Superboy

"No capes, no tights. No offense."

Superboy (also known as Conner Kent and Kon-El, "born" March 21, 2010) is a genomorph, a hybrid clone of Superman and Lex Luthor, and a founding member of the Team.

Personality
Although he desires to be a good hero, Superboy has anger issues. Having spent his first 16 weeks of existence as a science project and mind-controlled puppet, Superboy is defiant and does not like being told what to do or being dismissed. He often behaves with an air of extreme confidence, due in large part to the fact that he is Superman's genetic clone, and was created in order to replace him. This makes him exceedingly overconfident in his abilities to the point that he ignores the help of others and impulsively throws himself into situations that he cannot handle on his own. Despite this confidence he worries about living up to his namesake, Superman. Due to the fact he never really had the opportunity to interact with anyone until recently, Superboy is somewhat anti-social and has a hard time getting along with others or showing his emotions. As such he constantly behaves in a confrontational manner, to all people, even those who are attempting to be kind towards him. Even simple things like making amends with people who he has wronged is a tough concept for him to understand. However, he has learned quickly and is not quite so silent, to the point of even carrying on a conversation without getting angry.

By 2016, Superboy seems to have become more mellow and in touch with his emotions, but he is still angered whenever Miss Martian uses her powers invasively. He has also become more experienced and uses his intelligence more, planning attacks instead of going in with physical strength.

Physical appearance
Superboy is a partial genetic clone of Superman, and as such shares many of Superman's physical traits. Although at the time of his liberation, Superboy was 16 years old, though, chronologically, he was only 16 weeks old. As a side effect of the cloning process, Superboy will never visibly age, thus looks identical in the five years since his awakening. Superboy is a Caucasian male with short black hair and blue eyes. He is noticeably taller than most people of his physiological age and is quite muscular, likely due to his partial Kryptonian genes. He is considered very handsome by most girls and is typically seen with a frown on his face, rarely with a smile.

Superboy used to wear a black t-shirt (though he has worn a long sleeved shirt on occasion) with the classic S-shield in red and at times wore a brown leather jacket. He also donned dark blue fatigue pants tucked into dark-brown combat boots with a large buckled-belt. In 2016, he wears a long sleeve variation on his traditional black with red S-shield shirt and fingerless gloves.

Early life
On March 21, 2010, Project Cadmus initiated Project Kr. It was based on Project Match, an earlier attempt to clone Superman. Because of the incomplete DNA sequences, "Match" was deemed a failure, a mistake they did not repeat on Project Kr. For this new project, gaps in the sequences were filled with human DNA, with Lex Luthor as the donor. He was kept in a containment pod along with three G-Gnomes, who telepathically controlled him and educated him with the knowledge of a boy of his physiological age.

January 2011
As the clock struck New Year, Miss Martian and Superboy kissed.

Later, they were locked in a passionate hug when Superman arrived to talk to him. The Man of Steel congratulated him, and tried, uncomfortably, to create another conversation. He inquired about Superboy's civilian name, Conner Kent, and revealed his own secret identity, Clark Kent, to him. Conner was surprised and apologized for the similarity, but Superman was proud of the connection. Superboy was happy with the acceptance.

2014
Draaga showed up in Metropolis and challenged Superman to single combat. Following his defeat at the hands of Superman and Superboy, he retreated.

December 2015
Before he started his briefing, Nightwing wanted to know if Miss Martian and Superboy could work together, without their recent breakup getting in the way. They both agreed they were professional enough to do it.

Miss Martian, Superboy, Bumblebee, Beast Boy, Batgirl and Lagoon Boy were Beta Squad, tasked with protecting Noor Harjavti's democracy rally.

Megan and Conner scouted the crowd at the gathering, but found nothing out of the ordinary.

Clark Kent showed up at the rally and met with Superboy.

Jimmy wanted to show his old acquaintances how his mustache was growing, but neither Megan nor Conner could notice anything different about him.

Clark spotted Devastation, and excused himself. But almost immediately, Devastation, Superman and Superboy disappeared in a flash of light.

Superboy found himself trapped by Kylstar in a crystalline prison. An inhibitor orb nullified his powers, preventing an escape. Several other heroes, villains and champions were also captured. He tried to piece together what happened to him, but the sounds coming from the orb affected his thinking.

Captain Atom freed himself from his prison, and freed Superman, Superboy, Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel.

The heroes discussed what to do with the other prisoners. Superman spotted Draaga, a villain he and Superboy fought two years earlier. Captain Atom, as new leader of the League, decided not to free anyone until they knew more about their captor.

