"The Phantom Superboy" was a Superman story published in Adventure Comics #283 (April, 1961), written by Robert Bernstein and pencilled by George Papp. It was the story which introduced the Phantom Zone and its inmates (including General Zod), to the franchise.
Professor Lewis Lang - Lana Lang's father- is leading an archeological expedition when his team finds an odd metallic container. Since they cannot either break the box open or translate the hieroglyphic inscription engraved in the frontside, one cryptographer linguist posits that it comes from another world. Professor Lang decides to transport the box to Smallville so that Superboy can scan its contents.
Two days later, Superboy is trying to examine the box, but his X-Ray Vision cannot pierce through the metal. However, he can translate the inscription because it is in Kryptonese. According to the message, that box was launched into space twenty years ago (long before Krypton blew up), and it must not be opened. Thus, Superboy decides to fly the container to some secluded area where it can be opened safely.
Shortly later, in a mountainous region, Superboy rips the box lid off, and finds several odd devices, as well as a scroll. Upon reading the scroll, Superboy learns that the box contains weapons which were sealed and launched into space becasue they were too dangerous to be kept around.
Donning a thought-helmet, Superboy learns about the Phantom Zone Projector, a device which was used to send dangerous criminals like immoral Doctor Xa-Du or rebellious General Zod into the Phantom Zone, an alternate pocket dimension which was used as a prison.
As Superboy is pondering over the fate of those Kryptonian criminals, the Projector is accidentally turned on, and Superboy is thrown into the Phantom Zone. Clark is now an invisible, intangible ghost who can see the physical world but is unable to interact with it. And unless he finds a way to communicate with somebody, he will remain trapped in the Zone forever.
The Phantom Tropes:
- Anti-True Sight: The Boy of Steel finds an unbreakable alien box, a mysterious "Do not open" message engraved on its front side. However, Superboy cannot look inside the box to see what it contains because it is lead-lined, so he decides to take the box to a secluded spot to open it safety.
- Artistic License – Biology: A dairyman makes a mistake when delivering goods to Jonathan Kent's general store, leaving six milk cans instead of three, and no butter. Superboy solves his father's issue by whipping three cans' milk at super-speed until turning it into butter. However, not only is Clark using an incorrect method (butter is made by skimming and whipping the cream from previously fermented milk) but also useless (twenty-five litres of milk are needed to produce only one kilo of butter. Three cans will give you way less).
- Artistic License – History: In this story, set in a vague late 40s, Clark excitedly shows Lana the first electric typewriter on the market. The first known electric typewriter was invented in the year 1900 (although to be fair, new and innovative models were introduced during the 30s and 40s).
- Artistic License – Paleontology: A size-changing ray makes a lizard giant, and Superboy instantly starts calling it a dinosaur, even though lizards are not related to dinosaurs, and becoming giant would not change their taxonomic classification.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: A size-enlarging ray accidentally hits a small lizard, turning it into a sauropod-sized monster which starts furiously rampaging through the countryside.
- Breakout Villain: General Zod appears in a flashback, as nothing more than a random Kryptonian criminal. His popularity would grow through the years, though, until becoming almost impossible writing a Phantom Zone story without him.
- Came from the Sky: During an archaeological expedition in the New Mexico desert, Professor Lang and his colleagues witness a large object falling from the sky. When they arrive at the impact site, they find a miraculously intact glowing metal box. Since the box is too hard to be opened and they cannot translate the message engraved on its surface, they decide to take it to Smallville and ask Superboy help them out.
- Clone Army: General Zod was thrown into the Phantom Zone after creating an army of imperfect clones of his to overthrow the Kryptonian government with.
- Dead Man Writing: After finding an alien sealed box and ripping the metal lid off, Clark finds a message of his long-deceased father explaining that box contains dangerous weapons which were sealed and launched into space so that nobody can use them.
