Superboy #18 Review
Superboy #18 Review
Overview:
With H’el on Earth finally over, Conner decides to return the money he stole.
The Good:
Seeing Superboy in a fairly relaxed setting just doing his thing is nice. This picks up from the place before the crossover started and introduces Plasmus and Doctor Psycho. The two villains, with whom I am not familiar with, are a surprisingly good, if not entirely serious threat to Superboy. While Dr. Psycho seems to have fairly bad intentions and the possibility of being a big threat, Plasmus seems kind of like a joke, which works because it balances the book out instead of just giving Conner a physical threat. Plamus would be a bigger threat if he didn’t have the thick German accent but then he would lose his appeal and become another interchangeable radioactive muck monster for the Super-family to fight.
Scott Lobdell and Tom DeFalco write the plot and it is okay, while ther is good action and character balance there is one major flaw. Tony Lee writes the dialogue and for the first time, Superboy acts like a mature person.
The art by R.B. Silva and Iban Coello is really good and blends together well.
The Bad:
There is one major and fairly inexcusable flaw in this issue: Superboy is fine. He is 100% fine like he never even left. In fact, if you read the series and look out all of the H’el on Earth issues, there wouldn’t even be a lapse in the reader’s ability to follow the story. For a solid two thirds of the crossover, Superboy was on the verge of death after getting attacked on the molecular level and here there is absolutely no mention of that at all. There was even some character growth in which he started to look up to Superman but here there isn’t even a mention of any of it. The worst part about it is that both Lobdell and DeFalco wrote in the crossover, h’ell, Lobdell came up with the whole thing and this issue and there was no mention at all.
Nothing else was really bad about the issue.
Verdict:
An interesting pair of villain that could really give Superboy some trouble given the solid dialogue and art are derailed by a huge gaping plot hole/oversight that really was major. Honestly, this issue wasn’t that bad but it was kept from its full potential by the oversight.
3 (2.75) out of 5