2011-2015
Superboy's relationship with M'gann ended after he broke it off because of his disapproval of how M'gann used her abilities to extract information from villains, and she tried to make him forget that he was angry with her. He did not like to see her kissing her new boyfriend, Lagoon Boy, and thought he was a jerk.

At some point, Superboy, Nightwing and Miss Martian were invited to join the Justice League, but turned it down, stating that they were happier with the Team for now.

February 2016
After the destruction of Malina Island, Superboy suspected the bomb was smuggled to Earth via Boom tube. He suspected Intergang's involvement, and discovered Bruno Mannheim had come out of hiding. He took Blue Beetle and Wolf with him to follow them.

The heroes encountered Mannheim and Whisper A'Daire at the Hall of Justice. Mannheim activated an Apokoliptan device, which revived the residual energy in the Appellaxian husks inside the Hall's trophy room.

Superboy and Wolf attacked the merged golem, but were no match. After Blue Beetle unwisely attacked it with a sonic blast, which was bounced back, all three of them were knocked out. Intergang and the golem escaped.

Giving chase, Superboy berated Blue Beetle for not doing his homework on the Appellaxians, the League's first case, and explained their origins to him.

They caught up with the villains, and Sphere destroyed the control device. With Mannheim no longer in control, the golem made his way to the Arlington Nuclear Power Plant. Blue Beetle and Superboy restrained Mannheim and A'Daire before heading to the power plant.

The golem repelled all of Superboy's and Wolf's attacks. Blue Beetle's armor figured out a way to talk to it, and they learned that it wanted to end its mechanical life to stop the pain it was in. Superboy offered help, but at that moment, a sonic blast from the forest destroyed the golem.

When they returned to the clearing where they left Mannheim and A'Daire, they found them alive, but unresponsive, which angered Superboy.

Powers and abilities
As a partial genetic clone of Superman, he has most of the physical abilities of a Kryptonian who has absorbed the solar energy of a yellow sun. However, due to the human DNA supplied by Lex Luthor, he lacks the more advanced powers of flight and heat vision and presumably is incapable of ever acquiring them. In addition, his existing powers are considerably inferior to Superman's.


 * Physical
 * Super strength: This is one of Superboy's main abilities, allowing him to easily pick up or carry heavy objects.
 * Super leap: To compensate for his inability to fly like Superman, Superboy uses the super-strong muscles in his legs to jump incredible distances and heights.
 * Invulnerability: Like Superman, Superboy is nearly indestructible. This invulnerability allows him to rush into dangerous scenes with little care for what might actually happen. Out of all his teammates, Superboy has taken the most punishment from their missions but has displayed no lasting injuries. He has been tackled through walls, shot with guns and explosives, and had his feet dipped in lava. He has yet to be permanently injured, but he does experience pain.
 * Super hearing: Superboy can pick up the faintest of sounds over long distances.
 * Infrared vision: This ability allows Superboy to visually detect heat signatures, allowing him to easily see in the dark.
 * Hand-to-Hand Combatant: While normally relying on his sheer strength, Superboy has developed highly proficient combat skills from his training under Black Canary. He is shown to be especially good at grappling and takedowns.
 * Mental
 * Multilingual: Superboy can understand and speak many languages outside of English. He is at least fluent in Spanish, Atlantean,
 * Encyclopedic knowledge: Likely due to the G-Gnomes, Superboy has an encyclopedic knowledge of World History.

Weaknesses

 * Code words: When Lex Luthor said the words "Red Sun" to Superboy, he blacked out for several hours, remaining completely still until he snapped out of the hypnotic trance. Miss Martian psychically excised this programming from his mind, and confirmed that no other code words were implanted.
 * Kryptonite: Due to his Kryptonian DNA, Superboy is vulnerable to the unique radioactive properties of this green mineral. However, his human DNA appears to afford him greater resiliency compared to a pure Kryptonian, although he still finds it very painful.

Equipment

 * Motorcycle: Superboy has his own personal mode of transportation: a customized motorcycle. He used this on his mission to guard the Amazo parts. He left it behind to go after the MONQIs. He liked working on it in his spare time.
 * Sphere (Super-Cycle): This piece of New Genesis technology is actually a "she" that bonded with Superboy. Some months later, Sphere's abilities were brought to light.

