Pre Crisis Superboy recommendations

[comicstar100]

I've been thinking not checking out some of the Pre Crisis Superboy stories but I'm not sure where to start. Are their any decent trades that collect his best stuff?

[Zero Hunter]

The best Superboy stuff to me has always been when he is with the Legion. I never liked him running around Smallville as Superboy but love him when he is hanging out with the Legion in future. DC has been putting out some new trades lately covering some of late 70's Superboy/Legion issues. The first volume came out a few months ago and volume 2 is scheduled to come out in July.

[Flash Gordon]

I'm not a big fan of Superboy flying around Smallville either, but totally second the recommendation of the Legion stuff.

[superduperman]

In terms of stand along Superboy trades, there really aren't that many. There was a team up book a few years back that showcased all the times he teamed up with other heroes, usually from the future:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...-Ups+Ever+Told

[Zero Hunter]

For a lot of the early Superboy stuff you would need to track down the Legion Archives books. Those had a ton of the Superboy/Legion stuff from Adventure Comics, Action Comics, and Superboy solo series in them. There were 13 volumes in total, but the Superboy/Legion Vol 1 I listed above picks up issue wise were the Archives left off. These are all Superboy with the Legion stories though and not Superboy solo stories.

They really have not collected much of the old Superboy stuff because of the ongoing Lawsuits DC was fighting over the character for so many years. That is why his solo series was only collected in the Legion Archives instead of giving him a few Archive editions of his own.

[Kuwagaton]

Most easily accessible trades that I have featuring Superboy are Superman in the Sixties, Tales from the Phantom Zone, and Superman: Past and Future. But as you can tell from those titles, they include Superboy and feature Superman. Still a few good stories between them.

I've always been curious about what people would recommend, since they are so many lamentations about CoIE throwing stuff out.

For solo Superboy stuff, I like the comics right before the Legion trades, written by Leo Dorfman. Wacky stuff, but not available in trade and typically expensive for average at best quality. New Adventures of Superboy had him go solo again, but I didn't really like that volume and that's also not available in trade anyway.

[comicstar100]

I see a Hardcover on Amazon called Adventures of Superboy. It reprints More Fun comics 101-107 and Adventure comics 103-121. Pretty decent amount of stories I'm not sure if those are solo or Legion stories.

[Jon Clark]

I see a Hardcover on Amazon called Adventures of Superboy. It reprints More Fun comics 101-107 and Adventure comics 103-121. Pretty decent amount of stories I'm not sure if those are solo or Legion stories.

Solo. Legion doesn't come in until Adventure #247.

[Jim Kelly]

I see a Hardcover on Amazon called Adventures of Superboy. It reprints More Fun comics 101-107 and Adventure comics 103-121. Pretty decent amount of stories I'm not sure if those are solo or Legion stories.

Superboy first appeared in 1944--in MORE FUN COMICS No. 101 (January-February '45), on sale November 22nd, 1944. The Legion of Super-Heroes didn't show up until 1958 in ADVENTURE COMICS No. 247 (April '58), on sale February 27th, 1958. Superboy also appeared in SUPERBOY, the first issue (March-April '49) going on sale January 8th, 1949. So with the Boy of Steel appearing in MORE FUN/ADVENTURE and SUPERBOY, that's a lot of Adventures of Superman when he was a Boy, before the Legion is introduced.

I have the ADVENTURES OF SUPERBOY hardcover, but those early stories are missing much of the mythology that was developed around Superboy--and would come to influence the adult adventures, as well. That only starts to happen with the SUPERBOY title itself as there's more stories per issue, so they can get into his early days as a Superbaby, introduce more of his school chums--including Lana Lang and Pete Ross--and develop his adoptive parents who now both get their own names as Jonathan and Martha Kent.

Krypto the Super-Dog doesn't arrive until ADVENTURE COMICS No. 210 (March '55)--this story, "The Super-Dog from Krypton," was reprinted in SUPERMAN IN THE FIFTIES (2002). There are several Superboy crossover stories in SUPERBOY: THE GREATEST CROSSOVER STORIES EVER TOLD (2010). The earliest story reprinted in this TPB comes from 1955 ("Wizard City"--a prototype story about a Kandor-like city from Krypton on Earth, featuring a very young Jimmy Olsen) and the latest story comes from 1981 ("Superboy's Wild Weekend Out West" in which Clark meets a young Hal Jordan, as well as his brothers, Jim and Jack).

That's about all the modern Superboy reprint collections that don't feature Legionnaires. When I was a kid, Superboy was one of my favourite characters to read about. I liked him just as much as Superman and maybe a little bit more. I loved the writing of Otto Binder and the artwork of George Papp. And I liked the situations, with Clark living in a small town and being a teen-ager. He and Krypto did seem to get into some odd scraps. His town and even his parents could be fickle, chasing him and his dog away. Strange folks would come to Smallville and turn out to be time-travellers, aliens or robots. But the setting in this town--rather than a big city--where everybody knew everybody else's business gave it a STRANGER THINGS vibe.

It's hard to recommend any stories, because they aren't collected in any books. So you would have to buy the old back issues. But it probably wouldn't cost as much money to buy the Giants, Super-Spectaculars and Digest Comics--since those collect a lot of stories in one issue. SUPERBOY 147 (May-June '67) [80 Pg. Giant G-47] was released as a "Replica Edition" in 2003--it features Superboy stories where one or more Legionnaires appeared. SUPERBOY 174 (May-June '71) [G-83] was one of my favourite Giants (but only 64 pages, not 80), as it features all super-animals. And BEST OF DC [Digest] DC-15 (August '81) is a nice little collection of stories about Smallville (most of the reprints being from the 1960s).

The stories from the first half of the 1950s would be the hardest to find, given they neither feature the Legion nor Krypto, and few have ever been reprinted. There were a few Mars Boy stories back then that are worth trying to find--SUPERBOY 14, 16 and ADVENTURE 195. In fact, I would guess that it was Clark's encounters with other young hereos like Mars Boy that led to the Legion of Super-Heroes creation.

I'd certinly like to find some more of these early '50s comics as they contain Curt Swan's earliest work on the Superman family. And in particular I think the combination of Swan and inker Sy Barry is a great one.