SUPERMAN FAMILY 183 (1977)
by Bob Toomey & Kurt Schaffenberger
Jimmy Olsen continues to have adventures in almost every single issue of Superman Family, but at this point most of them are… well not exactly GOOD, but they’re competent if boring stories that don’t leave me much to say.
So I’m just going through two stories that warrant some attention and, for the time being, stop the Jimmy Olsen retrospective.
But before that fateful last entry, this short 3-page stories asks the question nobody asked: “whatever happened to Perry White”?
Pre-Crisis Perry White is famous for only two things: complete lack of knowledge on how to run a newspaper and his anger management issues.
Which is not surprising, considering the Daily Planet seems on the verge of collapse on any random day.
But there are… other reasons for his temper.
I’ve never encountered the expression “my horse just came in”, but in the case of Jimmy Olsen, I can’t help but wonder if it’s literally true and a horse just gave him a cigar.
It wouldn’t even make it to the top twenty weirdest things that have happened to him.
You want to know what Jimmy Olsen is, in a nutshell? He’s a guy who brings an exploding cigar to his boss in order to calm him down.
Like I said this is just a 3 page little story, but there is A LOT to unpack in the moral.
And there you have it: Perry White doesn’t have anger management issues… he is literally addicted to being furious at Jimmy Olsen.
You can understand why I sympathize with this story.
Historical significance: 0/10
Why, oh why would anyone bury THE quintessential explanation of the Jimmy-Perry dynamic in a throwaway 3-page story!?
Silver Age-ness: 3/10
I want to believe that an horse actually brought Jimmy his exploding cigars… and even THAT is barely a blip in Silver Age-ness.
Does it stand the test of time? 10/10
For what it’s supposed to be… a little gag to meet the number of required pages… you could put this anywhere.
For what it actually IS… it’s a story of co-dependence and self-harm that I totally see being done honestly!
Stupid Jimmy Olsen moment
Have a cigar.
Sorry, but– you can’t figure that out from context? He won money on a horse race, or at least it’s a metaphor and he enjoyed some similar good fortune.