JIMMY OLSEN 75 (1964)
“The Mystery of Convict 313!” by Leo Dorfman & Curt Swan
“When Supergirl Replaced Jimmy Olsen!” by Jerry Siegel & Curt Swan
Supergirl kicking Jimmy Olsen out of his own book would be a great improvement.
We begin with Jimmy receiving a tip about Convict 313 at the Metropolis prison. And it turns out that’s his father. (!!!)
I believe this is the first time we get Jimmy’s origin story!
It’ll be somewhat contradicted by future stories, but this is kind of cool actually.
Jimmy decides that he’ll stand by his father because maybe he’s a criminal only because of a brain injury. Wait, what?
This is honestly starting to have too much sense for a Silver Age story about Jimmy Olsen.
Then Jimmy learns that another newspaper is about to break the story about his father, and he’s devastated by the possibility of ruining the Planet’s reputation.
What the… the Daily Planet would be disgraced because one of the employees is the son of a criminal? AND Jimmy can’t have a girlfriend because of that!?!?
Look, I’m all for Jimmy Olsen losing his job and Lucy, but this is idiotic even for the Silver Age!
“Sins of the father” much? LITERALLY!?!?
Then Jimmy saves his father from an accident in the prison’s workshop.
And he saves him from the other prisoners thanks to Professor Potter’s gadgets that make zero sense. Does he makes weapons for Batman?
This moves his father so much that he tells Jimmy where to find the loot of one of his robberies, so that Jimmy can give the money back and be released from prison.
That’s not exactly how anything works, but whatever.
I guess Jimmy’s dad was some kind of supervillain because he managed to hide the money inside a mountain.
Except it’s a trap.
.
Then Jimmy’s father betrays the other criminals and reveals himself to be… someone else.
But to save Jimmy he had to take a bullet, so he dies. The end!
Despite the ending tease, it’ll be a while before we see Jimmy’s actual father.
Okay, that was surprisingly less stupid than I expected. What about the cover story?
Time travel, Red Kryptonite AND Superman moving the entire Fortress of Solitude into the future… at page one!?
Okay, I think this one will be silly enough.
All of that AND you start with the death of Jimmy, comic? Now you’re just spoiling me!
At this time the idea that you can’t change history was very well established, but I’ll give Supergirl the benefit of the doubt since she later points out that while she can’t change the past, maybe she can still change the future.
She tries to save Jimmy with… less than stellar results.
What are the effects of Red Kryptonite this time? She loses her powers if she’s in costume but she keeps them if she’s disguised as Linda.
Sounds legit.
Her plan? Get hired by the Daily Planet and get Jimmy Olsen fired!
Supergirl is like fifteen at the time, but Perry White will hire just anyone.
To get Jimmy fired, she pretends to be scared by a mouse so that Lucy can think that Jimmy Olsen was kissing her. Again: FIFTEEN.
You might wonder, “how does this get Jimmy fired?”, but you underestimate his idiocy.
But Perry won’t fire him, even when Supergirl changes his regular cigars with exploding cigars.
Next trick: give him a magic carpet!
HOW DOES THIS WORK!?
SERIOUSLY, HOW!?
I never thought I’d see the day Perry Olsen would fire someone for being fake news, but there you go.
Superman is still The Worst, but Supergirl is learning fast. Also: why would she get Jimmy’s job!?
Good news: Jimmy dies anyway.
Bad news: that’s not Jimmy.
Worse news: he’s hired again.
Worst news: he still has Lucy.
Oh well. You can’t always win.
Supergirl figures out that this proves that the future can’t be changed… but is that so? When she first saw the future, she didn’t see herself rushing towards the crash in her secret identity.
Historical significance
First story: 8/10
I don’t think that Jimmy losing his parents at a young age will be used often, and his relationship with his real father will only be good for two or three stories. Still, considering that 90% of his Silver Age backstory comes from this story, that’s a lot!
Second story: 0/10
Justifiably forgotten.
Silver Age-ness
First story: 5/10
Rather average for the time.
Second story: 10/10
It gets the highest score with the first two panels!!!
Does it stand the test of time?
First story: 3/10
“Jimmy’s father is actually a convicted criminal” is a perfectly fine idea. What they do with it, though…
Second story: 0/10
No. Just no.
Stupid Jimmy Olsen moment
First story: even for 1964, I have to think that Jimmy’s worry that the news about his father will ruin his live was overblown.
Second story: I will give him credit for believing the magic carpet thing, oddly enough, since he HAS seen magic so many times already. But dismissing Supergirl because she can’t fly… I get the benefit of the doubt, but this was extreme!
Interesting letters: they know that Helen of Troy wasn’t a real person, right? Right?
I wonder if some future writer made a point of having Linda go back and retrieve a sample of that specimen of Red K from the future once it wore off and could no longer affect her. They used to have a big store of neatly labelled Red K in the Fortress for occasions when one of them might want to trigger a given effect on a Kryptonian who hadn’t been exposed and gained immunity already. Had to be some plot where having Super-Clark for a day or so would have been useful – or suddenly depowering some Phantom Zone jerk who was impersonating Supes or something. Hmmm, do their “prison suits” count as a costume or civilian garb? And hey, do you keep your powers when you’re naked with this hunk of Red K?
There are indeed multiple stories where Superman (or even Superboy) keeps a collection of Red Kryptonite samples he’s already been exposed to.
Of course there’s an equal number of stories where this would be useful but never brought up.