Get ready to party like it's 1996.
Superboy and the Ravers is a nineteen issue DC Comics series published from 1996 to 1998. It was written by Karl Kesel and Steve Mattsson with artwork by Paul Pelletier, Dan Davis, John Kalisz, Todd Nauck.
Superboy 's friend Sparx (D.C. Force) introduces him to the never ending rave of Event Horizon where he meets Aura (Lindsay Wah), Hero Cruz, and Kaliber. When Lindsay, Hero and D.C. are attacked by a group of extraterrestrial punks called the Red Shift after leaving the rave they encounter Byron Stark who has been holed up for decades in the buried spaceship that killed his family and pregnant girlfriend and left half his body as transparent glowing green ectoplasm. After the fight Byron is invited to join the rave and gets swept along with Superboy and his new acquaintances on adventures across the universe, a road trip through the United States, and frequent visits to Event Horizon while the group acts as intergalactic superheroes usually pulled into situations requiring heroics not entirely by their own will.
Several of the surviving Ravers showed up again as Young Justice allies and in Kon's ongoing Superboy title and a handful of them joined various branches of the Teen Titans.
Superboy and the Ravers provides examples of:
- Action Girl: D.C. Force (Sparx) and Lindsay Wah (Aura) are regularly a central part of taking down the bad guys. The team ends up running into the the InterC.E.P.T. crew at various points which is made up almost entirely of action women including Nightshade (Eve Eden) a teleporting martial arts master, the tentacle covered Shaar Q, tough silicon based Strata, Beta Tos, and Ephyra.
- Anatomically Ignorant Healing: Byron Stark was horrifically injured when an alien craft crashed into his parent's house back in the 1950s and the ship's subsequent attempts to repair him replaced his damaged flesh with transparent green goo and stopped him from aging any further. The green stuff "repairs" any injuries he suffers afterwards in the same way making him understandably protective of his remaining human flesh.
- Badass Arm-Fold: Byron often stands with his arms folded, which also shows his control as he never damages the remaining human looking flesh of his right hand and forearm when doing so.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Shaar Q is from an alien race with a lot of tentacles on their strangely shaped heads and a long worm like body.
- Bizarre Alien Locomotion: Shaar Q sort of slithers and wriggles her way around and appears to have siphons so could presumably use jet propulsion in liquid like a squid or octopus.
- Blind Seer: D.C.'s grandmother is a seer who is also blind.
- The Cameo: While some famous DC characters show up as guest stars others show up for a panel or two, sometimes with no lines even including Lady Blackhawk, Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, Batman, Two-Face
- Cat Girl: Catwalk has cat ears and a feline tail.
- Cephalothorax: Shaar Q's race is built as an odd head that has a few protrusions and a bunch of tentacles.
- Civvie Spandex: The page image is from this very series. Kon-El pairs his skin-tight suit with a leather jacket, cocky grin, unnecessary belts, and sunglasses.
- Cleavage Window: Aura has a midriff window that goes high enough to show the underside of her breasts.
- Dark Age of Supernames: Red Death of the Red Shift, Kindred Grim, Screamqueen, Slither, Fang, Claw Hammer, Hardrock, Rock Steele, Loose Cannon, Sparx, Dino-Mite, Drrt, Scavenger, the Darkstars, and the Corpse Corps all show up here and were named and created in the 90s, though some of them got off better than others.
- The Dog Is an Alien: The immortal Rex the Wonder Dog is currently living with Hero and is a regular part of the team. Amusingly Rex can get into all sorts of places the rest of them can't due to their ages since he's well known and has a long history of making friends in high places.
- Doppelganger Link: Tetrad Force can split himself into four mentally linked duplicates.
- Energy Beings: Sparx can shift her body to be made entirely of energy.
- Facepalm: When Impulse guest stars the hulking Kaliber is seen giddily lining up for the speedster's signature along with a bunch of teenage fan girls while Superboy smacks a hand across his face in the background.
- Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Kon-El, Sparx and Aura seem to be vacuum packed and taped into their costumes.
- Greaser Delinquents: Half-Life is a hot-rodder from the 1950s who gained superpowers when an alien spaceship crashed on top of him and later won a flying motorcycle he was very fond of in a bet.
- Green-Skinned Space Babe: Like most other Tamaraneans Oleand'r is an orange skinned Statuesque Stunner with little regard for Earth's concept of modesty.
- Green Thumb: Hyathis shows up attacking Adam Strange and his daughter on their way to Zared using her ability to control plant-life and the rave got sucked into the fallout as the Zaredians searched for those who attacked of Rann's diplomatic mission and the Darkstars show up attacking everyone while accusing the Zaredians of causing Adam's disappearance.
- Human Aliens: Kaliber may be Qwardian but he essentially looks like an exceptionally tall well muscled hairless pink man.
