Superboy is one of DC’s New 52 relaunch titles, and so far, it’s off to an interesting start.
Of course, we’ve only just met this new version of Superboy, who is actually a clone of Superman, secretly created using a partly human genetic source.
The story opens to Superboy accidentally destroying the team who was responsible for creating him, and revealing his greatest weakness: a complete lack of empathy.
Unlike Superman, he seems to lack the ability to care about the suffering of others, and so has no desire to help them.
His motivations are all selfish, and while he seems to have a lot of, possibly programmed, knowledge about the world, he’s extremely immature. Of course, he’s only a few years old, despite his teenaged appearance.
Many of the secondary characters are given little detail yet, but already seem compelling: the sole surviving scientist from the team which created Superboy, and flame haired scientist called only “Red” by the other characters; a mercenary named Rose who has been assigned to take out Superboy if he gets out of control, but whom they seem to be training Superboy to be attracted to; and finally a mysterious figure called Templar, who seems to want to use Superboy’s powers in an attack on some of the DC universes younger heroes.
The story is engaging enough to follow, but it feels like it would be limited in scope.
This first arc will be interesting to see play out, but I can’t see much potential for interest beyond that. I suppose it depends on how this first arc turns out.
Superboy #1 is available wherever you buy comics, including the ComiXology store.
