Is that a landmine in your lunchbox?

Jimmy Olsen # 139 (July, 1971), published 50 years ago today, is like that joke your Dad tells over and over because he thinks it’s funny and you think it’s lame. Somehow though, it lodges itself in your brain and then you see there’s something more to it. Something you rushed past in your youthful cringe, something he’s slipped in there, like a time capsule that goes ping at a pre-determined time, when you’re ready to see it and when you open the contents, when you unscrew the top of that 1950s metal jar he stuck in the ground, you suddenly see a childhood moment with adult eyes.

In this case that Dad is Jack Kirby’s version of the ‘Merchant of Venom’, ‘insult’ comedian Don Rickles or to be more accurate his lookalike ‘Goody Rickles’, one of Morgan Edge’s research staff at Galaxy Broadcasting Service. National/DC decided to showcase the real Don Rickles, who was riding high with a successful comedy album, TV show and appearance in a prominent movie¹, in two issues of Jimmy Olsen to help promote the comic. Rickles gave his permission for a brief appearance and then felt exploited by National’s fulsome use of his likeness, later disowning the comics.²

Kirby’s treatment of Goody Rickles in Jimmy Olsen # 139 is almost pure comedy. It’s an unexpected change of pace from the main storyline, Morgan Edge’s involvement with Darkseid and Inter-Gang. So it’s unsurprising that readers then and since have panned the two issues. It’s easy to agree with letter-writer Gerald Triano, that Jimmy Olsen “….is being used as a supplement to Mr Kirby’s trilogy of mags, and nothing more.”

Yet there are some very funny moments including Edge’s murderous exchanges with Goody which are like a straight man/funny man stand-up routine, and some pointed satire. As my one-time comic-reading sister said to me when she was reading these commentaries, Kirby is amazingly subversive with a youthful audience. The kind of material, issues, ideas he is exploring, eyeline straight into the brain, heart and consciousness of a child, unnoticed by the contemporaneous adult world and then instantly stand out when that child reader gets old.

The first bit of text on the cover is: “Are you ready for defoliants in your succotash? Are you ready for landmines in your lunchbox?” Vietnam worsening, no end in sight, the counterculture’s final big push, the May Day 1971 protests at Washington D.C. over and each night, over dinner, or at lunch at school, images flashing before your eyes of young men dying, Agent Orange defoliant billowing across the screen, violence on domestic streets, anger and dissent, bitter generational conflict.

The juxtaposition of Kirby’s words mirror the compartmentalisation in society that was happening at the time. The jarring nature of such an all-encompassing conflict expressed as entertainment  ‘up next, more death in Vietnam, followed by the Don Rickles comedy hour, only on ABC!’ It’s like Kirby is saying, ‘this is what they’re serving up to you, are you going to swallow this?’ Jimmy Olsen # 139 follows on the aerodisc heels of Mister Miracle # 3 whose cover copy told readers about the paranoid pill and said ‘buy it, don’t swallow it!’

Kirby’s subversion continues in the vein of his signature Fourth World satire from Forever People # 3, the Glorious Godfrey issue. There’s a cynicism to the lines he feeds Goody, as the costumed researcher veers from slapstick, cornball, physical comedy to undermining authority, puncturing dreams. Goody hugs, mock punches Edge and then the agent of Apokolips becomes frustrated with the Rickles doppelganger: “(Edge) Walter Cronkite won’t get it! Truman Capote won’t get it! But you! – Goody Rickles! You’re going to get it! (Goody) It’s like John Wayne says! The American dream—it works! You just have to eat apple pie and believe!”

These aren’t sentiments your average eight- year- old reader would be used to reading. In its own way it’s a negative nod to the big red S, the idealistic State symbol of everything good, the super dream of truth, justice and the American way. Kirby features Superman prominently in Jimmy Olsen and undermines what he represents at the same time. Not everybody makes it, barriers are there for some but not for others.

The ‘landmine in your lunchbox’ is not a stink bomb put there by one of your friends, it’s not a literal bomb from a B-52, it’s the realisation that despite all the good intentions from others, all your fervent beliefs, things might not be as they seem, things may not work out for you, after all. The joke is an ugly truth. Are you ready for this?

¹Don Rickles was a nationally-know comedian, a peripheral member of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack with a long list of screen credits. His 1968 comedy album, 'Hello, Dummy!' charted to a high of # 68 in the Billboard top 200 charts. In the same year ABC gave him a variety show which lasted one season. In 1970, Rickles had a notable role in the film Kelly's Heroes, sharing billing with co-stars Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland and Carroll O'Connor. 

²From Mark Evanier’s ‘News From Me’ website blog, Sunday May 21, 2017 at 1.48pm.

Research this article:                                           

Comics:

-Comics Journal # 134, February 1990 (Jack Kirby interview by Gary Groth)

-Mike’s Amazing World of Comics website

-The Indispensable Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said! (Jack Kirby Collector # 75: TwoMorrows).

Popular culture:

-Helter Skelter, the True Story of the Manson Murders (Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry, W.W. Norton, 1994)

-There’s A Riot Going On (Peter Doggett, Canongate, 2007)

-Uncovering the Sixties (Abe Peck, Pantheon, 1985) .

Michael Mead is a 54-year-old New Zealand comic book collector, who likes to think he can do "contextual" commentary reviews of old comics, asking: "where does this story come from?", looking at the social, political, cultural times it came from, the state of the comics industry, the personal and creative journey of the writer or artist, the personal journey of the reader as a child and as an adult. 

As part of this, he is vain enough to think he can bring new insights into Kirby's Fourth World comics and so, on the 50th anniversary of publication of each issue of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, Forever People, New Gods and Mister Miracle, he will publish a contextual commentary. This is his 16th Fourth World commentary. Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake!