Krypto #41: The Secret Life of Krypto

From: Superman #152 (April 1962), Action Comics #288 (May 1962) and Superboy #97 (June 1962)

In Superboy #97, Clark Kent has made a ham radio pal from the fictional Baltic country of Morvania (should I tell you "morve" in French means "snot"?), an orphan name of Hans Linkner. After hearing his voice and seeing his picture, Krypto is in love.
Our favorite dog flies to Morvania immediately and finds Hans getting bullied for his orphandom. The other kids don't want to play with someone who has no parents... which is ABSURD, am I right? Imagine all the unsupervised parties Hans will be having in the future. These boys aren't thinking ahead. Hans is so unlucky, Krypto has to save him from getting hit by lightning. To cheer him up, Krypto... um... destroys a part of Morvania's heritage.
If Morvania had an evil king at least, but no, Good King Rolf is apparently pretty great. Well, nothing can stop Krypto's vanity, as we've often found out. After Krypto destroys his statue, Hans adopts him and calls him Zip. Unknown to either of them, the evil Count Von Kragg and scientist Erich Boznar see this encounter and factor it into their schemes to assassinate the king. It just so happens they own a piece of Green Kryptonite, which they never thought they could use, but here's a great opportunity to use Krypto's powers to their advantage. So they give Hans a nice lead dog-collar medal for his new dog, and remotely open it whenever they want to take away the pooch's powers. For example, whenever Hans commands him to do a super-feat to ingratiate himself to the bullies.
This happens over and over, until Hans doesn't want the humiliating dog anymore.
Strapped over a Green K barrel, Krypto is forced to make assassination attempts on King Rolf lest he meet a green-hued death. In the first, he sinks the king's ship, but secretly saves him at the last second. The second is... not great. Essentially, they've put dynamite under the palace, and they have a confederate inside, ready to die for the cause, who will let them know if Krypto disobeys them. His mission: Light the fuse with his heat vision. Because apparently, said accomplice doesn't have a match??? Somebody's not trying very hard. Before becoming a terrorist, Krypto visits Hand one last time:
Good thing Superboy can recognize specific barks over radio because he's able to fly to Morvania and disable the bomb, easy peasy. It's a good thing the villains didn't activate the dog collar, because the Kryptonians would both have been taken away. Except not, because Hans took the "unlucky" collar away on that last meeting, bless.
Everything's sorted and now, no foster parent will ever turn down a heroic lad like Hans. (A lot of Superman Family comics were about the plight of the orphan, weren't they? Part of living in a post-World War II world, I suppose.)

A month earlier, in Action Comics #288... Krypto saves Clark Kent's secret identity by making tunnels in full view, explaining away Superboy's old tunnel to his house in Smallville.
And a month before that, in Superman #152... Superman himself wears a big medal, a timepiece for a fundraiser, but he doesn't know it's got a camera inside that's allowing crooks to track his every move. The camera catches Krypto misbehaving.
It's not really what the crooks were looking for, but it can probably be sold to some 90s Fox special or something...

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