Superboy 18 (Review)

In “Mind Your Manners,” the story opens with Superboy having just returned his borrowed millions to the Manhattan bank vault that he robbed. The supervillain Plasmus burns his way into the bank at the same time, and since the villain’s aim is the one you would expect from somebody breaking into a bank–not to put money back, but to take it out–the two fight.

Dr. Psycho, now a professional psychic in Manhattan, is near enough to the battle to snoop around. When he arrives on the scene, his astral form gets caught in Superboy’s powerful unconscious memories. At first, he isn’t in control, and after discovering some of Superboy’s drives and desires he is ultimately ejected, but then he dives back into Superboy’s memories to discover a power-armored Lex Luthor at the center of them.

In the backup story, “Good Boy,” an alien has crash-landed in the Amazon jungle, and she is about to be murdered by Citadel troops. Krypto responds to her cry for help, and the story ends there without closure. It is more of a teaser trailer than a full-fledged backup story.

Dr. Psycho is an excellent choice for the villain in this story arc. He’s one of the epic supervillains that, despite all his self-deprecating mannerisms, wins as often as he loses. Wonder Woman has so few supervillains that can be used more than a few issues in a row without reader fatigue that it seems a shame to rob her of her best one. The New 52 Superboy, though, doesn’t have much of a rogues’ gallery of his own yet, and this villain that specializes in the human mind seems custom fitted to our hero Superboy and his interior drama.

“Good Boy” may be the first of several Krypto solo stories and not a one-shot, as Scott Lobdell has been on record of wanting to use Krypto in the New 52. Hopefully someone gives that shaggy dog a good grooming so he can look like the cuddly silver age super canine original. “Junkyard Dog Krypto” is fine until that happens.

After the arduous H’el on Earth took us far from the Superboy storyline, Lobdell and Co. have given us both a new jumping on point and a sanctuary for the established readership. A simple brawl returns us to Superboy’s own plot points, and the story ends with a promise to divulge the rest of Superboy’s origin story, which has been over a year and a half in the making. There is also the beginning of a new Krypto story, which is exciting because the New 52–with the exception of Dex-Starr and Socks the Cat–has done its best to distance itself from the DCU tradition of animal heroes until now. There have been ups and downs on this title since its inception, but the new direction is captivating and you should check it out.