The mystery of Boy Thunder, the long-lost sidekick of Superman, will come to an end in January's Batman/Superman: World's Finest #11 from writer Mark Waid and artists Dan Mora and Jordie Bellaire.
Boy Thunder debuted in Batman/Superman: World's Finest #7, and just like the title's first villain Devil Nezha, the character has been retconned into the historical friendship of Batman and Robin as Superman's short-lived sidekick.
His first appearance told his origin as the only survivor of an alternate, long-lost reality of DC's Omniverse which was destroyed. Real name David Sikela, his parents sent him through a rift to the core DC Universe as their world perished. Since arriving, he's developed the power to control solar energy which he can release in a massive, heated burst, or focus down into laserbeams.
Since his introduction, there's been a question about both his true identity, and the true nature of his origins, with Donna Troy warning Dick Grayson that something seems off after Dick introduces Boy Thunder to the Teen Titans.
The other question about Boy Thunder is, why have none of the Teen Titans, Batman, Superman, or Supergirl ever mentioned him in the years since his in-universe first appearance?
The answer to both the mystery of Boy Thunder's identity and why no one has talked about him in the time since Superman briefly mentored him will arrive in January, as DC's solicitation text makes it clear that whoever he really is, fans have met Boy Thunder's secret identity before.
"The saga of Boy Thunder crashes to a close as Batman, Superman, and the Titans frantically attempt to save their wayward ward!" reads the solicitation.
"The choices the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel make in this moment will affect the future as we know it, as the secret identity of this über-powerful last son—that of someone DC fans have known for decades—is at last revealed!"
So Boy Thunder is "someone DC fans have known for decades," meaning that basically all of DC history is on the table - at least up until the '90s or '00s depending on how liberal one's interpretation of "decades" is.
Does this mean that Boy Thunder has been absent from the DC Universe, with a modern-day return in the works (a la the aforementioned villain Devil Nezha, who returned in Batman Vs. Robin arc, also written by Waid)? Or does it mean that we actually have seen or heard from Boy Thunder in the modern day, but not by that name?
For now, all we can do is make our best guess at who Boy Thunder might actually be - no small feat when tons of characters could potentially fit the bill in classic Superman lore, from Solar Boy to Space-Boy, to Atom Man, to Lightning Man, and more (and if anyone can pick from a bench that deep for a World's Finest story, it's Mark Waid).
With that in mind, we've narrowed it down to a few likely candidates for his secret identity, a few dark horse surprises, and indeed a few wild guesses as to who Boy Thunder really is.
Ignition
Back in the early '00s story Superman: Emperor Joker, Joker manages to swipe the reality-altering powers of Mr. Mxyzptlk, remaking the world in his image with only Superman to save the day.
Ignition is an armored villain who was part of Joker's warped reality with the power to create explosions, whose real identity was never shown in the story.
Joker has taken an interest in Boy Thunder and will join the story in November's Batman/Superman: World's Finest #9, so there may be something to the idea of Boy Thunder as a creation of Joker's brief dalliance with omnipotence.
Sonik
In the mid-'80s, Superman and Batman were briefly joined by a third hero for a few arcs of the World's Finest title of the time, who was a young Black hero inspired by Superman to fight crime on the streets of Metropolis.
That hero, Sonik, only appeared a few times. And though he had sonic powers sorta like Boy Thunder's signature sonic boom effect, they came from his own technology, not innate powers from another world. Still, his pedigree as a Superman ally from World's Finest could put him in the running.
That said, Sonik is Black. And while Boy Thunder has a Black mother in Batman/Superman: World's Finest, whether DC would alter the character’s background and lighten his skin tone in the year 2022 seems questionable.
Superboy-Prime
The book seems closed on Superboy Prime, with the long-time hero-turned-villain recently returning to a version of his Multiversal home reality. But there are some similarities between Superboy-Prime and Boy Thunder.
For one thing, they both come from realities without superpowers or superheroes. In Superboy Prime's homeworld, he's essentially the only superhuman, albeit with the exact origin of the mainstream Superman - just like Boy Thunder, who's spared from the destruction of his world by a dimensional rift that takes him to the core DCU.
The obvious difference between Superboy-Prime and Boy Thunder is that Boy Thunder doesn't look, sound, or act like Clark Kent, nor share his name. But there's nothing saying he couldn't somehow be fully in disguise for some reason.
New 52 Kon-El
The New 52 version of Kon-El Superboy could be the wildest of wild guesses we could make about the secret identity of Boy Thunder. We're going there anyway, but we're also hedging our bets that the complex story of New 52 Kon-El is worth revisiting for World's Finest.
In short, much like the original Kon-El, the New 52 version is a clone of Superman and Lex Luthor. But unlike in the core DC Universe, rather than being a hero, he's more of a villain - or anti-hero at best.
In the pro column for why he may fit, he's a long-lost Superman spin-off character who was last seen disappearing into the Multiverse.
In the con column, he stretches the possible definition of the term "decades" in DC's solicitation text, having technically only been introduced in 2011, cause he's not the same Kon-El who was introduced back in the early '90s.
But if you count the idea of two versions of the same character as someone "DC fans have known for decades," he might just work.
Halk Kar
Halk Kar is a very minor, deep-cut character from the '50s - an apparent Kryptonian who lands on Earth in a stasis pod, carrying a letter from Superman's father Jor-El that makes Superman think he's got an older brother.
As it turns out, Halk Kar is actually a mindwiped citizen of the planet Thoron, who possesses powers similar to Superman's, since Thoron and Krypton are in the same solar system, and who met Jor-El shortly before Krypton exploded.
A different version of Halk Kar has appeared briefly in modern comics, with a cameo in Grant Morrison and Liam Sharpe's The Green Lantern, so he may be off the table.
But he was actually the comic book precursor to our number one guess for who Boy Thunder may be in reality.
Lar Gand
That brings us to our top guess: Mon-El/Lar Gand, who originates in the early '60s. For one thing, Boy Thunder kinda just looks a lot like Mon-El, with his short cropped hair. And the resemblance between the two characters doesn't stop there.
Much like Halk Kar, Mon-El (whose actual name is Lar Gand) crash-landed on Earth in a spaceship with a letter from Jor-El, leading Superman (actually Superboy at the time) to assume he is his brother, and name him "Mon-El," having landed on a Monday and seemingly sharing Superboy's Kryptonian origin among the House of El.
As it turns out, he's actually a Daxamite named Lar Gand who met Jor-El shortly before Krypton exploded, who later regains his memory and becomes a long-term ally of Superman.
Mon-El also has a long history in the DC Universe as a hero in the present day and as a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, so being "known for decades" is absolutely on the table.
A different version of Mon-El, in this case, a 31st-century descendant of Superman, appeared in DC's most recent Legion reboot.
But that means that the original Lar Gand Daxamite version of Mon-El is still out there in the ether, waiting for someone like Mark Waid - who wrote the character in his own stint on the Legion - to come along and bring him back to the DC Universe.
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