Editor Eddie Berganza figured it might be best if a teenage writer - someone who could truly plug into the teen psyche - handle a story featuring two teen heroes.

And so he turned to Sam Loeb, the son of veteran comics writer Jeph Loeb, to write an issue of DC Comics’ "Superman/Batman" featuring Superboy and Robin.

That story appears in issue No. 26 of "Superman/Batman," in comic-book stores April 26.

It is the second published comic-book story by Sam - and it will be the last.

Sam Loeb died last summer at age 17 after a three-year battle with osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer.

His first comic-book work was a short story for Dark Horse Comics’ "Tales of the Vampires." Sam was recruited by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon, who had met Sam and knew he "was not without `The Funny,’" as Whedon put it.

"The `Tales’ stories had that Buffy dry sense of humor and Joss asked Sam - not me! - to write a six-page story," the elder Loeb said in an e-mail.

"Sam got Tim Sale to illustrate it and Richard Starkings to letter and design it. He did it all by himself. I thought it was brilliant - and evidently others do, so I think it goes beyond a father’s pride."

Sam had plotted his "Superman/Batman" story before he died, but it needed dialogue and to be illustrated. After Sam’s funeral, friends in the comic-book industry asked Loeb how they could help.

"I knew that Sam would never have wanted a tribute book," Loeb said. "But here was this story that was unfinished."

So he and 25 friends who knew Sam - "the royalty of comics," Loeb says - contributed to the issue, each writing or illustrating a page or two.

"It’s so seamless and wonderful," Loeb said. "I thought it was going to be a big mess, but Sam’s story held it together."

"Superman/Batman" No. 26 also contains "Sam’s Story," written by Jeph Loeb and illustrated by Sale, a frequent collaborator.

The short story, about a young Clark Kent who loses a friend to cancer, resulted from a suggestion by DC president and publisher Paul Levitz after Sam’s death.

Levitz, Loeb said, "wrote me a lovely note suggesting that I try and put down into words what I was feeling. I didn’t think I could, but 10 days after the funeral, I wrote `Sam’s Story.’ It just came out of me."

An adolescent Clark is familiar ground for Loeb: He wrote "Superman for All Seasons," a coming-of-age story, and worked on The WB’s "Smallville," which dedicated the first episode of this season to Sam. Loeb is now a supervising producer on TV’s "Lost."

Sam shared his father’s love of comics - "one of about a million things we shared," Loeb said. "He was my best friend. And my only son. And my smile. There are people who knew us who had never seen a father/son dynamic like ours - and I can’t really explain it. It was magic."

A college-scholarship fund has been set up in Sam’s name; it will award $10,000 to one student per year in the Highly Gifted Magnet Program at Sam’s school, North Hollywood High School in North Hollywood, Calif. Faculty members will pick the student who "best embodies Sam’s spirit."

The writers and artists who contributed to "Superman/Batman" No. 26 will give their fees and royalties to the fund, and each original page will be auctioned off at this summer’s Wizard World Chicago, a comicbook convention.

"We hope to raise $100,000, from the royalties and the artwork sale, so we’ll have 10 years’ worth of awards in the bank," Loeb said.