250's for America's 250 · Day 2: Adventure Comics #250

Publishing: Friday, June 12, 2026 · DC Comics · Cover date: July 1958

Cover art by Curt Swan (pencils) and Stan Kaye (inks), lettering by Ira Schnapp

Day 2 hands us the first sneaky "key" of the series. On the surface it's a 1958 Superboy anthology — but tucked inside is a piece of genuine creator history.

The issue

The lead Superboy tale, "The Imposter from the Year 2958," sends a 30th-century lawman back to Smallville to warn the Boy of Steel that a future criminal has traveled to the past, impersonating a local to get his hands on cobalt for a bomb — and Superboy has to figure out who's been replaced. But the issue's collector hook is the Green Arrow backup, "The Green Arrows of the World," which introduces an international roster of Green Arrow–styled archers. It's drawn by Jack Kirby — his first Green Arrow story, kicking off a short, prized run. An Aquaman short rounds out the book.

Who's in it

• Superboy (Clark Kent) — the teenage Man of Steel, working out which Smallville neighbor is secretly a disguised criminal from the far future.
• Green Arrow and Speedy — DC's trick-arrow archer and his young partner, here meeting counterpart archers from other nations.
• The Green Arrows of the World — a one-off roster of internationally themed archers, introduced solely in this backup story.
• Aquaman — the King of the Seven Seas, starring in a short backup adventure of his own.

Behind the book (creators)

• Cover: Curt Swan (pencils), Stan Kaye (inks), Ira Schnapp (letters)
• Superboy story: Bill Finger (writer), John Sikela (art)
• Green Arrow story: Jack Kirby (art), Roz Kirby (inks) — writer uncertain (possibly Finger, Herron, or Wood)
• Aquaman story: art by Ramona Fradon
• Editor: Mort Weisinger / Whitney Ellsworth era

Meet the creators

Jack Kirby is best remembered today as the co-creator of the Marvel Universe — Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Thor, the Hulk, and the X-Men all trace back to his drawing board — but in the late 1950s, between stints at Marvel, he freelanced for DC on lower-profile backup features like this one. His brief run illustrating Green Arrow is a footnote in a career that would soon reshape the entire industry, but it's exactly the kind of hidden-key detail that makes back-issue hunting fun: a Kirby credit tucked inside a Superboy anthology nobody was looking twice at in 1958. Kirby's wife, Roz Kirby, inked this story and worked alongside him for decades, though she rarely received cover billing for it.

Ramona Fradon (1926–2024) drew this Aquaman short as part of a run that would stretch across the entire decade — she took over the feature in Adventure Comics #167 in 1951 and stayed with the character for ten years, eventually co-creating his sidekick Aqualad in 1960. One of the first women to build a career drawing superhero comics, Fradon later went on to co-create Metamorpho with writer Bob Haney and to draw the Brenda Starr newspaper strip for fifteen years.

What it's worth

This is the only entry in the set whose value rests on a creator credit: Jack Kirby's first Green Arrow. Mid-grade raw copies (VG–FN) commonly trade $40–$100, and higher VF/NM raw copies can reach several hundred dollars. Graded high-grade copies are scarce and command significant premiums — a CGC 9.x could run into the high hundreds to low thousands. (Verify current sales on GoCollect/Heritage.)

Where to read it (collected edition)

The Kirby Green Arrow story is reprinted in The Green Arrow by Jack Kirby (DC hardcover). The Superboy and Aquaman stories from this exact issue aren't gathered in a single dedicated collection — the Kirby material is the reliably reprinted portion.

Part of "250's for America's 250" — counting 24 milestone #250 comics down to the U.S. 250th on July 4, 2026.