Adventure Comics #495
Adventure Comics #495
Cover Credits
Penciller: Ross Andru
Inker: Dick Giordano

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Title: "The Secret of the Seventh Super-Hero"
Pages: 14

Feature(s):
Superboy (of Earth-1)

Writer: Robert Bernstein
Artist: George Papp

Reprinted From:
Adventure Comics #290 (1961)

Feature Character(s)

Supporting Character(s)

Villain(s)

  • Tom Tanner (a juvenile delinquent and Clark Kent look-alike; no further appearances)
  • A Sun Boy imposter (no further appearances)
  • Cyclops the Robot (destroyed in this story; no further appearances)

Guest Appearance(s)

Other Character(s)

  • A teacher, some students, a milkman, and a train brakeman (no further appearances)

Flashback Appearance(s)

Cameo Appearance(s)

Comments:
This story is based in part on "The Two Clark Kents" in the first story of Adventure Comics #191.

Following this story, Chameleon Boy helps Superboy preserve his secret identity in the second story of Superboy #93.

Then, Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, and Brainiac 5 provide Supergirl with a weapon with which to defeat the giant Infinite Monster in the second story of Action Comics #285.

Synopsis:
Tom Tanner, a juvenile delinquent escapee from the state reform school, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Clark Kent, arrives in Smallville and is mistaken for Clark by everyone, even Ma Kent, who unwittingly gives away Superboy’s secret identity. Tanner decides that he likes his new life as Clark and intends to remain in his place.

Meanwhile, outside Smallville, Superboy meets with Sun Boy, the newest member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, who has arrived from the future. He explains that he is in the 20th century to gather and return to a secret vault the six pieces of a super-weapon once dismantled and buried in Superboy’s time by the Legion. However, once the Boy of Steel gathers the pieces, Sun Boy, actually a villainous imposter, assembles them into a robot which emits a ray that can change good people into evil, and vice versa. He then sends the robot after Clark Kent.

Shortly thereafter, Superboy appears and begins an evil rampage, until such time as the bogus Sun Boy's guard is down. Then he destroys the robot, and takes the villain back to the future, where he explains to the Legion that the impersonator had given himself away by not giving the official Legion handshake.

The "Clark Kent" affected by the robot’s ray was Tom Tanner, who as a result is reformed and loses his knowledge of Superboy’s secret.

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