Superboy Enemies / Characters

Superman Main Character Index
Title Character
Clark Kent/Kal/El/Superman
Supporting Cast
Lois Lane | Jimmy Olsen | Ambush Bug | Steel
Villains
Central Rogues Gallery (Alexander "Lex" Luthor, Bizarro, Vril Dox/Brainiac, Cyborg-Superman, Darkseid, Doomsday, Lobo, Mister Mxyzptlk, Mongul, Phantom Zone Criminals [General Zod]) | A-L | M-Z (Superboy-Prime)
Spin-Offs
Supergirl (Kara Zor-El/Linda Danvers/Supergirl, Supporting Cast, Rogues Gallery) | Power Girl | Superboy (Conner Kent/Kon-El, Jonathan "Jon" Samuel Kent, Supporting Cast, Rogues Gallery) | Legion Of Superheroes (The Founders, Silver Age, Bronze Age, Five Years Later, Postboot, Threeboot, Retroboot, Rebirth, Other Heroes, The Fatal Five, The Legion of Supervillains, Other Villains, Supporting Cast)

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Project Cadmus

In General

For more on the Project as a whole and more Cadmus personelle see Characters.DC Comics Miscellaneous.

Agenda

In General

" We're selling the future. Our clients will pay any price for what we offer."

A secret criminal organization run by those who think controlled clones are the key to fighting off earth's frequent alien invasions rather than superheroes. They also see their clone army as a source of power, and are big fans of the might makes right school of thought.

Created By: Ron Marz · Ramon Bernado

First Appearance: 1996, Superboy Vol 4 #32

Clone Army: When they're first introduced they create an "improved" Superboy (mostly improved by his complete obedience) and intend to create a lot more and sell most of them to the highest bidder.
Evil Counterpart: To Cadmus, which already had a number of its own moral failings.
Expendable Clone: They see clones as a commodity to be sold, or destroyed if "outdated", rather than as individuals.
Kill and Replace: Their mode of operation for the most part;
"The old is sacrificed in order to make way for the new. That is the situation. Match is the new and his first labor is the destruction of the old."
They Would Cut You Up: Agenda most certainly would kidnap, experiment on and dissect any clones they wanted to replicate or any people they felt it would be beneficial to clone.

Director Beta

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/contessa_01.jpg

Director Erica Alexandra del Portenza

Former wife of Lex Luthor, the mother of his daughter and a former Lex Corp CEO.

Created By: Roger Stern · Tom Grummett

First Appearance: 1995, Superman: Man of Tomorrow #1

Older Than They Look: Her family lineage can live unnaturally long lives due to a meta-gene and in the twenty years she knew Lex prior to her faking her death she never physically aged.

Agent Spence

Amanda Spence

"He is you in any way that matters. Only better. [...] Let's face it Superboy, you're last year's model. Look at how easily I captured you. Match is more advanced than you in everything from his telekinetic powers to his implanted knowledge. You just don't measure up anymore kid."

Paul Westfield's vindictive daughter Amanda Spence feels Superboy is unworthy of carrying her father's genes or legacy and decides to make his life miserable and kill him in return for being made.

Created By: Ron Marz · Ramon Bernado

First Appearance: 1996, Superboy Vol 4 #32

Big Bad: Ultimately.
Bulletproof Vest: She is usually wearing bullet resistant armor as part of her uniform.
Disproportionate Retribution: Evidently Tana annoyed her after they kidnapped her and experimented on her so she not only went out of her way to kill Tana after giving her a Hope Spot, she also had her cloned just so she could have the pleasure of killing her twice.
Evil Is Petty: See above.
Family Honor: Why she takes Superboy's perceived deficiencies so seriously and decides to not only go out of her way to try to kill him but also to torture him both mentally and physically.
Villainous Lineage: Both she and her father have a skewed sense of morality that they use to justify hurting others.

Match

Kent Conner

Agenda's modified prideful Superboy clone. Agenda cut some corners in their process of creating a quick obedient clone and in the process failed to address the issues with Kryptonian cloning that tends to cause degeneration, even if this flaw in their process was not immediately evident.

Created By: Ron Marz · Ramon Bernado

First Appearance: 1997, Superboy Vol 4 #35

Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better: He was designed to be Superboy but "better", and certainly thinks of himself as such. He sees Kon as beneath him but Kon always beats him, sometimes even by cutting off his boasting with a well timed punch, even if early on it always took the situation making Match need to leave in a hurry rather than finish the fight since he really was stronger than Kon.
Became Their Own Antithesis: He was incredibly proud of his intelligence, the clever plans he could put together, his ability to be subtle and his more refined manner of speech and everything "evil" or villainous he did was on his master's orders. Then he started degrading and became a dumb brute who'd attack others loudly and for little reason and Kon-El surpasses him in terms of actual strength and power when he reappears in Teen Titans.
Clone Degeneration: Unfortunately for Match Agenda's cloning process has the same flaw as Dr. Teng's Bizarro creating cloning process of not including any living DNA in the clone even if the degeneration process is delayed and slower. He maintains the intelligence and cleverness he's so proud of throughout Superboy Vol 4 but when he appears again later he's started to become more Bizarro like until he's near indistinguishable from S-01 "Bizarre-O", Cadmus' first attempt at making a Superboy, and continues to degrade until his death at Superboy-Prime's hands.
Broad Strokes: When Match was brought back by later writers he had more in common with S-01 than his prior self though he retained his history with Kon-El and the former members of Young Justice.
Evil Counterpart: Match is an evil counterpart of Kon-El that Kon has to face.
Evil Doppelgänger: Match, though when he's not changing his appearance with his additional powers he looks like a pallet swapped Kon-El instead of properly passing as him, is still an evil character that looks like Kon.
Evil Knockoff: After Amanda Spence helped Agenda knock out and kidnap Superboy they used him to fashion a modified clone with more powers that would actually obey orders called Match and the first order given to him is to kill Superboy.
Evil Twin: Match is an evil clone of Kon-El, though the odd manner of his creation means he was created by replicating the effects observed by Agenda scientists "unzipping" Kon-El's DNA leaving room for interpretation on how and out of what he was grown but Kon considers him a brother.
I Am What I Am: Match says he is what he was created to be and there's no cause for him to stop trying to kill Superboy after his creators ordered him to, he also claims not to have any desire to do more than serve but after spending time pretending to be Kon-El among Young Justice he started to realize that he actually does, though it was already made evident by the end of his first appearance that there was more to him than he seemed to know.
"In order for my existence to be considered slavery, it would be necessary for me to possess free will. That is not one of my personality facets. I was created to serve. I have no other purpose, nor the desire for one."
Innocent Fanservice Guy: After his Naked on Arrival, he doesn't have much of a problem having a conversation in the nude, and when given an outfit to wear while doing so puts on the shirt first.
Palette Swap: He's an entirely pale white version of Kon-El visually, with pale blonde hair and even white eyes.
Pride: It's his greatest weakness initially, and eventually he loses all the things he was so proud of.
Superpower Lottery: He seems to have Superman's whole set, even if it the powers start fading as he dies.
- Flying Brick: Flyer with invulnerability and other powers.
- Invisibility: One of Match's upgrades from Kon is his ability to turn invisible, though it might actually be Chameleon Camouflage or an extension of his psychic abilities as this particular ability is only shown twice and never thoroughly explained.
- Master of Disguise: Match can use his low level psychic abilities to change the way his hair, eye and skin color look and make it look like he's wearing a different outfit. He is also capable of adopting other people's mannerisms and speech patterns. This mostly allows him to pretend to be Kon-El, even though he despises the way Kon talks and acts, since he's a Palette Swap of him.
- Mind over Matter: He's got tactile telekinesis like Kon-El, but greater control over it as soon as he's awoken/activated.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: He's got the same TTK field as Kon, and better control of it. He was later retconned to have the same weakened Kryptonian invulnerability as other "Bizarro" clones.
- Super-Speed: He's as fast as Superboy.
- Super-Strength: He has the same TTK that allows Kon-El to mimic super-strength and much better control of it, and later was given Kryptonian strength.

Tropes relating to Match in the Infinte Frontier era

Although he (along with Kon) was erased from continuity during The New 52, Match eventually returned in the pages of Suicide Squad. Amanda Waller, seeking a Superman-level powerhouse, kidnapped Superboy to fill the role. It was eventually revealed that Conner Kent would have been too difficult to capture and contain, and so Waller turned to the now-defunct Agenda, brainwashing Match to serve in his stead.

