costume that will later be associated with Jimmy Olsen, also a cub reporter.

Perry really has to run the gauntlet here from Planet Editor Mr. Hobbs. The story shows the difficulties young people often faced on their jobs. The young readers of the magazine could probably identify with this.

A Lesson for a Bully (1947). Writer: Bill Finger. Art: ?. Bullying athlete Pete Brant launches a dirty trick campaign for school mayor; he is challenged by honest candidate Tom Dawson, with Superboy's help. This is one of the least juvenile of the early Superboy tales. Although it describes a school election, nearly everything in the tale could translate into grown-up politics. And down and dirty elections are unfortunately still with us, never more so than in the year 2000. The tale is gripping throughout, and full of inventive incident. Finger was long interested in political situations and public life. His "Superman Under the Green Sun" (Superman #155, August 1962) is one of the most powerful of the anti-Nazi tales in comic book history, for instance.

The story has the "challenge and response" construction that is familiar in Superman family tales. Usually the bad candidate launches a dirty trick; Superman and the good candidate respond to this challenge with some elaborately plotted actions of their own. Finger often constructed his tales through hoaxes. Here the crooked candidate is often up to elaborate hoaxes, which he inflicts as dirty tricks on the good one. And sometimes, Superboy and the sympathetic candidate might launch a counter-hoax of their own, to cope with this situation. This gives lots of ingenuity to the story.

Finger opens the tale with a portrait of a star athlete as an obnoxious jerk and bully. While some athletes behave this way in real life, one rarely sees a frank portrayal of this in our sports worshipping media.

Superboy: Crime-Fighting Poet (1948). Writer: Don Cameron. Art: ?. When crooks go undercover as teachers in his school, Superboy has to root them out. Best of the early Superboy stories.

The most fascinating part of this story is that its second half is entirely in verse. The narration, dialogue and text passages displayed in the illustrations all make up one long, unfolding poem. Cameron's script shows tremendous zing and verve. The poetry is rhymed and in a steady meter. The story takes place in an English class where the students are studying "poetry and folk ballads", and the verse is in fact in the tradition of many folk ballads and poems. The verse is vigorous and imaginative, without ever being pretentious, and it does have the feel of a good folk ballad. Cameron also does interesting things with the mix of narration and dialogue, having them play against each other in unusual ways. People also break into each other's dialogue, sometimes adding extra passages to a refrain, using identical rhyme schemes. The effect is sometimes gently comic, as well as being ingenious. The plot of the tale is also light hearted and funny, and the poetry is definitely in the comic tradition.

Super-hero stories very rarely used poetry or verse. The juvenile nature of the early Superboy perhaps helped make this approach acceptable here: books for very young readers are sometimes in verse. There are probably more humorous and funny animal comics that use poetry, however. For example, take Beep Beep the Roadrunner, the comic book adaptation of the popular Roadrunner movie cartoons. In the movies, there is only one Roadrunner, and he never talks except to say "Beep Beep". In the comic book, there is a whole family of Roadrunners, and they all talk to each other using rhymed couplets of dialogue.

There was a long comic book tradition of humorous suspense tales in school: see the Slam Bradley story "Undercover in Grade School" (Detective Comics #5, July 1937), for instance.

The World's Wackiest Inventions (1952). Art: Curt Swan. Based on a cover by Win Mortimer. When Superboy kindly makes it look as if a strange helicopter invention works, things snowball and wacky inventors of all sorts descend on Smallville. The main appeal in this tale consists of the strange inventions. They show considerable mechanical ingenuity. Their technical properties form the actual plot of the tale. This is hard to do: a story whose very plot substance is made up of engineering ideas.

One of the inventions is actually on Win Mortimer's cover. The rest occur throughout the story. Curt Swan makes them look both comic and ingenious.

The story shows sophistication about financial matters, such as stock. This sophistication was common in DC stories in the early 1950's, then mysteriously disappeared in the Silver Age.

A Mask for a Hero (1952). Art: John Sikela. Based on a cover by Win Mortimer. A stranger in Smallville rescues many lives in a fire, but then goes masked so that no one can see his face. Excellent mystery story. The Smallville residents and the reader all try to determine why the hero wants his face kept secret, and what he might be hiding. The basic structure of this mystery tale is quite original, focusing not on whodunit, but why the stranger is concealing his face. Another unusual feature of the story's mystery plot construction: Superboy is often trying to prove that various ideas about the Masked Hero are wrong. He has vowed to help the man protect his privacy, and such conjectures are threats to it. Superboy has to use good detective work to disprove these hypotheses. Proving a "negative statement" is very difficult under any circumstances, as most scientists know, and it is often hard to see how Superboy will do this. All of this gives the tale an unusual plot architecture.

The story has the episodic construction familiar in many Superman family tales. Each episode deals with another potential reason for his hidden face. This means that many potential solutions, most of them false, are put forward in the story, and their plot possibilities are explored. We also look at various non-mystery situations that are triggered by the central idea.

As in "The Super-Artist of Smallville" (Superboy #25, April-May 1953), we see artist figures in Smallville. This is handled with considerable first hand knowledge.

Reporter Bill Wilder is a vividly drawn character. As is often the case with conspicuous characters in comics of this period, he is given a green suit. Such a color seems to make a character stand out. I've been seeing green suited men in comic books all my life, so they look normal to me, but it is not clear if men have ever worn green suits in real life in any era! Both Wilder and the Masked Hero show considerable machismo. The Masked Hero also shows up in a tux for a banquet.

Silver Age Adventure Stories

Clark Kent's Bodyguard (1956). Writer: ?. Art: John Sikela. When Clark is a witness to a crime, he is assigned a bodyguard who trails him everywhere, interfering with his job as Superboy.

The private eye hired to be Clark's bodyguard here is dressed like a typical film noir hero: trenchcoat, hat, tie. This is one of the few appearances of such a traditional looking private eye anywhere in the Superman family. The characters are usually far more likely to meet FBI agents, or other government officials.

Joe Smith, Man of Steel (1957). Writer: Otto Binder. Art: John Sikela. Joe Smith, an ordinary nice guy in the small town of Midvale whose

Superboy

Lana Lang's Secret Identities

The Game Stories

Mythos Spoofing Tales

Super-Infants and Super-Animals

Leo Dorfman's first work

The Didactic Stories

Science Fiction and George Papp

Mystery Tales

Challenges

Curt Swan

Jerry Siegel and Color

Other Color Stories

The Tales of Friendship

Tales of Friendship: The Ingenious Pete Ross Stories

Tales of Friendship: The Last Stories

Jerry Coleman and Imaginary Tales

Hollywood Satire - and Other Comedy

Later Stories of Smallville

Adventure Comics

Early Adventure Tales

Silver Age Adventure Stories