Former equipment

 * Shields: The shields given to him by Lex Luthor allow Superboy to suppress his human DNA, permitting his full Kryptonian abilities to surface for an hour, including flight, heat vision and X-ray vision. He has run out of them.
 * Solar suit: Upon being released from his cryogenic suspension in Cadmus Labs, Superboy wore a white solar suit with a red Superman S-symbol on the chest. The suit allowed him to absorb Yellow Sun radiation to fuel his powers even underground. The suit was damaged during the fight with Blockbuster. While staying with Wally West, he continued to wear the tattered solar suit until he bought new clothes from Forever Sixteen in the Central City Mall three days later.

Superman
Superboy is Superman's partial clone. During incubation at Cadmus Labs, Superboy was programmed to both take over for Superman if he ever died and to defeat Superman if he ever went bad. He respected Superman, to the extent that Aqualad was able to convince him to resist the G-Gnome's telepathic control by asking "What would Superman do?".

Originally, Superboy longed to meet Superman, but when they finally met, Superboy was angered by Superman's initial reaction of surprise and near disgust at having a clone. After the matter was explained, Superman tried to show some support for him, but failed and quickly excused himself. Over the next several days, while staying with Wally West, Superboy repeatedly wondered if Superman knew where he was, and when they'd meet again.

For the first six months after that, Superman had actively avoided Superboy and tried to push responsibility of him onto Batman and Red Tornado. Even when Superboy directly asked Superman to help him figure out the extent of his powers, Superman refused and quickly left. This apparent rejection made Superboy angry and led him to make several reckless errors of judgment, such as attempting to take down the powerful Amazo by himself.

Following being saved from Vandal Savage's mind control of the Justice League, Superman has come to accept Superboy. He revealed his secret identity, and approved of Superboy taking on his last name "Kent". Since 2011, Clark has given Conner a Kryptonian name, Kon-El. He now views Superboy as his little brother as opposed to his son.

Lex Luthor
Lex Luthor provided his genetic material to Superboy, and has tauntingly referred to him as his "son". Knowing him as a villain, Superboy disapproved of his connection to Lex Luthor, but Lex exploited it in the hopes of bringing Superboy to the Light.

Aqualad
Even before being elected leader, Aqualad tried to keep the Team together. This involved actively persuading Superboy to care more about his surroundings.

Miss Martian
Miss Martian and Superboy liked each other from the moment they met, and throughout their missions came closer and closer together. They eventually became a couple but did not tell their friends. Nonetheless, Aqualad and Robin found out easily, as did Zatanna, who informed Artemis, who told Wally and the latter was very sad to hear the news.

Five years later, they are no longer a couple,. Though it was his decision, Superboy is still uncomfortable seeing her with Lagoon Boy. Superboy broke up with her when he caught her trying to wipe his mind of his anger at her abuse of her telepathy.

Artemis
Artemis had a crush on Superboy from the moment she first saw him—before she came on the Team. During her first mission, she did not shy away of openly flirting with him, which made Superboy uncomfortable. She was distraught when Zatanna pointed out to her that he was in a relationship with Miss Martian.

Background in other media

 * In the comics, when Superboy was first introduced, he lacked all the powers he currently demonstrates in the cartoon series. Due to the fact he escaped his growth tube before reaching maturity and due to issues regarding cloning a Kryptonian (a Kryptonian is completely indestructible thus collecting a DNA sample is nearly impossible), Superboy was instead given tactile telekinesis, which allowed to him to simulate Superman's primary powers (flight, strength, invulnerability). As time passed and Superboy matured, he began to manifest all the normal Kryptonian powers, causing him to use his tactile telekinesis less and less. In the cartoon however, Superboy has not developed tactile telekinetic abilities. Instead, his powers are mostly the same as Superman's, although he lacks some abilities such as flight and heat vision.
 * Superboy's personality is distinctly different in Young Justice from how it was in the comics. In the comics, Superboy was immature, talkative, flirtatious and comically rude, which slowly was replaced with a more mature attitude. Here his personality is more brooding and somber, with bouts of uncontrollable anger and with a lack of understanding basic human interactions at times.
 * Superboy's romantic relationship with Miss Martian is something introduced specifically for the series. In the comics, Superboy had a long-term relationship with Wonder Woman's second sidekick Wonder Girl (Cassandra Sandsmark), that ended recently. Before that, he had multiple love interests, including Tana Moon, Roxy Leech and Serling Roquette.
 * Superboy's non-relationship with Superman is reminiscent of the comics, in which there was several years of awkwardness and distance between the pair before at last Superman accepted Superboy properly into his life and into the Kent Family.