From: Superboy #82 (July 1960) "The War Against Superboy!"
In this three-part "novel", Superboy is up against the General and his Crime Army, and his ally the Brain, in a far-reaching plot that almost gets the better of the Teen of Steel. Much better villains than we usually see, though their involvement with Krypto is... not their finest hour.
In Chapter 1, we're introduced to the bad guys, and why they hate Superboy so much. By the end of it, they've destroyed Superboy's robot complement, and stand poised to take out Superboy's OTHER deus ex machina. And that's Krypto. How? Well, would you believe reinventing the Bizarro ray, only with unlimited range, and making a Bizarro Krypto?
How terrifying for the Crime Army soldier who must gain this Krypto's trust by dressing up as Superboy. And he's a literal-minded menace as well:
"Cut it out" is not a command you want to give him. After a bit more mayhem, the General has his soldier send Bizarro-Krypto into space - and this is actually the plan - to incidentally lure the real Krypto on a wild goose chase to some remote planet. And despite the universe being a big place that goes out in all directions, it WORKS.
Time to lure a now friendless Superboy to the Crime Army Base where there's a cell made of Kryptonite. Of course, Superboy gets out if it by what I can only call Super Telekinetically rebuilding one of his robots from afar, but what about the Kryptos? When they meet, it isn't pretty.
During their battle to the death, an alien creature that looks like a big tentacled arm shows up and blasts the real Krypto. Bizarro Krypto is initially glad to have his foe go down, but suffers a sudden change of heart because... well because there are like 3 panels left to the story.
Krypto is saved and the time limit on the imperfect duplicate is up. Bizarro-Krypto disintegrates before the Pooch of Steel's very eyes.
Close calls!
Comments
Is this the first canonical appearence of Superman IV's rebuild-the-Great-Wall-of-China-vision?!