Superboy #162

Superboy #162 (On Sale: November 20, 1969) has a cover by Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson.

The feature-length Superboy tale, "The Super-Phantom of Smallville" is by Frank Robbins and Bob Brown. It was unusual at this time to see Bob Brown ink his own work and certainly Superboy inked by Wally Wood garnered a much better result, still the art this issue is much better than some of the Brown worked inked by Joe Giella in Batman. This is a fairly odd and convoluted story, but Robbins's handling of Krypto is...clever, or at least interesting. Sometimes Krypto thinks and speaks dog talk and sometimes his thoughts and speech is translated.

After a hard night on patrol Superboy is finding it hard to get to sleep as is his dog, Krypto, who eventually wakes Superboy back up to notice that the magnetic poles of the Earth are shifting. They head off into space searching for the cause of the shifting poles. Krypto gets his dog collar caught by a small dwarf neutron star. Unable to detach his collar from the star, Superboy takes it of and hurls the star into another galaxy. This corrects the issue with the Earth's poles but has caused unforeseen damage to Superboy's Phantom Zone projector. While Krypto goes back to sleep, Superboy wonders if the path of the neutron star was somehow affected by the Phantom Zone criminals and uses the projector to make sure the criminals trapped there are still trapped there.

What he finds is the criminals have captured Superboy's soul and are holding it captive in the Phantom Zone, saying they were able to capture it when the neutron star opened a small rift between the dimensions, and that if he wants his soul back he will have to release them all from the zone. We learn that Superboy's souls is actually a criminal called the Chameleon who has made himself look like Superboy. Superboy decides that going into the zone is the only way to retrieve his soul and wakes up the Kents so that they will pres the Recall button on the Zone projector in 15 minutes.

The damage done to the projector traps Superboy, half in the Phantom Zone and have still in on Earth. His half body is unable to reach the projector and the criminals see this. The Chameleon changes into a wolf and lures Krypto down to Superboy's basement where he is trapped and Krypto thinks the projector is a bone and tries to bury it. Luckily, he does so near Superboy who repairs the projector and is sent all the way into the Phantom Zone.

15 minutes later the Kents head to the basement to "Recall' Superboy but get the Chameleon instead. The projector is still broken though and only Superboy knows how to fix it. The Chameleon threatens to kill the Kents of Superboy does not fix the projector. Suddenly, Krypto returns still in a dreamworld and thinks someone has tried to steal his bone (the projector), which he takes into space to hide. The Chameleon wakes Krypto up and tell him to let go of the projector. As Krypto lets go of it, the neutron star passes by and captured the projector in its pull. As the Chameleon tries to pull it from the star, the projector turns back on sending the Chameleon back to the Zone.

Krypto attacks the projector thinking it harmed Superboy and in doing so hits the recall button and Superboy is returned from the Zone. Nothing better than a lucky dog I guess.

Edited by Murray Boltinoff.