Wednesday, May 21, 2008

The Return of the Kryptonite Kid

A year later, in Superboy #99, The Great Green Lummox returned. As shown in this Swanderful cover, the Kid and hos mutt aren't just Dreams of Doom, they're here and now!



Check out the interior art by George Papp. The splash page shows the Kid "Kryptonizing" the trap door into the Kent home.






But our story begins at a beach party at Lana Lang's beach home. And -- get this -- the beach home is "near Smallville." Umm, OK -- in the Silver Age, Smallville wasn't even given a home state -- the Kansas thing began with Byrne -- but, still -- a beach home?






Maybe it's just a big lake.






Anyways, all of a sudden, Clark is confronted by the terrible teen, who promptly turns a globe green. You see, his term in Zrrff's 5th dimensional jail was over, and he was simply booted out into the cold. Booted, my dear Baron! (as Dr Pretorious says in Bride of Frankenstein)





Then -- it's Pete Ross to the rescue!




Yes, this is the original Pete Ross, who discovered Clark/Superboy's secret on that campout in the thunderstorm. He's never let on to Superboy that he knows the secret. So Pete bumbles in with a hastily donned blindfold, and "accidentally" kicks the Green-K globe out of the open door.




Even though Pete is blindfolded, the K Kid says, "Oh-oh someone's approaching! Must flee! My Kryptonite power can't harm him!" Yeah, Pete should just kick this pink-dressing guy's butt!
Note how in the last panel of the "globe rescue" sequence, each boy is congratulating himself on fooling the other.
The story is resolved after a comedy of errors involving super-robots of both Superboy and of Krypto, each tangling with the Kryptonite Kid and the Green Growler.

Eventually, the Kid's space capsule is lured into a Red Kryptonite cloud, which (of course) turns the bad guys good, because Superboy remembered how a previous baddie was changed good by the same cloud.
So our reformed bad guys fly off into the sunset, with "no hard feelings" between the deadly foes.
Yeah, right!
All original content
copyright
© by Mark Alfred