- Disintegrator Ray: One of the Kryptonian forbidden weapons is a ray gun which is purported to be able to disintegrate anything, so Superboy decides to test it on a mountain which railroad builders want to blast away. Superboy fires a single shot at the summit, and the whole mountain begins quickly melting into nothingness.
- Early-Installment Weirdness/: This story is the debut of the Phantom Zone, but ironically nothing is really seen from the Zone. Although Superboy is thrown into the prison dimension, he floats around the solid world as an invisible, intangible ghost who cannot affect nothing except by projecting his thoughts. And he never runs into any inmate, although he guesses they must be still alive. Later stories would flesh out the concept, depicting an icy-cold, indigo-hued voidness populated by dangerous vindictive ghosts who are constantly watching the physical world.
- Faux Death: Dr. Xadu was banished into the Zone because he put two persons in suspended animation, with no idea as to how to revive them (although Xadu claimed they volunteered).
- Forbidden Fruit: When a group of scientists find an alien box, and decipher the writings carved into the frontside as a warning to not open the box, Superboy decides to go and open it anyway.
- Hurl It into the Sun: When the Kryptonian Council deemed several weapons were too dangerous to keep around, they sealed them in a box which was placed in a rocket and launched into outer space.
- Memory Jar: As examining a cache of Kryptonian devices, Superboy finds a helmet which projects the former owner's voice, thoughts and memories into the bearer's mind.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Xadu, an amoral Kryptonian scientist, is arrested after performing illegal suspended animation experiments. Although -he claims with no proof- his experiment subjects volunteered, the attorney point out that they have no way to reanimate them, and Xadu knew it.
- Mundane Utility: Jonathan Kent has too much milk and is lacking in butter, so Clark whips the milk in three cans at super-speed, transforming it into butter within a few seconds.
- No Endor Holocaust: When Superboy tests a Kryptonian weapon on a mountain, the story acts as if melting one mountain away did not just cause an enviromental disaster, as well as a huge loss of animal and plant life. It is made even more dissonant only one page later when Clark feels guilty about accidentally causing a lizard's demise.
- Prison Dimension: Superboy learns about the existence of the Phantom Zone, where Krypton sent their condemned criminals, like scientist Xa-Du, who put two persons in suspended animation without being able to revive them, or General Zod who attempted to overthrow the Kryptonian government.
- Pstandard Psychic Pstance: After getting trapped in the Phantom Zone, Superboy touches his forehead while using his brain's electrical impulses to influence the solid world.
- Shrink Ray: Clark Kent finds a sealed cache of Kryptonian weapons and decides to test an enlarging ray on one tree. Superboy accidentally hits a tiny lizard, which grows until becoming several times larger than a T. rex.
- Tempting Fate: After escaping from the Phantom Zone, Superboy thinks "Maybe some day when I grow up, I'll re-visit the Phantom Zone and meet all the criminals from Krypton who are still there!". Needless to say, Clark Kent would revisit the Zone many times, often becoming trapped in there, and he would meet and almost get killed by its inmates, who would become a constant threat to him, his cousin, and their adoptive world.
- Translation Convention: When Superboy listens to a recording about the history of the Phantom Zone, it is assumed that the Kryptonian characters are speaking Kryptonese, but their speeches are being translated for the readers' benefit.
- Trapped in Another World: After learning about the existence of the Phantom Zone, Clark Kent becomes trapped in that parallel dimension when a lizard accidentally pokes the Projector switch on right when Clark is standing in front of the device.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: One nosy lizard steps on the Phantom Zone Projector switch, accidentally sending Superboy into the Zone. Since nobody else knew about the Zone, Clark could have become trapped forever.
- Visible Invisibility: After becoming trapped in the Zone, Superboy is rendered as a partly transparent, white figure which nobody can see.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: When Superboy activates an old Kryptonian device and listens to a mental playback, some few old-fashioned English words are used to make the message sound more archaic (even though it was recorded only twenty years before):Mental recording: "Harken, wearer of this helmet! Until outlawed by the rulers of Krypton, yonder weapon was used as a means of punishing criminals!"
