SUPERBOY #93 (1961)
by Jerry Siegel and George Papp
Nothing creepy about this cover. At all.
The “Superboy Identity Detection Kit ™” deserves a zoom-in:
Everything in this set is amazing:
A) the fact that everything is labeled, including “Scissors to cut Clark’s Hair With”
B) the kit includes recordings, which are completely useless without a record player
C) is it just me or both of “Clark’s footprints” are of the same foot?
D) she already has two molds of Clark’s foot and in the cover she’s making a third one. There’s a joke about foot fetish somewhere…
Also amazing: Superboy has discovered a rock that flies “on its own free will”.
Forget the part about anti-gravity: the rock has free will. (WTF???)
That is such an amazing find that it deserves being tied to his action figures with a string.
We truly start off with Clark Kent picking some apples for Lana Lang:
While stopping a crime at the same time:
This is a shocking revelation to Lana!
By which I mean that she now has positive proof that Superboy is actually Clark Kent.
And we have positive proof that she’s insane.
She then follows Clark as he saves the fire department:
Leaving aside the fact that the Smallville Fire Department somehow managed to SET ITSELF ON FIRE (no wonder they constantly need Superboy to save them!), Superboy manages to get protect his secret identity once again.
Lana’s argument doesn’t really convince her father:
I mean, it REALLY doesn’t convince him. In fact, he points out while the entire premise of “I’ll expose his identity” is ridiculous:
Which shows an AMAZING lack of self-awareness from the DC writers, since they were constantly pulling off the same trick with Lois Lane in the Superman books.
Unfortunately, Lana’s dad goes just a liiiittle overboard with is otherwise justifiable anger.
Leading to… uhm… let’s call it the worst aged panel I’ve seen so far.
Not that the following one is much better.
Luckily we go back to… let’s call them more acceptable ways to punish your teenage daughter.
With all this time off, Lana has time to reflect of the true priorities of life.
Later she finds Clark sneaking into Superboy’s secret cave (I guess “the Super-Cave” never caught on), only to find him next to Superboy!
Clark has an explanation, of course: he volunteered to be Superboy’s guinea pig.
Sounds legit.
She then tries another experiment: checking if Clark’s tie is fireproof.
I think Clark’s look sums up the logic behind it pretty well.
Other things that don’t work: proving his hair is indestructible…
…and switching his prescription glasses with fake glasses.
Hey, this means the cover was a lie: those AREN’T Clark’s glasses!!!
And when this doesn’t work either, she decides to use a fluoroscope.
No, she didn’t pull it out of her kit, it was randomly sitting around in the Super-Cave.
This fails in an strange way: Superboy’s skeleton doesn’t show up at all.
That’s interesting. Does this kind of thing mean that Clark would risk his secret if he ever went through the TSA to catch a plane?
Anyway, this FINALLY convinces Lana to give up her suspects.
Except, as the editor’s box shows, she clearly won’t and this issue was completely useless.
This is where we discover that “Clark Kent” was actually Chameleon Boy from the Legion of Super-Heroes!
Who then explains to Superboy how he got there (despite the fact that Superboy already knew all of this!!!)
Historical significance: 0/10
As usual for this period, nothing from this story will ever be used again.
Superboy/Legion significance: 0/10
I’m putting both together because this story is rightly forgotten.
Silver Age-ness: 7/10
Focus on the secret identity aside, there isn’t much that is particularly Silver Age.
Then again, this is one of the issues that focuses the most on this aspect.
Does it stand the test of time?: 1/10
In her insanity, Lana’s methods for proving Superboy’s identity were relatively logical.
But this is also the issue with her almost being spanked, so I can’t give it TOO much credit!
Time travel doesn’t work like that
There’s nothing wrong from a technical standpoint, but… you want to write an article on Superboy, you have to all of his history, and THIS is the moment you want to write about!?
The glasses, they do nothing! / The glasses, they do something!
You would think Clark’s efforts to prove he’s not Superboy would work on Lana, but most of them fail completely.
On a literal sense, the glasses really don’t do anything: they aren’t prescription glasses! You’d think Clark would wear real glasses just in case… sure, he doesn’t need them, but with X-Ray vision I doubt he’d have trouble to see anyway.
Amazing letters of the issue: “why do you make Superbaby talk like an idiot?”
And my personal favorite: “Why didn’t Superboy commit cannibalism?”
I think the issue is best summed up by two panels: