Like Smallville before the show, but not in Smallville this month.

The Smallville TV show had a long run of adventures for Clark Kent before he became Superman, and in many episodes he would meet heroes either before or at the start of their own careers. But on TV, he never met the hero in today's book! From 1981, New Adventures of Superboy #13, "Superboy's Wild Weekend Out West!" Written by Cary Bates, pencils by Kurt Schaffenberger, inks by Dave Hunt.

The cover proclaims this to be the "wildest weekend" of Superboy's life, but it's still mighty tame: it's not like "Superboy's Risky Business" or anything. Recently, Clark had managed to not look like a coward in front of Lana Lang, so naturally he now had to dial that back, namely by cowering under a van after two tigers escape from a truck. I am honestly not sure why Lana's so mad at him: as Clark, he had tried to lead them away from other people before ducking out to change into Superboy; Lana acts like Clark should've punched the tigers out and tied their tails together himself. Still, before he has much time to mope about the humiliation he suffers to protect his secret identity, he and the Kents are on their way to Coast City, for a family anniversary. Clark still has to play chicken, although the boy sitting next to him isn't afraid--even when lightning takes out the plane's tail and it starts to go down!

Clark flies the plane down, as his dad puts it, "by the seat of his pants!" Securing himself against his seat and the floor of the plane, he lifts it from there; which probably would've worked five years later when Byrne's Man of Steel made most of Superman's powers telekinetic in nature, but not so much now. But anyway, the fearless boy introduces himself as Harold, no-prizes for guessing he was Hal Jordan! By the end of the issue, Superboy has to save Harold from smugglers with a WWII submarine, and suggests maybe he needs to "combine his fearlessness with good judgment!" How much that actually took, well...depends on when you ask, leave it at that.