Becoming the Mask: Even after his true identity is restored, the other members of the Suicide Squad note that he's still acting like The Cape. Waller's dialogue (and her confession to "Superman" in Future State) implies that this was All According to Plan.
The Bus Came Back: He was absent for a decade after Flashpoint, since Conner didn't exist for most of that time. He returned as the Suicide Squad's resident "Superboy" in 2021.
The Cape: Match's behaviour while brainwashed was consistent with the real Kon-El, refusing to kill and going off-mission to try and rescue those in need.
Expendable Clone: A variation, in that Waller doesn't necessarily consider him especially expendable, but the rest of the world more or less forgot about him after the Agenda shut down, meaning nobody noticed when she grabbed him to mold into her own personal Superman.
The Friend Nobody Likes: Naturally, being upstanding and heroic doesn't endear him to his supervillain teammates, who initially consider him an annoying killjoy.
Heel–Face Brainwashing: Waller has his true memories supressed to use him as a stand-in for Conner on the Suicide Squad.
Shapeshifting Failure: Without regular injections of special medicine, his body and speech patterns begin to revert to the Bizarro-like state he had in the 2003 run of Teen Titans. After The Reveal, Waller's scientists are able to stabilize his mind, but his appearance remains that of a Bizarro, and he even begins wearing a shirt with a backwards "S" shield.
Thou Shalt Not Kill: His brainwashing causes him to adopt the actual Conner's aversion to lethal force. Waller even reminds him of it to snap him out of his Unstoppable Rage when fighting Ultraman.
Tomato in the Mirror: Thanks to a combination of recurring Clone Degeneration, a confrontation with the real Conner, and coming face to face with dozens of Superboy clones in tanks.
Unstoppable Rage: Ultraman gets under his skin so bad that he stops trying to escape Earth-3 in favor of continuing to fight.
What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Waller justifies kidnapping and inducting "Superboy" by nonchalantly opining that, as a clone, his mere existence is a crime.

Gene-Gnome

One of Donovan's D.N.Aliens

Created By: Karl Kesel · Tom Grummett

First Appearance: 1995, Superboy Vol 4 #65

Adaptational Backstory Change: There are "G-Gnomes" in Young Justice (2010) but while they have Gene-Gnome's mind control abilities, propensity for riding around on shoulders and ties to Cadmus they're otherwise very different from Gene-Gnome. For one thing none of them seem to have anything resembling a personality and theyre now "genomorphs" instead of D.N.Aliens, though of course all other characters that were originally D.N.Aliens are now "genomorphs" in the show.
Adaptation Personality Change: The G-Gnomes don't really seem to have any personality at all beyond that of maybe a cat or dog and are certainly not malicious even if their actions are often horrifying while Gene-Gnome was unquestionably a cruel vindictive villain.
Adaptation Name Change: The G-Gnomes of Young Justice (2010) are obviously that earth's version of Gene-Gnome.
Adaptation Origin Connection: In Young Justice (2010) the G-Gnomes were how Superboy had information implanted in his head while the method behind his implanted knowledge was not really explored in the original comics.
Mind Manipulation: He secretly twists the thoughts Dub is reading off of his colleagues to make Dubbilex feel unwanted long before he actually reveals himself. He even twists the reader's perception of the others working at Cadmus and in the end it's left ambiguous just how any of them really felt about Dubbilex and the other less human looking and acting Cadmus creations, especially since Director Cannon's thoughts, which mostly fit Fantastic Racism, are implied not to have been tampered with.
Parrot Pet Position: He's not a pet, but he's a tiny D.N.Alien that takes to sitting on Dubbilex's shoulder as an invisible mind controller after he strengthens their Psychic Link.
Psychic Link: He creates one in between himself and Dubbilex in order to poison Dubbilex against Cadmus, he slowly uses the link to turn Dubb into a mind-controlled puppet.

Point Men

Grey Lady, Blank Slate, Blockade, Groundswell, Serpenteen, Short Cut

A group of super-powered Agenda soldiers created through the same destructive cloning process that resulted in Match. The whole group eventually defected after learning that they were clones and that their superiors considered them replaceable and humans in general idiotic and in need of "evolution".

See Young Justice under Enemies

Other Villains

King Shark

Nanaue

"No." ~*crunch*~ "Now I'm free."

