Mark Waid’s Superman: Action Comics Vol. 1: Boy of Steel is pretty great. That’s high praise coming from me, an ardent Byrne Superman fan who still believes the best Superman is one who never thought himself a superhero for as long as possible.

If there are times that Waid’s young Superman story gets hokey, with Clark learning the lessons every young Superman learns every time, there’s also times I found it surprisingly sophisticated. A lot of this book follows familiar tropes, but the places where it’s unexpected, or suggests unexpected things to come, hold a lot of promise.

How long does Waid want to be writing Superboy and not Superman? Are there years and years of Superboy stories to be told within these confines? I’m not sure, but I know Waid’s in for at least one more, and I’m not sorry about that.

[Review contains spoilers]

As befits an “adventures of Superman when he was a boy” story (one in an increasing selection to choose from), Waid peppers the book with cutesy callouts to the DCU-to-be: Robert Queen, Winslow Schott, Silas Stone, and one of the book’s major players, General Sam Lane. The slippery slope here is an Alfred Pennyworth and/or Bruce Wayne appearance — not that there isn’t precedent, from the Silver Age on through Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, but I’d as soon Waid stick with Superboy stories and not “Superman stories just where we make all the characters young.” Kudos to Waid, however, for preserving, in the Byrne-ian manner, that Lois Lane is still the one to name the young Superman.

In dealing with Sam Lane, Waid’s Clark reminds us more than once that he’s been brought up to respect authority; “That’s how a young man was to behave in Smallville.” If this feels a bit pat, it’s probably not far off the original conceptions of Superboy, and it’s a detail that I did think gave Clark some strong depth. This is a character who’s set himself a calling, an intention to do good, but that necessarily brings him in conflict with other do-gooders, Lane’s military, around him. Superboy and Lane’s later sit-down in a diner, while maybe too evocative of Superman & Lois, is impressive for the lack of angst that the two bring to solving their problems.

Again, there are a few lessons that a young Superman commonly learns in his various iterations, mostly under the “with great power comes great responsibility” rubric. Hopefully Waid has this out of his system so it doesn’t keep coming up; the audience has been here before, so we’re not learning anything even if Clark is. The book’s second chapter is one of these, Superboy threatening a corrupt salesman only to realize his powers might actually frighten people. Better is the later scene where Clark almost uses his powers to force lifesaving treatment on Captain Comet, then doesn’t, and then we’re surprised to learn it was a test. Though Waid perhaps overcomplicates who does what in a “It’s a Wonderful Life”-esque banking scheme later on, there too the lesson-teaching is unexpectedly effective.

I imagine the object of unknown origin that’s calling Superboy’s name at the Metropolis Expo, left unresolved, will be related to goings on in the larger DCU next time around. But I’m far less sure what Waid’s hinting at with Lana Lang’s father Lewis — matter of fact, at least so far as post-Crisis is concerned, I think this may be the first time I’ve seen Lana have living parents, rather than being raised by her aunt. So much for Millennium, I guess, but continuity concerns aside, here at least Waid is going into new (or new for me) territory, and that’s got my attention. I’d as soon see Waid plumb new ground, introduce new villains and new conflicts, than a comic about Superboy learning the lessons of growing up.

Though, that said, Waid reestablishes Kenny “Conduit” Braverman as the school bully here, and I’d be curious to see Waid now use Conduit in the past or present through this new guise. And the presence of the evil bald banker in this story reminds that there’s a Lex Luthor-shaped hole in Boy of Steel; I can’t believe that Waid doesn’t think Lex came from Smallville, and I wonder just how long (or not) Waid can go before Lex makes an appearance.

A book with three artists can spell trouble, but Boy of Steel is dealt a good hand, led by Skylar Patridge and then with tonally similar work by Cian Tormey and Patricio Delpeche. Patridge depicts everything well, though notably I thought her Clark Kent looked like a “regular kid” while her Superboy was more gangly and awkward; maybe that’s a trick of Clark wearing collared shirts and Superboy wearing pajamas, but I thought it spoke to the whole “Clark is the real identity” aesthetic.

I have enjoyed Cian Tormey’s work on titles similar to this — Billy Batson in Lazarus Planet: Revenge of the Gods — and the slightly more cartoony take on Superboy is well in line, if only that Tormey’s Superboy maybe looks a little too old? Delpeche finishes with a Fleischer-esque tone quite right for “classic” Superboy stories, with shades of Rick Burchett, Darwyn Cooke, and Michael Cho.

I also liked the final chapter spotlighting Pete Ross. We’re again in too familiar territory with Pete discovering Clark’s secret and Clark realizing he can’t tell his loved ones without endangering them — but after most chapters with the Clark-Pete-Lana trio largely separate, it’s fun to see them in one adventure together. (Particularly Lana and Pete’s friendship beyond Clark, what with Lana supergluing her hand to Pete’s!) If I shudder at Waid writing Pete saying “goss” — even the Star Wars quotes were too on the nose for me — it is fun to have these characters back around again.

More fun, however, will be to have the past-set Superboy interacting with the present-set DC Universe (the lack of which, I think, has killed a lot of Legion of Super-Heroes titles), as promised for the next volume. Superman: Action Comics Vol. 1: Boy of Steel is an appetizer, and it’s good; now I’m interested in whether Mark Waid can make a full-fledged series out of this, fleshing out Lana, Pete, Kenny, General Lane, and the rest, or if this trip to the past is for crossover purposes and that’s it.

[Includes original and variant covers, character sketches]