Last Week’s Comics 9/21/2011
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Superboy #1
(DC – writer: Scott Lobdell; art: RB Silva)
DC’s reboot rolls right on, adding secondary and tertiary characters to its tier one efforts. Like Pigs, Superboy delivers its premise on the last page, and while it has promise, it’s already been explored by Geoff Johns in his Teen Titans run. The issue starts strong but quickly falls apart, relying instead on poor dialogue and eye-rolling references to previously established stories.
Scott Lobdell lives in two worlds in this issue. On the one hand, he does a stellar job of internalizing Superboy’s thoughts. The best writing of the issue occurs in his thought bubbles, which range from his
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explorations of his powers to his analysis of humanity. We get some great descriptions of Superboy’s awareness of his telekinesis, as well as his attempts at understanding the knowledge he has, regardless of never learning it (he spends the majority of the issue in a glass tube).
But it’s the other parts of the issue that fail. The one person with any speck of humanity is a scientist working for Project N.O.W.H.E.R.E. (lame, I know) who feels sorry for the clone she’s experimenting on. She feels close to Superboy, speaking to him as if she’s his lover in a hushed voice only he can hear. The final pages of the issue introduce another scientist who is the typical “evil meanie,” a man who looks like a cross between Eldon Tyrell from Blade Runner and Dieter Laser from The Human Centipede (much more like the latter). Also, we finally find out why Superboy was created: to seek out and destroy the Teen Titans (Red Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl and a few new characters).
This makes sense because Scott Lobdell is writing Teen Titans as well. I like the idea of Superboy as a weapon, but only because Geoff Johns wrote such a cool arc where Superboy’s programming finally kicked in (since he was cloned using part of Lex Luthor’s DNA, Johns wrote him as a ticking time bomb and then a walking weapon – once Luthor turned on his programming, Conner Kent went on a rampage, shaved his head and slashed a giant “L” into his chest). That was cool. This, however, feels like a repeat of the past.
I like RB Silva’s art, and while it’s a bit juvenile-looking, it’s clean and colorful (thanks to Rob Lean), and Superboy looks like a badass in the end. But the final page isn’t enough to keep the rest of the issue afloat. There are attempts at building some kind of depth to the characters, but they’re short, and it’s evident that Lobdell wants to focus much more of his time on Superboy. I know this sounds strange, but when Superboy is the focus of the writing, the issue is superb. When he’s not, and time is devoted to those around him, the issue feels weak. And unless Superboy stays a weapon for awhile, I won’t be sticking with this series that long. To have a designed weapon go from bad to good in one issue is cheap. And I don’t want to keep throwing away money on cheap writing.
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