Superboy #157

Superboy #157 (On Sale: April 3, 1969) has acover by Neal Adams. Looks like an Infantino layout.

In "Get Lost, Superboy -- Who Needs You?", by Frank Robbins, Bob Brown and Wally Wood, some bananas taken from a red-sun world and irradiated under Earth's yellow sun, are used by Superboy, to heal an sick albino gorilla. Superboy believes the bananas will impart enough super-power to the ape to ensure his survival. Smallville jock, Bash Bashford, accidentally ingests some of the bananas, and gains super-strength. Bash's already enlarged ego is stroked even more when Smallville dubs him “Superbash” and begin calling him instead of Superboy when trouble arises.

However, when a giant meteor nears Earth, Bash admits that he is in over his head, and allows Superboy to deflect the meteor's path. Superboy helps save Bash's face by telling the everyone that Bash had been his “secret deputy” the whole time.

Although I love any work by Wally Wood, I do think his inks were pretty much wasted on Bob Brown's pencils. His return to DC Comics had started six months earlier with his wonderful pencils and inks on Captain Action #1. Since then he had been relegated to inking things like Captain Action, Angel and the Ape, Superboy and an issue of Teen Titans. For the next few years at DC, all of his penciling would be done in the hardly-seen romance books. Right before he lost his sight in one eye, Wood did full art for a couple issue of All-Star Comics featuring the Justice Society of America.

Edited by Murray Boltinoff.