A serial killing man-eating monstrous bulletproof shark/human mashup who is native to Hawaii. He is rather unconcerned with human ideas about morality and cares for very few. After becoming a supporting character in Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis where he helped train the new Aquaman he sort of disappears from Atlantis and reappears as a straight villain again. He eventually joined Bane's Secret Six, though the only motive kind of given for his move to straight villainy makes little sense as Nanaue has never cared about human money.

Created By: Karl Kesel

First Appearance: 1994, Superboy Vol 4 #0

Antihero: Nanaue has a ~weird~ position in Atlantian society where his behavior is more understood even if no one cares for his eating people thing even there. He helps train the new Aquaman when the first goes missing. It helps that he's more chatty underwater.
Arch-Enemy: He and Sam Makoa have a longstanding animosity. He starts going out of his way to save Makoa by about the time Superboy meets him but the detective never gets over his hatred of Nanaue since he had to watch him kill and eat his some of his fellow officers the first time he managed to arrest him, and King Shark always remains a threat to Makoa even with his respect for him.
Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: He kills Sidearm by tearing a huge hole in him with his claws when the other Suicide Squad member looks like he's going to shoot Makoa in the back, he doesn't even try to eat him which, as noted below, is the biggest sign of disrespect a shark in the DCU can give a body. Makoa had no clue about Sidearm's intentions, and Nanaue makes only a token attempt to enlighten him while Makoa yells at him for taking out one of their allies.
Blue-and-Orange Morality: He is incredibly detached from humanity. There are things even early on, like his warning some swimmers not to go in the water due to shark danger, and then sighing and eating them when they ignore him, that hint he just views the world through a very different lens.
Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: He seems to care for his mother. This does not prevent him from eating her arm, though it does keep him from killing and eating her.
Half-Human Hybrid: His mother Kaikea is a Hawaiian woman and his father is Lord Chondrakha, King-god of all Sharks.
Not Enough to Bury: Makoa notes that his victims' bodies are never recovered because Nanaue eats them. This might be due to his relationship to sharks in the DCU as those with higher intelligence like Cron One-Eye make it clear it's the height of disrespect to the dead for a shark to leave a body uneaten.
Parental Abandonment: By his father when he was young. He gets drunk every time he has to deal with or work for his father, and disobeyed him when he ordered Nanaue to kill Aquaman.
The Quiet One: He very rarely speaks, though he's capable of it. The only thing preventing him from fitting under Beware the Quiet Ones is that he's (almost) never met anyone who failed to notice his general bloodthirsty nature.
Rogues' Gallery Transplant: After Superboy was coaxed into moving back into Project Cadmus Nanaue became an Aquaman villain/anti-villain/anti-hero.
Shark Man: He's a shark-human mix.
Super-Toughness: He's bullet proof, and while a high powered extended application of a replication of Superman's heat vision knocks him for a loop and allows him to be captured it does so without doing any visible or lasting damage.
Villainous Valor: He grows to respect Makoa to an extent, and brutally murders Sidearm when the other villain looks like he's going to shoot Makoa in the back.
Walking Shirtless Scene: His fin usually (Depending on the Artist) would make it pretty difficult for him to wear a shirt. Also he usually does more swimming than walking.
Would Hurt a Child: He attacked Tana's little niece Iolani unprovoked while she was playing in the ocean at a busy beach. Strangely, although he did hurt her he didn't kill her or anyone else even though he'd have been able to do so easily. It's possible he just enjoyed scaring everyone out of the water and decided to just let Iolani go when Superboy grabbed her out of the water. He does have a weird sense of humor as demonstrated when he chucked Jimmy Olsen out a window in Villains United, dressed as Black Canary of all things.

Lady Dragon

???

"Our powers are wonderfully equal child! The skill of the warrior will decide the day, as ever it shou[ld]"

"Lady Dragon" is the leader of the strange criminal organization known as the Silicon Dragons. With Superboy's arrival in Hawaii Sam Makoa worries the Dragon's will start to ramp up their firepower to remain on the same power level as their opponents, and he's right.

Created By: Karl Kesel · Humberto Ramos

First Appearance: 1994, Superboy Vol 4 #10

Dragon Lady: As her name makes clearly evident.
Laser Blade: She uses a plasma sword to fight Superboy.
Eyepatch of Power: A Cybernetic eyepatch which allows her to see the interface for remote controlling the Dragon's fancy underwater hideout.
The Leader: Of the Silicon Dragons.
Leotard of Power: She wears a green one-sleeved leotard.
Villainous Valor: To a bizarre extent. She'd chop off her own arm in order to stay on the same power level as an opponent.

