Forget Krypto, DC Comics is Reviving Superman’s OTHER Animal Sidekick

I know we all love Krypto, but DC Comics is seriously bringing one of Superman’s other, frankly stranger, animal friends back. If you’ve read as many Superman comics as I have, you know that the guy’s mythos is filled with a lot of outlandish things. Opposite-natured clones, strange visitors from different worlds and timelines, etc. The Silver Age alone saw numerous writers and artists shake up the Man of Steel’s lore with plenty of wild swings. And while some of those swings paid off and became fundamental pieces of lore, other elements were left by the wayside of history.

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But one of the things I love about modern Superman is that nothing is really gone. Creative teams will look back and reuse old plot points, like the current Supergirl ongoing, re-establishing that Superman sent her to live in an orphanage. Or they’ll take an idea and reinvent it for the modern day, like Aethyr, a powerful being that lives in the Phantom Zone. The minds behind the current Superman books really love Superman’s history, and it seems like any idea from the past is fair game for reinvention, including a certain simian friend of the Big Blue Boy Scout.

DC Reintroduces Beppo, the Super-Monkey

In Superman Unlimited #12 by Dan Slott, Lucas Meyer, Giuliano Peratelli, and Dave Sharpe, El Caldero, the nation that became home to the Earth’s greatest supply of kryptonite after it was struck by a meteorite, is having a celebration. Superman might be missing in the wake of DC K.O., but the people of El Caldero are honoring his sacrifice, debuting a new Superman statue in the heart of the nation’s capital. President Castilho is asked if he’s worried that Superman’s absence will affect the sales of kryptonite, but Castilho isn’t worried, claiming that there’s plenty of applications for kryptonite.

At the same time, somewhere in a secret lab in Metropolis, a group of scientists is indeed finding additional uses for kryptonite by experimenting on monkeys, injecting them with some kind of kryptonite cocktail. One monkey manages to get out of his cage, and he springs for the nearest escape. The scientists go into full lockdown mode, but it’s too late. The monkey, experiment #06638, is out running around Metropolis. The scientists also note that it’s 10 hours until sunlight, at which point they note he’ll be extremely dangerous.

Out near Hob’s Bay, Superman’s associate Bibbo is locking down his food truck for the evening, but while cleaning up, he discovers the wayward primate sneaking a few pierogis for himself. Bibbo takes it in stride and offers the monkey a Soder. Bibbo sees the identification tag on the monkey’s wrist, misreading the upside-down number #06638 as the name ‘Beppo’. The monkey takes the name Beppo and does a little bit of schtick with Bibbo as the night goes on, neither of them aware of what will happen to Beppo when the sun comes out.

Beppo is About to Go Bananas on Metropolis

Beppo is a deeper cut than other Super-Family animals like Krypto, Streaky, or Comet. Beppo was one of Jor-El’s test animals that snuck onboard baby Kal-El’s ship and hitched a ride to Earth. He would pop up every once in a while as a comical addition to Superboy’s adventures. But like most of the other outlandish elements of Superman’s history, he was erased during Crisis on Infinite Earths. However, Beppo has made sporadic appearances due to later continuity shake-ups, though he never seemed to have the staying power that Krypto did.

But I do love how they’re tying in Beppo with the recent influx of kryptonite. That new cache kryptonite already caused the Super-Family a lot of grief, but we’ve only seen it used as weaponry and minor things like cosmetics so far. We haven’t seen what secrets scientists have been able to unlock or what they’ve managed to combine it with. All we know is that whatever is in the drugs Beppo has been dosed with, it’s going to be a huge problem when the sun finally shines on Metropolis.

I’m not expecting Beppo to go full villain. That’d be like expecting Streaky to suddenly turn heel. But we still don’t exactly know what the kryptonite concoction will do to him. Give him the usual gamut of Kryptonian powers? Make him Titano-sized? Plus, the Super-Family is spread a bit thin, meaning that if the worst happens, they won’t have Superman to readily handle him. Hopefully, whatever happens to Beppo won’t make him a complete force for destruction. But I have a feeling his monkeyshines will be a real challenge come daylight.

What do you think about Beppo’s return to Superman canon? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts on the ComicBook Forum!