My Collection - SUPERBOY [1994 Series]

Superboy [1994 series]
36 issues [1994 - 2000]
1 - 30, 50 - 51, 56, 69 - 70, 0

This version of Superboy was probably the best thing to come out of that whole "Death of Superman" thingee back then. The series lasted up to #100 a few years back, and I think the same character, with a different costume, is the Superboy still hanging around at DC right now, although who knows what's going on there in the next few months.

I didn't really expect to like the series that much when it launched, but I had liked some of Karl Kesel's writing before, and Tom Grummett's artwork looked nice. It wound up being a pretty good monthly read, nothing groundbreaking but a nice mix of short adventures, cliffhangers and a large supporting cast, including Dubbilex, the DNAlien from Kirby's 1970s run on JIMMY OLSEN. The use of the Hawaii setting was also good, at least different from the New York and New York stand-ins so common in comics.

I read it until Kesel and Grummett left with #30 (with a few fill-ins along the way), and didn't like the few after that I took a look at. The two returned a few years later with #50, but either something was off or I just wasn't in the mood for that type of thing at the time (I wasn't steadily reading any other monthly super-hero book at the time), because I didn't stick with it any of the times I sampled it. Those issues don't look too bad to me now, though, so maybe someday I'll pick up a few more of them when I'm in the mood for some light super-hero fun.

Noteworthy issues:
#4 has some nice artwork by Mike Parobeck doing a version of the book in the style of the Superman/Batman animated shows of the era.

#8 has a nice old Superboy vs. new Superboy, with some nice tributes to the original version, and one of the better things to come out of DC's "Zero Hour" crossover.