Superboy #1

In September 2011, DC relaunched its entire universe with "The New 52," and Superboy also received a brand-new series that same month with issue #1, "The Clone," written by Scott Lobdell and drawn by R.B. Silva. The story begins in the laboratory of the secret organization N.O.W.H.E.R.E.: scientists have cultivated a clone from Kryptonian and human DNA, but three months on the instruments detect no brain activity, and the higher-ups declare the experiment a failure and order it terminated. The female scientist "Red" (Caitlin Fairchild) insists the clone is alive and that its thought frequencies simply cannot be captured by the instruments. At the very moment the termination sequence begins, the clone shatters the incubation chamber with telekinesis, the laboratory is destroyed, and nearly everyone present dies; only "Red" escapes. She thus takes over observation of the experimental subject. A month later, "Superboy" appears to be at a high school in a small Kansas town, a transfer student who knows everything in class but is socially out of place; the silver-haired girl Rose Wilson approaches him on her own and takes him home. But this "quiet life" is actually a virtual-reality test built by N.O.W.H.E.R.E. to gauge his moral sense. When a woman in a burning house calls for help in the simulation and he shows no reaction, the scientists realize that this clone lacks human conscience. Nevertheless, the organization's head, Zaniel Templar, decides to send him into combat immediately. Issue #1 establishes the "man-made weapon" origin of the New 52 Superboy and also plants seeds for the "Teen Titans" crossover story.