The mystery of the Hollow Men has been on Superboy's mind ever since the first issue of Jeff Lemire's SUPERBOY. The Phantom Stranger knows the secrets behind this Smallville legend, and Superboy wants that knowledge – but at what price does the Stranger hold it?
"Rise of the Hollow Men" begins in Jeff Lemire and Pier Gallo's SUPERBOY #8, on sale next week!
[gallery link="file" order="DESC" columns="2"]
Superboy can't seem to shake the feeling that something's amiss in Smallville, and whether he may be the cause of it. Is it just teen angst, or is something deeper really going on? Conner's got to stay focused though, if he hopes to beat Kid Flash in a race around the world. Who will win?
Find out in SUPERBOY #5, on sale March 9!
[gallery link="file" order="DESC" columns="2"]
Hello, DC Nation! Wil Moss here, associate editor on the SUPERMAN line of books. How’ve you been? Have you lost weight? Well, you look great.
So before you head to the comic store this week, I want to draw your attention to two fine offerings from the Man of Steel’s corner of the DCU that hit the shelves Wednesday!
The first is SUPERBOY #4, the rip-roaring conclusion of “The New Adventures of Psionic Lad”! “Who the heck is Psionic Lad?” you ask? Superboy’s wondering the same thing – all he knows so far is that Psionic Lad’s arrival caused everyone at Smallville High to pass out unconscious, and the gang of armored thugs that showed up right after don’t look too friendly. It’s another excellent chapter of this fun new book – featuring Jeff Lemire’s unique blend of superheroics and small-town drama; and Pier Gallo’s stunningly inventive layouts and spectacular artwork. Jeff and Pier lay down some story elements in this issue that will have BIG repercussions towards the end of 2011!
The second book I’d like to plu – I mean talk about … is SUPERMAN 80-PAGE GIANT 2011 #1, which features a bevy of talented up-and-comers telling tales of Superman and his supporting cast! One of the coolest couples in comics – Paul Tobin & Colleen Coover – write a terrific Lois Lane story (see, Twitter, we DO listen!), with the talented Amilcar Pinna on art. Brooklyn’s Finest, Neil Kleid & Dean Haspiel, unite to tell a story about barroom brawls, boxing matches, Metropolis and Perry White; newcomer Beau Tidwell and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS artist CAFU bring to the table a terse espionage story starring none other than Jor-El; and just wait’ll you get a look at Dan McDaid’s Bizarro and Trevor McCarthy’s Supergirl! All that and more awaits under an amazing Dustin Nguyen cover (a companion piece to his cover for December’s BATMAN 80-PAGE GIANT 2010 #1!).
And hey, after you read these, drop us a line via www.dcletterspage.com and let us know what you thought of ‘em!
[gallery link="file" order="DESC" columns="2"]
Psionic Lad visits Superboy from the Smallville of 2216 - a Smallville that's been turned into a "towering, festering acropolis; a rogue, immoral city-state" that's at war with the rest of the world. This future is the fault of a tyrant known as the Prime-Hunter, and Psionic Lad needs Superboy's help to find a way of fighting back.
Find out if Superboy is up to the task in Jeff Lemire and Pier Gallo's SUPERBOY #4, on sale February 2nd.
...with a lot more Doomsday than they bargained for.
As announced earlier this week, the Reign of Doomsday story will continue through SUPERMAN/BATMAN ANNUAL #5, as Supergirl must team up with Batman to try to stop Doomsday and Cyborg Superman from tearing them apart. The issue will hit in early April, written by James Robinson with art by Miguel Sepulveda.
Later that month, the Reign of Doomsday story will pick up where that issue leaves off in SUPERBOY #6, by Jeff Lemire and Pier Gallo. Conner's battle with Doomsday builds toward an epic sixth chapter... which we're not spilling any clues on just yet.
Check out the covers below!
Below are four pages of Jeff Lemire and Pier Gallo's SUPERBOY #3. What's happening to the students of Smallville High? I'm not telling.
Better yet, I'm presenting these pages word-free, and even though removing Jeff Lemire's text feels extremely sacrilegious, I have a feeling any lack of explanation as to what's making all of the students collapse will make you guys boil a bit more. You have to think, though -- if it's bad enough to drop Superboy, it's gotta be something pretty crazy.
Want the skinny? Check out SUPERBOY #3, on sale tomorrow.
