Michael Cho’s Awesome Superboy Cover
Today on his website, artist Michael Cho posted his painted cover for the upcoming hardcover collection of early "Superboy" stories, and it is pretty great:
I've been looking forward to the collection -- the few Superboy stories I've read from the '40s somehow manage to exceed the Golden Age craziness of their grown-up counterparts -- but seeing Cho's beautiful cover makes me even more excited. It's a great piece of art, and according to Cho, "It was a fun assignment, and gave me the opportunity to draw a light-hearted super hero image. I even got to put in a puppy."
Going by the listing that's currently up on Amazon.com, the hardcover was originally solicited with a cleaned-up version of the cover of "Adventure Comics" #120, and I have to say that I prefer Cho's version by a long shot. For one thing, it's a beautiful piece that really captures the kid-friendly fun of the stories, and for another, it's not just one of the many, many, many Golden Age Superman covers that featured the Man (and or Boy) of Steel lifting up one of those gigantic trapezoidal weights that I have only ever seen being dropped on a cartoon roadrunner.
As to the book itself, it's set to contain "More Fun Comics" #101 - 107 and "Adventure Comics" #103 - 121, starting with Superboy's first appearance and moving on through the years before he got his own title. To my knowledge, those stories haven't been reprinted too often (and never in their own collection), but I hope there are plans in the works for a second volume, if only so we can get to "Adventure" #159, because this is a story I want to read:
Who doesn't want to find out what happens when Superboy gets super-classy?