It's A Rough Life In The Superboy Revenge Squad!

I imagine that there are a lot of good, rewarding jobs for a space pirate.

Unfortunately, ending up in the Superboy Revenge Squad is not one of those rewarding jobs.

I mean, there's not a lot of variety in your staff meetings:

"Their main business is the same as usual"?? Well, yeah, when you call yourself the Superboy Revenge Squad, that does sort of limit your agenda each week, doesn't it?

A) Open meeting; recite "I Hate Superboy" oath
B) Old Business: Last month's plot to kill Superboy. FAILED
C) New Business: Brand new plot to kill Superboy. APPROVED
D) Adjourn. Donuts in the rumpus room.

Just think--you signed up for a life as a space pirate!! You imagined a life of swashbuckling, booty, exotic ports...and instead you end up in the SRS, and spend your whole career kvetching about some damned teenager on a backwater planet.

One example of how dreary life must have been:

Let's do an extreme close-up here:

This tells us two things.

First, the Superboy Revenge Squad has had at least 55 previous plans involving Red Kryptonite. Fifty-five!! At some point you think they'd decide to give up on that little gambit. But no, they keep trying that Hail Mary pass that never, ever works...

Secondly, there's an untold story out there where the Superboy Revenge Squad gave Superboy a super-itch.

I want to read that story. Grant...?

Anyway, working for the Superboy Revenge Squad is pretty much all downside. A little elementary time travel tells you that you can't ever actually succeed in killing him; but you still get punished pretty severely for failure:

That's...just weird. And yes, those are heat-vision charred dog bones they're being forced to fight with, from earlier in the story.

So, moral: no matter what your guidance counselor tells you, don't be a Silver Age space pirate.

From Superboy #118 (1965), as reprinted in Four Star Spectacular #6 (1977)