[gallery link="file" columns="2"]
Poison Ivy rarely leaves Gotham City, and yet here she is in Smallville, just as the town's vegetation is out of control. Think she might be in town to actually help Superboy get to the bottom of this mystery? Yeah, color me skeptical, too.
Issue 2 of SUPERBOY lands on Wednesday.
[gallery link="file"]
So here I am. Superboy #1 is out today! It feels like a long time coming. Pier Gallo and I have already been working on the book for the better part of 2010. So let me tell you a bit about what I have planned for Conner Kent and Smallville...
As of typing this I have six full scripts done with a seventh in the outline stage. And, I have the first fifteen issues plotted out. So, this will be a BIG story. A Big story made up of a lot of smaller stories. Most of the run will be only 1 or 2 part arcs that add up to a bigger, badder story I'm weaving in that will culminate around Issue 12 or 13. I don't want to say too much about it yet, but the first issue has some pretty good clues and teases. It also has THE PHANTOM STRANGER! one of my favorite comic book characters. Seems like an odd fit? Well Smallville really is the ideal American small town. But all small towns have a dark side. And Smallville's dark side will be slowly creeping to the surface, making Kon-el's attempts at a "normal life" harder and harder to achieve. What you see in the first two issues will only be the tip of the iceberg. (If you're interested I suggest picking up THE PHANTOM STRANGER showcase editions...they too will hold clues to coming events!)
Astute readers of my past work will also notice an "homage' of sorts to Essex County in the first issues opening sequence. It pretty much mirrors the opening pages of Tales From The Farm, with the young character of Lester dreaming of flying away and leaving his troubles behind.
(PS...One more thing. Just a side note...my past work is obviously very Canadian. I'm a proud Canuck, what can I say. But it's kind of interesting how Canadians have played a big part in Superboy's life so far. Tom Grummet a fellow Canuck was the Superboy artist through the 90's. maybe we'll have to team up for an all Canadian issue?)
One thing I love to do in all my comics is use visual motifs. Re-occurring imagery that slowly reveals a metaphor or draws attention to certain aspects of the plot. I did it a lot in Essex and I do it a lot in Sweet Tooth. But It's also fun to use these motifs as a way of drawing links, thematic or otherwise between some of my different books. It's why I made Jepperd a hockey player in Sweet Tooth and had him being followed by crows as he trekked across the post-apocalyptic world. And it's why I used this opening sequence to Superboy. Kon-el and Lester have a lot in common, and at the same time, they're very different. Lester used his imagination to escape the small town he was stuck in and the hard realities f his life. He dreamed of being a superhero and flying away to great adventure. Conner is trying to use the normalcy of small town life to escape being a superhero. But he can't. Like Lester he is who he is, and he'll have to accept it sooner or later.
Now all this talk about my past work and hoe Essex County led to Superboy is probably a bit misleading. Any of my readers expecting to pick up Superboy and read "Essex County with Capes" will be disappointed. EC was a indie book through and through, both aesthetically and in its pacing and execution. Superboy is not Essex County. It can never be that kind of book. It's a superhero comic. A DC superhero comic, and it celebrates it. It's big and fun and full of action. But if I do my job right, all of that action a will mean something. And it will be balanced with real characters...real people living in small town America trying to figure themselves, and their lives out. And finding the answers within each other.
What else can I tell you about the book? Let's see...There is a great first issue cover by Rafael Albequerque (American Vampire) and great covers to issues 2-5 by the awesome Phil Noto. There are a few new characters like Psionic Lad and The Spawn of Smallville. And of course there's always KRYPTO! So that's about it for now. That's all I got. I hope you like the first issue. If you do, stick around and come back for more. If not, that's cool too. Thanks for trying it out.
I can't wait for #2 and #3 and beyond to come out, to share the stories I've been cooking up with Pier Gallo and the rest of Superman team up at DC! Thanks for reading.
Writer Jeff Lemire and artist Pier Gallo step into Smallville next Wednesday with the launch of SUPERBOY #1, which launches the hero into a new, ongoing series. And, wow, is that Rafael Albuquerque cover a beauty or what? Wait until you see Pier Gallo's interiors.
But this is a Smallville you’ve never seen – one that even Superman doesn’t know about. What are the mysteries surrounding the town and beneath the surface, and what do they hold in store for Superboy? Only one way to find out. Check out some pages from the first issue below, stay tuned to The Source for more from Jeff Lemire on the series and pick up SUPERBOY #1, which goes on sale 11/3.
