Superboy: The Man of Tomorrow

Collects: Issues 1-6 of Superboy: The Man of Tomorrow

This review is part of a look at the 2023 Dawn of DC continuity.

Conner Kent is struggling to find his place in a world that seemingly has no room for him. After a heart to heart with Ma and Pa Kent, he decides it is time to expand his radius. If Earth has enough heroes, he will take his brand of justice into space to help the people other heros overlook.

The grass is not always greener though. Conner's first trip heads south very quickly when he discovers an imprisoned population on a planet completely overrun by genetic experiments. He clearly bites off more than he can chew, and the beings quickly get the better of him. Things look incredibly bleak until a group called the Cosmoteers saves the day by indiscriminately slaughtering hundreds of the experiments in the process.

The narrative tries to frame the real battle as Conner's internal struggle for autonomy. He was born as a weapon and cloned for sinister purposes, but he refuses to be labeled as such. He finally breaks through his mental block by deciding to stop asking what Clark would do, and starting to ask what Conner would do. Parallel to this, we have Dominator X creating clone weapons. His magnum opus experiment is Infinity, a terrifying combination of all his experiments funneled into a single host.

This is where the script falls apart. Infinity is built up as this terrifying creation, but the monster is dispatched in less than a single page. The entire purpose of this supposedly ultimate supervillain is just to serve as cannon fodder to show the audience that Travv, one of the Cosmoteers, is a heartless vigilante. Travv blasts Conner with red sunlight, the Cosmoteers murder a Green Lantern named Dal Tornan, and then they just run away. It is incredibly sloppy writing filled with nothing but wasted potential.

The narrative slog continues from there. Conner instantly heals from the red sun radiation and pulls himself together. Dominator X creates a new baby Infinity, which Travv lets escape. Then Conner and Travv fight, and Travv is dispatched immediately. Through the sloppiest storytelling imaginable, Travv somehow ends up implanted into a Kryptonian body to become Cyborg Superboy.

This thankfully leads to the only genuinely interesting aspect of the entire story. The comic calls back to Conner's history with Hank Henshaw. His deeply repressed fear of the Cyborg Superman is easily the most compelling, psychological angle of this arc. But do not get your hopes up. The villain essentially takes himself out after only a handful of punches are thrown. To make matters worse, the Cosmoteers are inexplicably forgiven for all the heinous things they did, including murder.

The Green Lanterns finally show up, arrest the Cosmoteers and Cyborg Superboy, who is basically just a crispy coma patient at this point, and Conner returns home. This arc was pretty terrible. It completely lacks depth and meaningful character development. It rehashed a cybernetic threat that should have carried massive emotional gravity and completely squandered it. It introduced interesting villains only to pull them off the board within minutes. Overall, it is just a massive mess.