Adventure Comics #494

In "Part I: Superboy's Big Brother!" from Adventure Comics #494, Superboy discovers a mysterious, amnesiac teen with powers after a spaceship crash near Smallville. He takes the boy in, names him Mon-El, and helps him build a new life—only to uncover unsettling clues that Mon-El may not be the Kryptonian he appears to be.

In "Part 2: The Secret of Mon-El!" from Adventure Comics #494, Superboy's attempt to uncover the truth about Mon-El's origins takes a shocking turn when a well-meaning test accidentally exposes him to lead—revealing not a Kryptonian secret, but a far more complex past. As Mon-El's memories return, he recalls his true identity as Lar Gand, a Daxamite explorer who once visited Krypton and met Jor-El and Lara before coming to Earth. With time running out, Superboy makes the difficult choice to send him into the Phantom Zone, hoping to buy enough time to find a cure.

In "To Win Is to Lose!", Aqualad wakes from injury with only fragments of memory, certain he must aid Aquaman in rescuing Mera—though Aquaman is far from Atlantis, searching elsewhere. As he journeys, he’s captured by a tribe of sea warriors and forced into a brutal arena duel, while Aquaman confronts a race of undersea giants and a curious surface explorer. Meanwhile, Atlantis trembles as a sudden sea quake shakes the city, deepening the mystery of what’s unfolding beneath the waves.

In a bold twist of fate, Lex Luthor, trapped in a prison cell, reaches across time to summon the Legion of Super-Villains—believing that for every hero, there must be a villainous counterpart. Together, they journey to the past to break free and unite in a scheme to destroy Superman, only to find their plans derailed when Luthor subtly alters the course of one key member—Saturn Queen—shifting her allegiance in a way no one saw coming.

When an experimental anesthetic transforms a wounded ambassador into the vessel of his long-dead pirate ancestor, Captain Skull, the sudden surge of supernatural power unleashes a menace from the past. Now, with the ambassador's body as his prison and his cursed legacy awakened, only the Spectre stands a chance of confronting the ancient terror reborn.