JIMMY OLSEN 112 (1968)
by Otto Binder & Pete Costanza
I have to give some credit to the Silver Age: they didn’t use their covers to hide how colossally stupid a story could be.
We begin with a princess wanting to join the Jimmy Olsen Fan Club.
Okay I can see why she can be a Superman fan, but why the Jimmy Olsen Fan Club!?
Well technically she’s a fan of Magnaman.
Jimmy Olsen proclaiming “That’s logical!”. Now I have seen everything.
All of this just to kidnap Jimmy. Seems like a lot of unnecessary work!
Jimmy is brought to the country of Duxania, where he meets Magnaman.
This may shock you, but Magnaman sucks.
So let me get this straight: there’s a bad guy with Superman’s powers threatening your country and you look for Jimmy Olsen instead of, say, SUPERMAN!?
Sounds legit.
The king explains the origins of Magnaman to Jimmy: it was all thanks to a local scientist.
♫ Super-Gopher, Super-Gopher, does whatever a Super-Gopher does ♫
The serum gives super-strength, flight and invulnerability to his assistant.
In addition to copying Superman’s costume, Magnaman also rips off Captain America’s origin.
The king wants Jimmy to discover Magnaman’s weakness. And Jimmy IMMEDIATELY finds the answer, because nobody bothered to check the scene of the murder!
Except it was all just a setup by Magnaman. Even he doesn’t know his weakness, but he’s sure it’s not lead.
Jimmy issues a challenge to Magnaman, who shows up wearing a goofy helmet to protect his ears from the sound of the Signal Watch.
Jimmy fights him with a sword made of lead (????), and Magnaman pretends to be defeated.
This ends up with Jimmy making out with the princess and becoming a duke.
Jimmy figures out that the king is going to be safe as long as he keeps a lead sword at all times.
That is the saddest parade I have ever seen.
Superman shows up to join the festivities, jumping at the chance to “entertain the crowd”.
Such “entertainment” involves Superman surviving being buried alive for two hours.
“Honey, do you want to go to the Superman Parade and watch the ground for two hours straight?”
Duxania must be the most boring place on the planet.
But when they dig the casket out of the ground *choke* Superman is dead!
Poor Silver Age Superman… he died as he lived: making an ass of himself to entertain easily amused people.
Or not.
And of course the impostor is Magnaman.
All things considered, his plan wasn’t even bad!
Now… this is where I would typically say “let’s play Guess The Stupid Ending”. But when I do these, the false options have to sound at least as plausible as the correct one.
And I couldn’t POSSIBLY come up with something THIS stupid.
Yep. Magnaman was killed by Super-Gopher.
Because his secret weakness was OTHER SUPER-BEINGS.
You can’t make this stuff up!!!
Any chance the king did not mercilessly slaughter all rebels after this?
Historical significance: 0/10
For why Jimmy being a duke is never brought up again, see the letter below.
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
Super-Gopher. That is all.
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
Bury this issue and stare at the ground for two hours.
Stupid Jimmy Olsen moment
I could forgive Jimmy for believing that lead was Magnaman’s weakness, since he knows Mon-El… if he didn’t see that Magnaman was INVULNERABLE TO REGULAR BULLETS!!!
Interesting letters: your answer as to why we never heard about Duke Olsen.
