Monday, September 19, 2011

Superboy #1

The "New 52" marches on, and brings us to a completely new version of Superboy.

This story starts with the title character being studied by the scientists who created him.

He's a clone of Superman (who presumably doesn't know anything about this) with human DNA mixed in. He's a mystery to the scientists, but we hear his thoughts and discover there's a lot more to the "Teen of Steel" than we might expect.

It's a solid story by Scott Lobdell, with the only drawback being that the whole "hero in a test tube" story has been used quite a bit lately - see Flashpoint: Project Superman for the most recent example.

Still, there are some good touches, including the true identity of the scientist known as Red, which may surprise you (unless someone spoiled it for you the way they did for me - durned Internet)!

The artwork by R. B. Silva and Rob Lean is quite good, with a fresh, clean look. There are a few minor quibbles - for example, at one point Superboy is supposed to be levitating, but it looks like he's just standing there. But those are minor gripes - I really like the look of this book.

The opening issue sets up some interesting potential directions for the series, and gives us a glimpse of a certain team you'd expect Superboy to be part of. It's a promising start, and hopefully future issues will make him less of a victim and more of a hero we can support.

Grade: B+

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1 comment:

Brian said...

Superboy #1 was fun and well-done. Lobdell threw in some nice surprises, including the use of my favorite Wildstorm character from the 1990's. I'm looking forward to the second issue.