Superboy #1

This is the last of the New 52 issue #1's I'm planning on reviewing. On to #2's soon!

Title: Superboy
Issue: 1
Date: November 2011
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Penciler: R.B. Silva
Inker: Rob Lean
Colorist: The Hories
Letterer: Carlos M. Mangual
Editor: Chris Conroy
Cover: Eric Canete, Guy Major

Superboy is a clone being grown in a tank, and the experiment is about to be terminated because the team of (mad) scientists involved can't detect any signs of consciousness. Until he wakes up and kills a bunch of people. That probably counts.

So Superboy is falling in love with the one scientist who showed a bit of compassion, except that once she's placed in charge of the project by means of the mad-science equivalent of a battlefield commission, she's suddenly married to her job and Superboy is left to his virtual reality world, a world where teenagers who look remarkably like Slade Wilson's daughter talk philosophy and distract the new kid in town from doing the important things like rescuing people trapped in burning buildings.

In the non-virtual world, Rose Wilson is the hired-assassin-on-standby in case things get out of hand a second time. Like THAT is going to help.

Half of Superboy's DNA comes from Superman. The other half is not-quite-revealed in the last words of one of the dying scientists. The scientists try to figure out why the kid has no empathy. They even consider the possibility that the human donor could have been "a deeply pathological, megalomaniacal narcissist (That sounds familiar. I'm thinking the initials L.L are involved, and I don't mean Lois Lane. Or Lana Lang. Or that mermaid chick. Or... Oh, never mind.).

Because of course, we all know that personality is inherited as a simple Mendelian trait. Not that I should be surprised. Comics writers have been writing about genetics since X-Men #1 and it sometimes feels like none of them ever bother to actually learn anything about the subject.

So the guy behind project N.O.W.H.E.R.E. (sadly we don't get to find out what the acronym stands for) shows up and decides he wants to field-test Superboy against the Teen Titans. Seems pretty obvious where this is heading.

Rating: 5/10