Superboy #32 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Aaron Kuder
Art By: Jorge Jimenez
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: June 11, 2014

Where You Goin?  N.O.W.H.E.R.E.

Last issue are increasingly less psychotic Superboy was hanging out in STAR Labs where he was given a battery undershirt to maintain his energy consumption to his burning ratio.  It's ugly as hell but man does it hide underneath a normal shirt like nothing you've ever seen before.  So new threads, new friends, a less murdery attitude all seems well for Jon Lane Kent.  That is if you think having a ghostly Kon like figure haunting him seems well, oh and Parasite was loose in Star Labs.  You'd think that it would be a bigger deal than it was, but not everybody is Superboy who can suck Parasite's energy, and then blow his goddamn arms and legs off to finish the fight.  Yeah Superboy is a badass.  Let's see what crazy Superboy is up to this month, and see if he returns to his stabby ways, and by stabby I mean anything that causes bodily harm because that boy's a psycho, but he seems to be getting better.  Okay that's enough of that.

Explain It!:

So Parasite's been quartered, but don't worry kids he'll be just fine.  Now Superboy sets out the goals for this issue by talking about when he absorbed Parasite's power he was able to tap into something different with his TK abilities and sorta contact Kon, who's apparently being held against his will at a N.O.W.H.E.R.E. facility.  Somehow Jon is supposed to find him and the two will use their abilities to cure their degenerating physiology.  Some kind of super science, I don't know.  So I guess it's time to go find Kon.

While you'd imagine that Jon would be a solo artist, it looks like the Star Labs band isn't allowing him to go out and perform the big show on his own.  It's kind of weird seeing Jon go with the flow and be told what to do, but I guess he's growing as a pseudo person.  So we're heading to a N.O.W.H.E.R.E. facility in Alaska and we have Superboy and Guardian which I understand, but we also have a tech guru, the girl who has a crush on Jon, and two security officers who we won't see the rest of the issue.  This seems like putting people in harms way is okay in the Star Labs workplace.  I don't know if this is a OSHA thing or not, but I think someone should give them a call just in case.  

It's not going to be all fun and games going to Alaska kids, for one thing it's Alaska and that sounds terrible, and for another N.O.W.H.E.R.E. keeps their operatives frozen, and unfreezes them when they need some wet work done.  Well I guess a strange aircraft coming towards their facility counts as wet work because the unfreeze order is given to Leash, Hammersmith, and Rose Wilson to take down the the intruders.  Our heroes land their plane and the fight begins.  Yeah danger for civilians we brought with us, what the hell?  It looks like the bad guys have the upper hand until Rose STABS SUPERBOY IN HIS FUCKING EYE!  Oh God!  But that's the turning point folks, that gets him just pissed enough, but when Niti the girl who has a crush on him is in danger, it's game over.  All the villains are down, and I don't know if Superboy's eye is gone or not but he's not looking too good.

Okay I need everyone reading to bare with me here because I don't completely understand what's going on here myself, and by don't completely understand, I'm talking about I'm confused as hell.  So Jon makes his way to a stasis pod where he finds Kon/ not Kon wearing his (Jon's) old costume before he took Kon's.  Are you still with me?  He says that he knows this isn't Kon, but the first time that he met Kon Kon was transported back to this time by HARVEST, and apparently has been in this stasis tube ever since.  Yeah like I said I'm not sure what the hell I'm reading here.  But what I do know is when Jon touches this double of his an explosion emits outwards, and when the dust clears Jon is surrounded by Superboys from throughout the Multiverse.  Yeah we got some Superboys going on.  Now for the Kon mystery I'm still in the dark.  Either Scott Lobdell's ending to Teen Titans is right and Kon is out in space and heralding for "The Oracle", or somehow Kon went back in time and is in a stasis pod.  Or... Or people this stasis pod frequenter is actually Jon Lane Kent and when he touched it it did some freaky Time Cop like shit and did the wacky on the Timeline/Multiverse.  I don't know, but I'm dying to find out.  Be back here in a month and we'll try to tackle these questions together.

Bits and Pieces:

While I'm not entirely sure of what went down in this issue, it's definitely peaked my interest.  I don't like not being in the know, and this shit better get resolved so I can get a happy off of it.  But besides for my ignorance, I'm really digging Aaron Kuder's tamer Jon Lane Kent, and I love that we finally have a direction besides for the pre-Kuder month's straight forward "I'm going to murder everyone" story arc.  We only have a couple issues left before the end of the series people, so go get the best Superboy stories you've seen in a long time, and try to absorb all you can before it's gone.

7.5/10