Adventure Comics #7

What Did Black Lantern Superboy Do?

Tony Bedard Writer
Travis Moore Penciller
Dan Green, Keith Champagne & Bob Wiacek Inkers
Brian Buccellato Colorist
Steve Wands Letterer
Sean Ryan Associate Editor
Brian Cunningham Editor
Special thanks to Geoff Johns, Eddie Berganza & Adam Schlagman

Our main cover by Aaron Lopresti shows Black Lantern Superboy battling his one-time girlfriend, Wonder Girl, in the Fortress of Solitude. There's a faint light emanating from Conner's ring, but I'm not sure what it's actually doing. Anyway, this is a solid, straight-forward cover. Nothing too special, but it gets the job done.

Our variant cover by Francis Manapul (from dc.fandom.com) again goes to the multi-panel gimmick, which I probably never will like. But I do like most of the original panels, giving us Manapul's take on some key moments in this issue. Although I will admit the largest panel in the middle looks a bit off. Something about zombie Superboy's face just doesn't work for me.

Our story begins with Black Lantern Superboy attacking Wonder Girl in Coast City. The real Superboy is trapped inside his body, unable to prevent himself from choking Cassie. Naturally, this reminds him of the last time he became someone else's puppet and was forced to attack his friends.

Superboy remembers that last time, he was able to shake off Lex Luthor's programming, and he attempts to do the same now. But his "real self" is manifested as a withering, weak body floating in endless darkness. He does gain some hope when Cassie begins calling out to him, but he's horrified by the mean-spirited words his "zombie self" begins hurling at Cassie. Luckily, Cassie is smart enough to know that's the ring talking, even though the words do hurt more than the punches. She wraps Conner in her lasso and electrocutes him, which enables the real Superboy to take control for a millisecond and whistle for Krypto.

Krypto arrives four seconds later, and Conner is thrilled to see the will, love and rage manifested in his faithful dog. But then he's surprised to see his zombie self use freeze breath on Krypto — a power Conner thought he didn't have. Zombie Superboy again turns on Wonder Girl, feeding her the usual Black Lantern lines about how everything will make more sense once she surrenders to Nekron. Conner suddenly gets a brilliant idea, and while his zombie self monologues, he takes control of his heat vision to carve out a message to Cassie: "Fortress."

Cassie understands the message well enough and immediately takes off for the Fortress of Solitude. Black Lantern Superboy naturally follows her, as does Krypto. Cassie quickly gets inside the fortress, but doesn't understand what, exactly, Conner was referring to. However, Krypto knows, and he digs up the healing chamber that currently holds Conner's corpse, undergoing its thousand-year recovery regiment. Krypto pulls the corpse out of the pod and the Black Lantern ring becomes confused.

Luckily, everything goes according to plan and the ring eventually flies off Conner's finger and heads toward the corpse, which Krypto keenly keeps away from the ring. Conner realizes he can't let the ring actually attach itself to the corpse, because then he wouldn't be able to destroy it without killing himself. So once he regains control of his body, he hits the ring with a blast of freeze breath while it's still in midair. Cassie scoops up the frozen ring and tosses it into space, hoping it'll stay frozen forever up there. (Remarkably, the ice did not melt on its path out of Earth's atmosphere.)

Conner and Cassie put his corpse back in the chamber so history can resume like normal and he can be revived in the future. Conner explains that he actually has Luthor to thank for giving him experience fighting off mind control, as well as Raven's subsequent trainings, otherwise he never would have been able to resist the Black Lantern. He then leads Wonder Girl and Krypto back to Coast City, where the Black Lantern Kid Flash is still running amok and none of our heroes have become Lantern deputies yet.




Bart only appeared in the background of a couple of panels in this issue, but it still was nice to see what his best friends were up to during this time. And it was especially nice to see the condition of an imprisoned soul in a Black Lantern body. I wish we could have received a similarly emotional story about Bart, but the only person writing Bart's story is Geoff Johns, and I don't think he's ever spent more than two seconds trying to get into Bart's head. Anyway, I thought this was a solid and fairly logical story. Granted, the pervading "logic" of these Black Lantern rings has always been a bit tenuous, but this story made enough sense for me. Now let's check out the new ads:

Perfect rebound. got milk? with Chauncey Billups. I know "rebound" is a basketball term, but Billups played point guard and was not a strong rebounder. In the 2009-10 season, Billups averaged 19.5 points, 5.6 assists and 3.1 rebounds per game for the Denver Nuggets, while reaching the All-Star team for the final time in his career.

EverQuest II: Sentinel's Fate.

Human Target. A brand-new six-issue limited series inspired by the Fox TV show.

Dante's Inferno. Go to Hell.

A four-page black-and-white preview of First Wave, a six-issue limited series about Batman, Doc Savage and the Spirit.

The DC Nation page shows the black-and-white versions of the covers to the Return of Bruce Wayne.

Supreme Commander 2.

Halo Legends on Blu-Ray and DVD.

Next time, we'll see how Bart gets that Black Lantern ring off his finger in Blackest Night: The Flash #3.