[gallery link="file"]
“Hey Jeff, this is Geoff Johns!” That’s not what I expect to hear when I pick up the telephone. But it’s exactly what I did hear a few months ago. I’d been working away on inks for an issue of Sweet Tooth (the Vertigo series that I write and draw) one afternoon when my wife passed me the phone. “Who is it?” I mimed to her, annoyed at the disturbance. She just shrugged. I rolled my eyes, put down my brush and answered. “Hello?”
“Hey Jeff, this is Geoff Johns!”
And that’s how I ended up writing The Atom co-feature in Adventure Comics and then the new monthly Superboy series. Well, truth is told there was a bit more to it than that. I had to pitch and develop my ideas for both characters with DC Editors and all around great guys, Matt Idelson and Brian Cunnigham, over the course of a three or four month period. But really it all kind of happened rather quickly.
I never really set out to write superhero comics. Don’t get me wrong, I love them, always have. But my work has always tended to skew pretty far from the mainstream. I started out self-publishing my own mini-comics, and from there went on to do a number of indie graphic novels like the Essex County Trilogy. I was, and am perfectly happy working on these more personal projects. So I never expected, or lobbied to get writing gigs in the DCU. But when Geoff called and offered me the chance to do it, I didn’t hesitate for a minute.
I grew up reading DC comics. Wolfman and Perez’s Teen Titans and Levitz and Giffen’s Legion of Superheroes were the duo-bibles of my own personal religion as a kid. I know the DCU in and out. So the opportunity to put my stamp on one or two DC characters was too good to pass up. And luckily I’m a really fast artist, so figured I’d still able to balance my “personal” work like Sweet Tooth, with Superboy, The Atom and whatever else came up at DC. Boy was I ever wrong.
Again, don’t get the wrong idea, I am able to keep up with, and in most cases stay way ahead of, all my deadlines. What I was wrong about was presuming I’d never care as much about the DCU stuff as my creator-owned work. Because as soon as I started digging in the rich old soil of Smallville, and messing around with Superboy’s life, I knew that this project was going to be every bit as important to me as anything I’d ever done before.
I grew up on a farm, in a really small town in Canada that may as well have been Smallville. So it isn’t hard for me to inject some of that experience into the book. And I love the idea of telling truly rural superhero stories. So many of today’s comics are set in urban centers, especially superhero comics. So it is really important to me to allow the new Superboy book to fully exploit it’s country setting and hopefully bring a unique point-of-view to the monthly comic racks.
But what about Superboy himself? What do I hope to say about the character of Conner Kent anyway? What makes him unique, other than the where he lives? Well , to me Kon-el is the ultimate outsider. He never had anything resembling a childhood, or a real family or parents. He was born in a lab and missed out on all of that. And. As a result he’s never had anyplace to truly call home. So, as our series starts, he’s finally trying to allow himself to find both of those things, family and community, in Smallville.
Community…that leads us to the supporting cast of the book…and to Geoff Johns again. In Geoff and Francis Manapul’s amazing Adventure Comics run with Superboy they set up some great new characters in Simon Valentine and Lori Luthor. Basically they gave me two incredible gifts. Simon is brilliant young man who is either destined to become Superboy’s greatest friend, or his greatest enemy. And Lori is Lex’s niece, so she and Conner are (sort of ) cousins, yet clearly have some unresolved feelings for each other. This is more rich soil to farm with. So expect them to be a BIG part of Conner’s life and adventures moving forward.
And then there’s THE PHANTOM STRANGER. One of my all-time favorite DC characters ever since he showed up in the classic Alan Moore Swamp Thing run, which I worshipped as a kid (and still do). You might not expect a dark and mysterious guy like The Stranger to pop up in pastoral Smallville. But he’ s going to be there a lot. Which might clue you in that there are a few dark and sinister things going on under that small town veneer that are going to make Superboy’s life even more interesting as my first year on the book unfolds.
All that and Krypto too. What more can a writer ask for?
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Pier Gallo, the artist on Superboy -- and colorist Jamie Grant. He is simply fantastic. He’s enthusiastic, passionate and talented. He brings an insane amount of detail into each panel, but never loses sight of the importance of clear storytelling. He has a singular voice to be sure, with a real European influence in his drawing. Between the two of us, I really think that Superboy is going to be a very unique comic.
The book hits in November, and If Pier and I do our jobs right, you’ll become as passionate about the new adventures of Superboy as we have. And if not, I’ll sic The Phantom Stranger on you.
See you in November, and until then, be sure to check out The Atom in Adventure Comics!
