Superboy #32

The living weapon finally cracks!

This is a story about Superboy. Superboy was created by N.O.W.H.E.R.E. to be a living weapon, you know? Because the best kind of weapon is not the kind that sits there passively waiting for you to use it. No, no! That's conservative and traditional thinking! The best kind of weapon is the kind that you have no control over! The kind with emotions so that when somebody says "Guns don't kill people. Living weapons kill people," they're more accurate than that other stupid version of the statement. Who wants a gun that can't kill people?! What a useless object! That's why you need a living gun that can get pissed off all by itself and do the killing all by itself so that all those pinko lefties will finally be right when they say guns kill people!

If I had a living weapon, I'd probably take it on walks at the park and keep it off leash. Then when it ran up to people, I'd say, "It's okay! He's harmless!" And they'd be forced to uncomfortably smile and pretend they didn't hate my fucking guts for allowing my living weapon to shove its muzzle right in their crotch. Then if my living weapon ever did kill someone, I'll justify it by saying that my living weapon was always loving and had never harmed anybody ever so it must have sensed that the person it killed was a horrible person and probably the next Hitler. I'll blame the victim for all of my troubles and resent them for getting my living weapon euthanized. Afterward, maybe I'll start up some kind of cultural campaign trying to explain how living weapons aren't dangerous at all! I'll show pictures of a baby curled up with a living weapon and say, "See? That baby isn't dead! Living weapons are never dangerous!" I'll ignore the fact that a living weapon has a mind of its own and can go off for any reason and at any time simply because I love living weapons so much! And nobody will ever convince me that a person hurt by a living weapon wasn't asking for it or else why would the living weapon have hurt them, hunh? Answer that!

Superboy begins with a scene that's intensely insensitive to quadruple amputees and the decapitated.

As you can see, Aaron Kuder honed his writing chops on the elementary school playground. Next up, he'll place Parasite in various situations and wind up calling him Bob and Art as well as Matt. He'll probably follow all of that up with a rhyme about pee in Coke and a ditty about where milk, lemonade, and fudge come from. Then he'll finish up with a few facts about gross things and things that might be grosser than those already gross things.

Superboy has suddenly come into telepathic contact with the other Superboy. That Superboy was lost in time while destroying Krypton but apparently he's back in the Now of the DC Universe and being kept in a stasis pod by Harvest. It makes sense if you don't give a shit about anything that has happened to Superboy in The New 52 prior to Aaron Kuder taking the helm. I highly suggest not giving a shit about that past stuff because, so far, Aaron Kuder's work on Superboy has been the best of the series (aside from Justin Jordan's run that was cut short due to interference with a Lobdell story). Superboy hasn't really had a chance to be in a story that was just his story and contained within the pages of his comic book. Kuder is finally giving him that chance so I'm going to ignore all of the past history of this poor kid. For now, all I need to know is there are two versions of Superboy in the present due to time-shenanigans and they must merge with each other to survive.

Superboy and the New Newsboy Legion head off to save Kon-el who's being held in a N.O.W.H.E.R.E. facility in the Arctic. Or the Antarctic. Or at the Harvest School for the Gifted in some desert in Africa or something. Fuck if I know! See what happens when I try to make sense of Superboy's past?! I'm instantly confused! So let me start over relying only on Aaron Kuder's work.

Superboy and the New Newsboy Legion head off north to Alaska to save Kon-el who's being held in a N.O.W.H.E.R.E. facility. On the way there, Niti kisses him and then shows him her ass while making eye contact. That's like the universal sign for human presenting! Unless she's not making eye contact when she shows him her ass and looks back over her head. She might be looking to see if there is any movement in the crotch area since he's wearing that skin tight outfit.

I'm guessing there is a lot of movement in the crotch area.

In the N.O.W.H.E.R.E. facility currently being approached by the New Newsboy Legion, Rose Wilson, Hammersmith, and Leash are all thawed so they can defend the facility and keep Kon-el for themselves. Remember that thing I said about previous history not existing? I'm really resisting commenting on it right now! For all I know, this is the first appearance of Rose Wilson. And if you want to remain sane, you'd join me in my ignorance.

As Superboy and his friends arrive to battle some Ravagers, Aaron Kuder puts a few typos into the script in honor of Howard Mackie. It's really touching. I hope when DC unfreezes Howard Mackie because they're desperate for another writer to fill some quotas, they show him this homage to him. If I were Aaron Kuder, I would have also added about twenty extraneous punctuation marks as well as the typos.

And then there's the big fight scene. The fight scene is usually where I take a break from describing the action to talk about other things going on in my life. But nothing is going on in my life. So let's get back to the action!

If only Dave Sim were here to over-explain the injury to the eye motif!

I have to say, after seeing Superboy get his vile jelly stabbed out, I'm ready to petition Congress for another go at the Comic Book Code Authority! Ghastly! Just look at the eyeball flopping off into the distance! I can't believe teenagers are allowed to read this! Shouldn't they be studying and promising their purity to Jesus?

I don't really know much about Superboy's levels of invulnerability, so I'm just going to have to believe Rose has a sword that can easily enough lop out Superboy's eyeball. Plus Superboy's powers have been wonky from all the time travel and from battling parasite and from his genetic defect that is killing him, so it's easy enough to think this could happen to Superboy whereas it would never happen to Superman.

Superboy knocks out Rose and kills Hammersmith and Leash. Okay, maybe he doesn't kill them. But he does throw them on a trajectory that crashes them through a solid fortress's outer walls and off into space. Or maybe just miles away into the harsh environment of Alaska. So while he might not have killed them, he certainly didn't try to not kill them. Then again, if I were to remember Joke-el's pre-Kuder history, I might remember he's murdered plenty of people already so these two hardly count at all.

Superboy continues on to find Superboy on his own. When he finds him, he realizes it isn't Kon-el at all but an alternate version of himself. He reaches out to merge with himself and then everything explodes.

Or multiplies. Or something. "Malkovich Malkovich!" "Superboy! Super! Boy! Superboy!" "Pika pi!"

Superboy #32 Rating: +1 Ranking. I can't help but rate this comic book on a curve. After all the confusing shit the character of Superboy has been put through, it's nice to see him star in a fucking story of his own. Even if he's still locked to the crappy baggage from the first two and a half years of The New 52. It looks like Aaron Kuder is going to put all of that history to rest and finish this comic book off with Superboy ready for a new start. Thank Christ. Seriously, thank you, Jesus Christ. This is a miracle that only you could have accomplished which is why I now accept you as my Lord and Saviour. With a "U"!