The LAST Adventures of Superboy (#55 Script, Unpublished)

If you were reading comic books in 1984 and one of the titles you happened to pick up was The New Adventures of Superboy #54, you would have read this in the text page by my old pal Bob Rozakis: "This is the LAST issue of NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERBOY! Our creative team will be taking a couple of months off to catch their breath...and then we'll all be back in July when Superboy and Supergirl will be sharing a 48-page monthly comic tentatively titled DC DOUBLE COMICS!"

Well, that never did happen. Instead of DC Double Comics, DC came up with the Crisis On Infinite Earths instead and both Superboy and Supergirl (which I was also writing) were retconned out of existence and out of my monthly writing assignments. Before Crisis came about however, I had written several scripts for both characters, including the full-script for The New Adventures of Superboy #55, which was supposed to be the final issue of the title and wrapped up the then ongoing storylines, including Jonathan Kent's murder trial and Clark's romance with Lisa Wallace.

But a lot of that got pushed to the side when we switched directions for DC Double Comics, for which I wrote two Superboy scripts (the first of which was penciled by Carmine Infantino, replacing the great Kurt Schaffenberger), and one and two-thirds scripts for Supergirl (penciled by Eduardo Barreto, replacing Carmine). We really did switch gears with these characters and I've always regretted the book was never seen.

And fans have long badgered me to find out what happened in The New Adventures of Superboy #55...and, the thing is, I'd forgotten! I didn't even have a copy of the script and, in fact, no memory of having ever written the issue. I had it in my head that we just stopped with #54 and then I started writing the new direction stories for Double Comics. But, a couple years back, Paul Levitz, combing his files, found a stash of old scripts from Julie Schwartz's files, most of them "written off" by DC in the 1980s (this is a tax thing, charging the costs of unused material against taxes as a business loss), including the original scripts for #55, as well as Double Comics #1 and #2, all with Julie's hand edits (this was written in the typewriter days, on an IBM Selectric, IIRC). As soon as I started reading the #55 script, it all came back to me, but, until then, as I said, I had no recollection of having written it!

So, if it's been gnawing at you for the last quarter century...if you gotta know...Whodunnit?...Does Clark have a future with Lisa?...will Pa Kent go to the chair?...here's your chance...the UNPUBLISHED script for The New Adventures of Superboy #55!

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERBOY #55 Script..........$20.00