TRULY GONE AND FORGOTTEN FOES : THE MUMMER

Not to be confused with "Superboy Gets a Hummer!" which is a specialty video you can find online.

Ironically, when it comes to Superman’s many rogues, the ones who've proven to have the longest shelf-life aren't the world-beaters and weightlifters, but rather the soft, breakable ones who ought to fold like a house of cards or pop like a bounce-house the size of the sun under the slightest pressure from the Pinky of Steel. Never mind that Superman could turn Toyman, The Prankster and even Lex Luthor into gristle piñatas with a determined eyebrow flex, they've still managed to build the longest rivalries with the Last Son of Krypton.

Of course, not every unpowered villain makes a legacy – “Squishable” alone does not a legend make.

Superboy isn’t much different, and one of his first super-foes is a “mischievous mountebank of menace” (comic book writers used to get paid by the alliteration) known as “The Mummer,” a frustrated entertainer who turns crooked, like Wesley Snipes only with more knee-socks and fewer tax problems.

You can wait forever, son, he died in there.

Apparently some sort of 17th century fop-comic, the Mummer’s big gimmick involves utilizing a trio of increasingly smaller “dummies” – actually sophisticated robots of his own invention – who aid him in his crimes. You would think he could just sell the robots to make his fortune, but robots are a dime-a-dozen in the Earth of the Silver Age. You comb robots out of your beard in the morning, there are stone age tribes yet undiscovered by Western civilization on the Silver Age Earth which have their own robots. You get two robots in a box of Cap’n Crunch as a prize, and you’d probably throw one of ‘em away.

The Mummer’s tremendous pride encourages him to challenge Superboy to a contest of wits as a means to truly launch his criminal career, aided by a Superboy robot of his own invention – which is also his downfall, as Superboy reprograms it to just fuck the poor idiot up. The Mummer quits thereafter, his legacy preserved only in an annual parade held in Philadelphia every New Years.