If Clark was Superboy, why would he ever leave Smallville?

[Jim Kelly]

In "How Clark Kent Met Lois Lane," ADVENTURE COMICS 128 (May 1948), teen-age Clark won a school contest that had him become a cub reporter at the Daily Planet. Lois Lane won the same contest in her hometown and that's how the two first met.

When I started reading SUPERBOY comics in the 1960s, it seemed to me that Clark routinely left Smallville for reasons.

SUPERBOY 134, in an imaginary story, Superboy becomes a menace when exposed to Red K., and Jonathan Kent turns him into the F.B.I. His reputation ruined and his secret identity revealed, the Boy of Steel leaves the Earth to start over on another planet.

SUPERBOY 137, the Kents move to Dover city and become John and Margaret Kendall. Clark becomes Chuck and poses as a blind boy (with dark glasses).

SUPERBOY 139, when the Boy of Steel's powers pose a menace to the town, the Smallvillains drive him out of the burg (even Ma and Pa Kent).

SUPERBOY 146 & 148, Clark runs away from home, despite his parents' pleas for him to return, and he sets up residence in Casino City as Chuck Kibbee and throws in with a shady couple named Mr. & Mrs. Zero--together they pull off a scam to break the bank at a crooked casino. The casino boss threatens to kill the Kents, but Clark acts like he doesn't care. Then two thermo-electrical entities leave the Kents' bodies, that they were possessing, and attempt to enter the bodies of the Zeros, but they destroy them with their polar powers--because they're really Polar Boy's parents from the 30th century.

SUPERBOY 149, Bonnie & Clyde take Clark and Lana hostage and force them into a life of crime.

SUPERBOY 153, in a tale involving Hitler, Hirohito, Stalin, Churchill and Quisling, alien invaders abduct all the residents of Smallville, leaving Superboy a boy without a town.

SUPERBOY 159, Superboy is forced to leave the Earth when an army of his robots attacks the world.

SUPERBOY 160, Superboy exiles himself to the Moon, when he believe he has killed a young woman named Cleop (short for Cleopatra).

SUPERBOY 161, Clark gets in a fight with Bash Bashford and critically injures him--after which he leaves town.

[manwhohaseverything]

SUPERBOY 161, Clark gets in a fight with Bash Bashford and critically injures him--after which he leaves town.

this one is straight hugo danner..

The children had an awful picture of Hugo standing for a second with the writhing form of his attacker above his head. Then he flung it aside, over the circle that surrounded him, and the body fell with a thud. It lay without moving. Hugo began to whimper pitifully.

That was Hugo's first fight. He had defended himself, and it made him ashamed. He thought he had killed the other boy. Sickening dread filled him. He hurried to his side and shook him, calling his name. The other boy came to. His arm was broken and his sides were purpling where Hugo had seized him. There was terror in his eyes when he saw Hugo's face above him, and he screamed shrilly for help. The teacher came. She sent Hugo to the blacksmith to be whipped.

That, in itself, was a stroke of genius. The blacksmith whipped grown boys in the high school for their misdeeds. To send a six-year-old child was crushing. But Hugo had risen above the standards set by his society. He had been superior to it for a moment, and society hated him for it. His teacher hated him because she feared him. Mothers of children, learning about the episode, collected to discuss it in high-pitched, hateful voices. Hugo was enveloped in hate. And, as the lash of the smith fell on his small frame, he felt the depths of misery. He was a strong man. There was damnation in his veins.

The minister came and prayed over him. The doctor was sent for and examined him. Frantic busybodies suggested that things be done to weaken him—what things, they did not say. And Hugo, suffering bitterly, saw that if he had beaten the farmer's boy in fair combat, he would have been a hero. It was the scale of his triumph that made it dreadful. He did not realize then that if he had been so minded, he could have turned on the blacksmith and whipped him, he could have broken the neck of the doctor, he could have run raging through the town and escaped unscathed. His might was a secret from himself. He knew it only as a curse, like a disease or a blemish.

Secret origins also has The incident.doesn't it?Man no wonder the kid hates himself,his power and constantly considers his powers a burden.Is always restricting himself in the name of self control..

[BBally]

I'm a big fan of the pre-Crisis Superboy stories but I think it would be better for modern audiences that Clark did his superheroics in secret (whether he wore the suit or not is irrelevant) and this created an urban legend about the mysterious guardian angel of Smallville. Then when the revelations that Superman and Clark Kent were the same person comes to light, people many years in the future started delving into and taking about the secret heroics he did in Smallville and retooled them modern folklores about the Superboy of Smallville reimagining him as Smallville's public hero with the suit and everything so that the classic Pre-Crisis Superboy stories became 25-30th Century folklore, which would inspire the formation of the Legion of Superheroes who through time travel shenanigans (whether it's to meet him or to catch a 31s Century criminal who escaped to the past) meet up with young Clark Kent who does become Superboy and have adventures with the Legion but his time with them is erased from his memory in order to preserve the timeline.