Silver Sword

Arnold Kaua

A Hawaiian museum curator who was fused with some metal when he tried to pick up what he thought was trash after a canister of it was lost by the military and washed up on the beach.

Created By: Karl Kesel · Tom Grummett

First Appearance: 1994, Superboy Vol 4 #2

Chrome Champion: He was accidentally merged with a silvery experimental substance that responds to his mental commands and which he coats himself with to fly. He even thinks he's a hero, fighting for the preservation of native Hawaiian culture but he's actually an anti-villain in practice as he doesn't put much stock in existing Hawaiian culture and tends to forget about the people currently living there.
Color Character: Silver Sword.
Cool Helmet: His shiny silvery mahiole.
Recurring Character: Recurring villain through the early part of the series.

Queen Nosferata

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nosferata.jpg

Nosferata is a Wild Lander with big plans for her own advancement and her own army separate from that of the Royals.

Created By: Karl Kesel · Tom Grummett

First Appearance: 1998, Superboy Vol 4 #50

Beast Folk: She's got a lot of bat traits, but her only noticeable hair is the long stuff on top of her head.
Black Eyes of Evil: Her eyes are portrayed as either solid black or solid blue.
Slouch of Villainy: She's first introduced leaning back in her carved stone throne as she listens to a minion's report.

Kossak the Slaver

An extraterrestrial slave trader with a ship nearly as big as the earth.

Created By: Karl Kesel · Tom Grummett

First Appearance: 2000, Superboy Vol 4 #75

Irony: He was once a slave on the very slave ship he now runs as a particularly cruel slave trader before he managed to overthrow the previous master.
Self-Disposing Villain: He, maybe, atomizes himself rather than be caught. Superboy wonders if he actually teleported instead, either way he's never seen again.

Sidearm

????

Superboy's first villain. A bank robber who possesses a "technovest" with modular robot arms (one at a time).

Created By: Karl Kesel · Tom Grummett

First Appearance: 1994, Superboy Vol 4 #1

Alas, Poor Villain: Gets eaten by King Shark in the Suicide Squad storyline.
Berserk Button: Does not like Superboy getting his name wrong.
Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: His increasing frustration with Superboy is easy to understand, especially since someone whose superpower is mechanical and (usually) lacks a range attack is the worst person to be fighting Superboy — in their first battle (told in flashback in the zero issue) Kon destroyed his arm with tactile telekinesis before he even knew he had tactile telekinesis.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Well, not that dangerous.
Plug 'n' Play Technology: Presumably his own arms are designed to plug in and out of the vest, but he also steals Professor Hamilton's prosthetic and it connects without any difficulty.

Luis Rojas

First Appearance: 1994, Superman L Son of Kal-El Vol 1 #18

Jon Kent's own Expy of Lex Luthor, he is a young teenager who launches a campaign against Kryptonians with the help of Luthor.

Dominator X

A Mad Scientist who sells genetically engineered Super Soldiers on the intergalactic black market.

First appearance: Superboy: The Man Of Tomorrow #1

Creators: Kenny Porter, Jahnoy Lindsay

Species: Dominator

Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: X is colored purple to distinguish him from the rest of his species, who are usually yellow.

Cyborg Superboy

Travv

Genetically engineered freedom fighter turned terrorist.

First appearance: Superboy: The Man Of Tomorrow #1, #5 (as Cyborg Superboy)

Creators: Kenny Porter, Jahnoy Lindsay

Species: Daxamite (formerly), Human/Kryptonian hybrid (cyborg)

Blessed with Suck: This is what Travv thinks of his technopathy, since the augmentation cost whatever powers he would have developed as a Daxamite.
Brain Uploading: When Travv's initial fight with Superboy destroys his original body, Travv's cybernetic spine transfers his consciousness into a cybernetically augmented clone body of Conner, becoming Cyborg Superboy.
Child Soldier: Travv was genetically engineered by Dominator X as a weapon to be sold to the highest bidder.
Lack of Empathy: Travv is more than willing to use his fellow genetic experiments as weapons against Dominator X.

Characters / Superboy Enemies

Project Cadmus

Agenda

Director Erica Alexandra del Portenza