How Superboy became a man!

[flint_marko]

This is from DC Super Stars #12.

Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen are on a plane when they pass over Smallville, and Clark flashes back to when he was Superboy.

Smallville is attacked by a UFO. Superboy stops it.




Later, Clark is at the school dance.





Suddenly the robot teacher shows up and reveals Clark's identity as Superboy, telling him to fight him. Superboy battles his teacher before realizing that the fight was all in his head, and that he was still dancing. The robot teacher telepathically tells him that distinguishing reality from illusion was another test.









Later, three sasquatches are wreaking havoc in Smallville. Superboy ties them up with his cape, only to discover that they had recently been captured and were going to be used in a circus. Feeling bad for them, he secretly lets them go and releases them into the woods. His robot teacher shows up, telling him that the sasquatches were another test.

Comments

[donnblake]

Ugk...

That's squicky.

[darkknightjrk]

You know, in terms of "hero falls in love with a woman only to see her murdered by the villain" stories, I got to give this one points for the random death sentence of having Bigfoot murder her with a rock to the head.

[beoweasel]

...Okay, what the flaming fuck?

So, it would have been bad if it turned out that girl was just a duplicate or a robot created by Clark's mechanical teacher as a test of his character, but it's made a thousand times worse that he took a girl against her will, and altered her personality to make her fall in love with Clark, just to test him.. Seriously, I would have turned the robotic rapist into fucking scrap.

[neurotic_kitten]

This. I thought they were going with the "She's a robot" route, but then we get "I kidnapped and brainwashed a teenage girl so you could get laid". And the whole kidnapping just brings a whole lot of more plot holes, isn't her family and the police looking for her? With who is she staying on Smallville? How long has she been on this state? Ugh.

On a less creepy note, the first clue that everything wasn't as it seemed is that she didn't have a "L" name.

[bruinsfan]

Seems to me she'd been in her brainwashed state for the two weeks she'd been in Smallville, which apparently was also long enough for her to become the most popular girl in school.

[cleome45]

There's something really weird about reading these scans almost back-to-back with stillanerd's "Clark and Lisa" scans further down the page.

I don't even know what thinky thoughts I think right now, but they're there. :/

[silverhammerman]

Then he melted that creepy fucker down with his heat vision. Just try to contradict me.

This is just such a terrible story, I can't believe this got through, even back in the day. I honestly cannot fathom why on Earth they didn't make the girl a robot, or at least pull back on the "That's right folks, Superboy just got lucky." vibes. This is genuinely awful.

[freezer]

I honestly cannot fathom why on Earth they didn't make the girl a robot

They don't even have the "Clark would've been able to tell with his super senses." You can't tell me Sex Trafficer Bot there couldn't have made a robot that could fool him.

It's telling that Marvel pulled a near-identical reveal with the (first) Gwen Stacy Clone retcon and it was portrayed as an unquestionably evil thing.

[joeyconqueso]

"Then he melted that creepy fucker down with his heat vision. "

Seriously, we can't have him going to other planets and pulling this shit on other victims. He's as bad as Sleez.

[icon_uk]

He only cares about Kryptonians, so at least other planets are safe... I hope... though Kandor City should probably keep an eye on them.

[jkcarrier]

Unfortunately not. Another of Robo-Creep's appearances included this little tidbit:

[silicondream]

I don't think he actually could melt it down. A Kryptonian robot would have been just as superpowered as he is, and probably Kryptonite-resistant into the bargain.

Which means that whatever terrifying lessons he was "teaching" to people on other planets, they were helpless to resist.

[joeyconqueso]

Is kryptonian metal that unforgivingly tough ?

[silicondream]

Pre-Crisis, all Kryptonian stuff basically got powered up by the same factor under a yellow sun. So if the robot's made out of the Kryptonian equivalent of steel, it'd be much tougher than Superman, just as ordinary steel is tougher than human flesh. (And invulnerability was pretty much a Kryptonian's greatest power. In the 60's, Superman couldn't even cut his own hair with heat vision.)

Seriously, five or six Kryptonian-class heroes were once almost squashed by a trap that was basically a spring-launched rock. But it was a rock and a spring from a Krypton-like world, so it took all their strength to hold it back.

[silverhammerman]

I smell an utterly fantastic and horrifying supervillain just waiting to be reintroduced! A completely amoral and borderline indestructible Kryptonian robot roaming the universe, brainwashing unwilling civilians in order to administer bizarre "lessons" and "tests".

[bruinsfan]

DCnu's bolder, edgier take on the Eradicator!

[nefrekeptah]

And since I like this concept, and never gave a damn about the Eradicator, I heartily approve.

[gamerguy]

That story was my first real exposure to Super-dickery. Sure there were plenty of covers, but those never depicted events in the actual story. I wouldn't say there was any sex involved, though, despite the 'code' of the fade-to-silhouette.

[donnblake]

It's not just the silhouette- it's that immediately followed by "Clark's bed is still made,"

[captainbellman]

...Sooooo, has anyone caught that recent movie with Zoe Kazan and Paul Dano?

[joeyconqueso]

Does Lana keep Clark around by putting his self esteem down ?

The "I deserve to be called a man!" panel

[big_daddy_d]

Sorry but I have to do this.

[silicondream]

So Superboy doesn't have the speed and alertness to save the love of his life from an unexpected Sasquatch stoning? If Lois knew that, she'd jump off a lot fewer buildings.

On another note, Lana's getting seriously shortchanged here. She discovered Superboy's secret identity about 37 times, and he never rewarded her with a makeout session. He just assembled robot armies and recruited superheroes from the future to make her believe she was having another psychotic break. But Misty tells him he's got exceptionally manly penmanship, and he's helpless against her wiles?

I can only imagine that Clark saw Misty's lantern jaw and general air of scientifically-induced brain damage, and instantly sensed a kindred spirit.

[joeyconqueso]

He may be smart but it doesn't mean he's not stupid

[jmacq1]

DC should officially change the tagline from "Faster than a speeding bullet" to "slightly slower than a sasquatch-flung rock."

A tremendously squicky story with a heaping side-helping of sheer WTFery. But hey, at least we know why Superman grew up into such a tremendous dick...

[maseiken]

I think I can speak for all the Men of Scans Daily when I say that my time with the Robot that randomly hurled bizarre challenges at me and reprogrammed a random girl into my first love, a false love, as a very formative time in my life.
No seriously how does this make Clark feel more like a man, I think he's dealing with an odd perception of masculinity there.

[donnblake]

That, at least, I think I can answer. It's not about masculinity, it's about maturity, which is why it's SuperMAN as opposed to SuperBOY not SuperMAN as opposed to SuperWOMAN or SuperPERSON. He's saying that what he's been through (IE, series of increasingly bizarre challenges, and finding and losing (twice in quick succession, from his point of view) what he believes to be the love of his life) has had a maturing effect on him, and that having passed that ordeal, he deserves to be recognized as an adult. Given the number of real-life cultures that have various ordeals one must passed in order to be recognized as an adult, and that the Teacher explicitly positions himself as testing whether Superboy is ready to take on the responsibilities of becoming Superman, it makes a certain amount of sense.

Not doing anything about the whole incredibly skeevy brainwashing thing is another matter entirely.