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Superboy # 63
PLOT
- We pick up where last issue left off -- with Superboy catching a glimpse at Black Zero's army of Doomsdays, culled from different realities across Hypertime. Black Zero then reiterates his mission -- to save the lives and rights of all clones, or Genetix, in every Hypertime reality.
- Metron shows up, and it's hinted that it is from Metron that Black Zero got his inspiration to invade world after world throughout Hypertime.
- Superboy is then introduced to the director of this world's Cadmus
-- Paul Westfield, a version of the man from whom Superboy's DNA was
cloned. We get an interesting encounter between Superboy and the alternate
Westfield that underscores the relationship between the two (which,
as far as I know, never occurred in Superboy's home reality). Superboy
is then introduced to "the directors", a group of Westfields from all
the Hypertime worlds that Black Zero has already conquered. Each time
Black Zero takes over an Earth, he leaves a Westfield in charge of protecting
Genetix on that world, and then gathers them all together as he introduces
a new Westfield to the group.
- Superboy stuns Black Zero by telling him that in Superboy's reality, Paul Westfield is dead, just as Knockout arrives with the Challengers of the Unknown, who had been in disguise as Black Zero's Stormguards.
- A battle ensues between Superboy and his allies and Black Zero and his Stormguards, until Superboy shatters Black Zero's hypergun (see Superboy # 62).
- Superboy informs Knockout that "her" Superboy died of severe burns after his trip through Hypertime, and the Westfield of Knockout's reality reveals that he lasered that Superboy right as he was stealing the Hyperjacket which started this whole adventure. Knockout, enraged, goes after Westfield, who panics and jumps towards the Hyperium reactor, meaning to escape into Hypertime. Something rather different happens.
- . . . as Westfield impacts the Hyperium, setting off a chain reaction and causing all the other Westfields in the area (and all across Hypertime, as a matter of fact) to implode, to be erased from existence.
- Black Zero, angered by the death of the man he considers to be his father, as well as the deaths of every version of that man, has his enemies taken to the Doomsday chamber, where it's only a matter of time before the Doomsdays break forth.
- After the Challengers explain how they came to be involved in the struggle against Black Zero, Knockout and Superboy succeed in breaking out of the Doomsday chamber, but Knockout decides to stay behind and stall the Doomsdays to give Superboy and the Challengers a chance to escape. After kissing the Kid, she shoves him out of the room and jams the door, meeting her end with a smile on her face.
- Superboy and the Challengers then head out to find, and stop, Black Zero once and for all. . .
Back to Issue 62..........On to Issue 64