- I Just Want to Be Special: D.C. backstory involves nearly getting herself killed to trigger a meta-gene she hoped she had and Hero doesn't have any powers naturally instead using power giving items. Hero is justified however due to his status as a Weirdness Magnet in the DCU those items help him stay alive, and bizarre situations and powerful artifacts tend to land in his lap anyway.
- Impossibly Cool Clothes: Sparx's usual low cut strapless leotard isn't really there but if it was it would have to be painted on. Some of the other outfits she conjures up the appearance of wouldn't really work if they were made up of physical clothing either.
- Impractically Fancy Outfit: Bizarre outfits are quite common at Event Horizon, many of which look like they'd restrict movement and require magic to stay on at the least.
- Incompatible Orientation: D.C. is attracted to Hero but Hero is gay, made more complicated by the fact that one of the H-Dial heroes Hero called up made out with her and she doesn't fully understand that Hero is a separate character from the individuals he turns into when he uses it.
- Killed Off for Real: Unfortunately quite few of the friends Superboy makes at the rave are killed in the comic and never come back and on the team itself Half-Life ends up killed.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: Half-life and his girlfriend only had sex once and weren't trying to or expecting for her to get pregnant which of course she did. While he made the decision to marry her and they were both excited about their child even if they knew they were out of their depth as teenagers she and their unborn child were killed when aliens crash-landed their ship into of the house they were in.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: During the road trip Kaliber points out a billboard with The Flash on it and Superboy responds with "Guess the Flash is making an appearance near here…"
- Magnetism Manipulation: Aura's powerset includes moving objects through manipulating the magnetism around her and being able to perceive the magnetic forces around her.
- Monochromatic Eyes: Tamaraneans have single color eyes as a species trait and some of those with superpowers have monochromatic eyes when those powers are in use.
- Most Common Super Power: While some of the extraterrestrial women in the series do not much resemble the women of earth at all those that do along with the human ladies are all well endowed.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Kaliber comes from an Always Chaotic Evil race of weapon-makers that frequently clashes with the Green Lantern Corps. He idolises Superman and wants to be like him.
- Octopoid Aliens: Shaar Q's race are essentially oddly shaped heads with a mass of smaller tentacles and one large one.
- Older Than They Look: While Half-Life's dripping exposed skeletal half may be a bit distracting the remaining human part of him looks quite young for someone who was a teenager in the 1950s since he hasn't physically aged since the accident that left half of his body glowing and green.
- Sarcastic Confession: Aura straight up tells D.C. that she's being blackmailed to spy on Superboy's group but D.C. thinks she's joking.
- Secret Identity: Aura's real name is Lindsay Wah, Sparx's is D.C. Force and Half-Life's is Byron Stark. A number of the other ravers are heroes on their home planets and only go by their hero names in the series.
- Sensual Spandex: Aura's form-fitting costume has the entire front of the midriff cutout high enough to ensure constant underboob exposure and another cutout showing off most of her back.
- Silicon-Based Life: Strata and her husband and child are from a silicon based alien species.
- Sizeshifter: Kaliber can change his size.
- Shock and Awe: D.C. Force has exceptional electrokinesis.
- Speech Bubbles: Half-Life's speech bubbles lower edge is always dripping and the text within is uneven with different letters at different sizes.
- Spikes of Villainy: The villain Drrt wears strips of leather covered in spikes like a dog collar and Whoon wears a strip of them like a mohawk on his headgear. The Thunderers of Qward wore large spikes on their helmets and a had more attached to various places on their armor.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Superboy finds himself a bit suspicous in the first issue when D.J., the giant bouncer, and Kindred Marx manage to get away from right behind him after giving him the Event Horizon stamp. And the bouncer manages to show up and disappear so quickly that the Kid refers to him as Stealth Bouncer before the end of the first issue.
- Superheroes Wear Tights: Most of the team averts this, opting for Not Wearing Tights, armor or a Leotard of Power but Superboy's outfit fits even if he dons a leather jacket over top of it.
- Superpowerful Genetics: The whole force family has superpowers of some kind or another and D.C.'s latent meta-gene was triggered in an event which should have killed her, which is not an uncommon way for meta-genes to be triggered in the DCU.
- Transformation Trinket: Hero gets his hands on a H.E.R.O. dial after losing his force-field projecting vest. Which works in a manner consistent with previous appearances; it turns him into a completely random different superhero with each use.
- Translator Microbes: The Event Horizon hand stamps conveniently seamlessly translate an incredibly wide variety of alien languages for those wearing them.
- Tropey the Wonder Dog: Rex the Wonder Dog is part of Superboy's team and regularly spots the good and bad guys before the rest of the group.
- Twofer Token Minority: Hero Cruz is gay with Puerto Rican with African heritage.
- Two Girls to a Team: Superboy's Ravers are a group of four guys and two girls.
- Wingdinglish: In Superboy's initial introduction to Event Horizon the different extraterrestrial languages being spoken are each represented by different looking nonsense fonts.
The party's over!
