No one talks about Metropolis. It doesn’t have Gotham’s history or Blüdhaven’s tragedies or even Hub City’s perserverance. It’s simply there as Superman’s home and that weird classical ideal of the city of tomorrow. A city, however, can mean different things for different people. For some, it’s a reminder of everything that they’re not—the first, the strongest, the fastest. And for others, a city can be the only place that they can exist, whether they want to be there or not. These twin perspectives of a city like Metropolis run concurrently in the new series City Boy by Greg Pak, Minkyu Jung, Sunny Gho, and Wes Abbott, and Superboy: The Man of Tomorrow by Kenny Porter, Jahnoy Lindsay, and Lucas Gattoni.

Cameron Kim is tied to Metropolis. His mom left him there in the care of his grandmother and he’s been walking the city since. And since then he’s also come to talking with the city as well. He can communicate with the streets—seeing the little things just barely hidden from view, but Metropolis always lets him know. And it’s for this reason that he’s being targeted by forces that trace their connections back to Darkseid. But just out of view of Cameron’s story is Conner Kent. As a clone of Superman, he should feel connected to Metropolis—he’s been here for years already. But, after another Crisis, he’s left in this version of Earth that doesn’t know who is here, where he came from, or really what he is. While the crest he wears may be synonymous with the city itself, it’s no longer a part of him—prompting him to leave this Earth entirely to look for somewhere else to mark his heroics.

Even if Conner leaves Metropolis, he’s still tied to it. That’s what makes this city so fascinating to read about over the decades. Both of these comics add more to the mythos of city—albeit one more than the other—but they still create this ever-present image of Metropolis in our heads. When you have Conner Kent, you see the tops of the skyscrapers and the gleam of the sun off the Daily Planet’s golden globe. But with Cameron Kim, you see everything else—everyone and everything that gets swept to the sides in any modern city. They create a contrast between the idealized version that has become so iconic to the Super-family and their mythos and the reality of trying to live in a place that is hostile to everyone except those who can get off the streets.

While they were released a month apart, City Boy and Superboy feel like an aspect of the same series, just slightly to the left of one another. It brings into perspective the multitude of stories that happen within Metropolis and how they play out—one where someone can simply fly away when they need a change, and another where they’re tied so completely to the city that they never could just walk away from it.

Get excited. Get metro. 

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Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.