3 out of 5

Three issues of Superboy during the back-up era of DC: half the issue devoted to our title character, the back half (at this point) running Dial H for H.E.R.O.

Let me start with the latter: Dial H is an variously amusing bit of clunk in the 80s, with readers writing in hero / villain ideas to appear, and getting credit when our lead characters dial their H.E.R.O. rings for a new power and costume. That very concept – essentially a new name and set of abilities every dial – is asking quite a bit of our creators, and story-er / writer E. Nelson Bridwell and Bob Rozakis go pretty cheeky with it, Bob doing his Silver Age Zow Powie-style dialogue with a dash of lampshading, while Bridwell provides a shoehorned “origin” for the ring across these three issues, but really one one before things go off the rails and villainous The Master attacks. Howard Bender’s pages stuff a ton in, using pretty fantastic eye direction to keep things moving. That said, as this loose story starts to heat up, it gets dumber and dumber and requires more lampshading, and Bender struggles to keep a ton of baddies circulating against the currently dialed-heroes dumb powers. As a main feature, I think this stuff struggles, but even though it takes up almost half the book, positioning it as a backup gives it underdog flair. The whole thing is just campy goof, and it wears that proudly, but with enough innocence to not be annoying. I could never call this my favorite strip by any means, though it’s something I looked forward to because of its quirks.

Kupperberg’s Superboy entries are pretty standard fare, and are much better at hand-waiving away huge logic gaps with action and overwrought dialogue versus H.E.R.O.’s flailing. That dialogue’s overwroughtness is due to a frustrating habit writers still employ, though much, much less often than the norm of the 80s and 90s: when Superboy travels to Japan to check out movie-hero-turned-villain Sunburst, the translated dialogue is done so either in broken English, or in cinematic chatter, like even in one’s native tongue they sound like foreign panic baddies from 30s cinema. Kupperberg drops the broken English pretty quickly, but maintains the ridiculous tone to an obnoxious level. While I think this was arguably purposeful – the name Mifune is worked in, suggesting Paul was a fan of some classic flicks, and due to Sunburst being a movie star, you can see that he may’ve been going for some meta – the story tries to create some empathy for Sunny, and it’s hard to do that when he otherwise sounds like a walking cliche. But you take some of this with the era as well, when Supes could manifest hypnosis powers and whatnot as needed. Alex Saviuk’s art and Kurt Schaffenberger’s inks are, thankfully, perfect, crafting one of the few times that S-Boy looked age appropriate, and the pages shuffle through dialogue and action equally excitingly. There’s a subplot with Pa Kent potentially running for a political office that’s some interesting (if also logically hole-y) intrigue, and, in general, this mini-arc chugs along professionally.