Paul Westfield

This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Find sources: "Paul Westfield" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Paul Westfield is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. He first appeared in Superman (vol. 2) #58 (August 1991) and was created by Dan Jurgens.

The executive director of Project Cadmus, the post-Crisis version of Jack Kirby's DNA Project, Westfield was revealed to be in charge of the project in Superman (vol. 2) #58. An unscrupulous director ironically hired for his ethics, he appeared in issues of Superman, Superman: The Man of Steel, The Adventures of Superman and Superboy (vol. 4). A noteworthy story was his plan on creating a clone to take Superman's place during multiple issues of the Funeral for a Friend storyline after The Death of Superman event. This led to the debut of Superboy (Kon-El) in the following Reign of the Supermen! crossover event.

Paul Westfield is a Vietnam War veteran and the executive director of Project Cadmus, a secret government agency in Metropolis. After Superman suffers amnesia, assumes the Gangbuster mantle, and battles Guardian, Westfield begins seeing him as a threat.^[1][2] He captures Superman and has Dubbilex probe his mind for information, which is transferred to a computer.^[3] Guardian destroys the computer, but Westfield retains the information and intends to file a congressional report against Superman. Guardian and Dubbilex stop him by threatening to publicly reveal that he killed his mentally unstable commander during the Vietnam War.^[4]

Following The Death of Superman, Westfield and Cadmus create "Experiment 13", a human with Kryptonian-like powers, to replace him. 13 brokers a deal with Cadmus to become known as Superboy and goes on a world tour to establish his new name, with Dubbilex chaperoning him.^[5]

In the "Battle of Metropolis" story arc, Dabney Donovan kills Westfield, who is revealed to be Superboy's genetic template.^[6][7][8] In retalitation, Westfield's daughter Amanda Spence kills Superboy's love Tana Moon.^[9]

Additionally, an alternate universe variant of Westfield appears in the "Hypertension" story arc.^[10]

Superboy is later retconned to be a clone of Superman and Lex Luthor who is unrelated to Westfield.^[11][12]

Paul Westfield appears in the BBC radio drama adaptation of The Death of Superman.