According
to the DC Wikia,
the cover art is by Curt Swan. The story
was written by Jerry Coleman, and the story art was by John Sikela.
Right off,
we have a disconnect with a more modern mind.
True, in the farms of more-or-less 1930s Smallville, and even in 1957,
the year of this tale’s publication, births at home weren’t unheard-of.
But a
super-advanced race of geniuses practiced home delivery?
My question
about this spectacular splash page is simply, Why is Superboy carrying a house
around on his back? But, to our story
...
One day
outside Smallville, a huge “WHAMMMP!” is heard, and a chunk of Krypton the size
of a city block lands undamaged, without causing a rift in the Earth’s crust
that wipes out the human race.
Take a look
at the second panel. The Kent farm must
REALLY be out in the sticks, if Superboy feels secure enough to hang his cape
on the bedpost (next to his chewing gum?), where any passerby might spy it.
We must
assume that it’s a storytelling conceit, when we’re able to read, in English
characters, the name of Superboy’s scientist dad.
What a
bunch of “ifs”! If this chunk of Krypton survives the explosion ... if it happens to end up ON THE SAME
PLANET as Kal-El ... if Kal-El finds
this secret message ....
Of course,
in comic-book-land, nothing interesting would happen without such things!
Now we read
the Three Tasks of Jor-El. Superboy is
most intrigued by the third; it seems most easy to fulfill. Read some books? Simple!
But when he takes a further look around, he can’t find any! What to do?
Why, take a
field trip to his childhood home!
It’s a good thing that Superboy attached his cape
to the lead suit. Otherwise, nobody
would know who he is!
This crude
mudbath-type of outfit is nowhere near as advanced as the lead suit Superman
would invent to use against Luthor, in Action Comics #249
(1959, two years after this story).
You have to
smile, though, when you read the last panel of this page. Superboy is making use of some unused land,
to set up his “memorial to Krypton.”
Note that not only is this a swamp, it’s a CONDEMNED swamp! How in the world can the town “condemn” a
SWAMP!?! What are they going to do –
tear it down and build another one?
Note that
the DC editors make it very clear that the materials used to construct Krypton
Park are all taken from places where they won’t be missed.
And now
that we get an ogle of Krypton Land, don’t you wonder if its appearance was
suggested by Disneyland’s Tomorrowland, which had opened in 1955?
His theme
park now finished, Superboy heads to space to rescue somebody, Task Number Two
from Jor-El’s list. He surveys many
planets, looking for a good deed that needs doin’. He looks a long time. In the words of Ad Worx in Cujo,
“Nope, nothing wrong here!”
Until he
discovers a Very Special Planet. I
wonder how Superboy can tell the mood of the folks at a glance? From what I can see in Panel Two, I can’t
tell whether or not the people look “dejected.”
What a typical example of human do-goodery, to ASSUME that we could meet
an alien race and “read” their faces, to infer their emotional state?
OK, judging
by the bottom two panels of Page Seven, Superboy is fixin’ to take that weird
rock formation and use it on the advancing comet, like spearing a meatball!
No, instead
of spearing the comet. Superboy smashes it with a rod of iron (just like the
irate Jehovah in Psalm 2:9).
Then he
descends to the planet he has saved, to make sure they know that Krypton saved
them. Or something like that.
It’s a good
thing that Superboy gave a Super-Vision examination to the comet after he
smashed it ...
... because
particles from this comet’s tail evidently had also coated the Krypton fragment
when it passed through this same space system.
With amazing omniscience, Superboy knows that the Krypton block “must
have passed through the comet!” Thus
“coated,” this Kryptonite is somehow inert, and the Boy of Steel may now take a
bittersweet stroll through his forsaken childhood home.
Here we
have another of those gosh-darn coincidences.
That foresightful Jor-El had programmed his secret, invisible projector
to trigger only when it heard somebody crying, and only if that weeping matched
a recording of the infant Kal-El’s crying.
Ain’t it amazing that Kryptonian science could make a voiceprint match
between a baby’s voice and how that child would sound ten years later?
The last
panel of Page Ten previews a book called The Last War, “which tells how
Krypton abolished war finally ....”
While this statement might not have meant a lot to the 1957 grade-school
audience, consider the times. This story
was produced by a team whose parents experienced World War I, “The War to End All
Wars.” And some of the crew – cover
artist Curt Swan, for instance – had served in World War II. The Korean War (1950-1953) had just wrapped
up. (This is a generational generality, but still apt.)
So perhaps
this Kryptonian book, The Last War, was a bit of wishful
thinking, a dream that might never come true on Earth.
The
projector clicks off. Superboy begins to
muse on the wonder of it all, only to drop to the floor unconscious. Some helpful human observers darg him away
just in time. Unnoticed by him, the
“coating” that had insulated the city’s Kryptonite has worn off, and without
rescue he’d have croaked!
And what
terrible news greets him on recovery: He
can never approach the block again, or even Smallville! The Kryptonite radiation is too intense. This outer-space real estate has got to
go! But how can he do it? What can he do now?
I doubt
that any of the kids reading this story had heard of Archimedes, but the
grown-ups at DC had. As quoted by Diodorus Siculus, the Greek philosopher
famously said, “Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth.”
Or, you
could thrown a Kryptonian city block into space! Don’t say that Superboy uses a lever and a
fulcrum. Put it into our juvenile
vocabulary: He made a giant seesaw!
We end our
tale, of course, with the status quo
restored. Kal-El is left with a sad
memory. He’s encountered a literal piece
of his past, only to realize that he can’t keep it with him forever, except in
memory. On the bright side, he can
reminisce while sitting on his giant model of a Kryptonian Kally Jlin!
