Superboy #161

Superboy #161 (On Sale: October 7, 1969) has a cover by Neal Adams.

"The Strange Death of Superboy" is by the regular team of Frank Robbins, Bob Brown and Wally Wood. What I love about the better Frank Robbins' stories is that they are driven by emotion and there had to have been a lot of emotion for Superboy growing up. He packs a couple of good ones into this story of being so fed up with having to constantly build up the lie of meek Clark Kent, feeling so humiliated in front of the girl he loves, that he decides he would rather be human and able to fully express himself, than be Clark Kent, the butt of jokes.

The hows and wheres of Clark stripping his powers away are not nearly as important as the why, and Robbins has spun a great "why." But Robbins doesn't stop there. There is a great scene where a non-super Clark Kent boxes school jock "Bash" Bashford and is losing until he realizes that he he is still fighting like Superboy, and Superboy always pulls his punch. Clark KOing Bash is fun to see, but even better is when a freak accident on the football field leave Bash near death and Clark must regain his powers to fly in the only surgeon who can save Bash's life.

The issues ends with a two-page The Superboy Legend by E. Nelson Bridwell, Bob Brown and  Wally Wood covering "More of Superboy's Secret Hideaways."

Edited by Murray Boltinoff.