I am somebody

In Jimmy Olsen # 148 (April, 1972), published 50 years ago today, it’s the cover that sends the strongest message. This issue is the last of Jack Kirby’s revisioning of Superman’s previously foppish, carrot head schoolboy. Jimmy and the Newsboys are in army green, in a cage being lifted away by an unseen force and not even Superman looks like he can save them. Prisoners in the Fourth World version of the Hanoi Hilton¹, powerless Sixties youth drafted into a war they don’t believe in, Carmine Infantino’s unseen hand yanking away Kirby’s creative dreams.

Over the Jimmy run (#133 to # 148, except for a #140 reprint), Jack Kirby used the title, his first at National/DC after leaving Marvel, to escape his own self-imposed strictures of telling the Big Story (in New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle). It allowed him to run the full gamut of counter-cultural symbolism, to farce, to boy’s own adventure, to loneliness and the human condition. His Jimmy Olsen comics have been overlooked and derided by many fans because they simply haven’t looked closely enough at the content (before writing these commentaries I would have included myself in their number).

Apart from the Fourth World introduction of Darkseid in # 134, Jimmy Olsen has been a wild free-for-all with the only real constant being the relationship between Superman and Jimmy. It’s hard to remember now but in 1970 Jimmy was a sychophant, a dependent dweeb, a teenager continually bailed out by Uncle Supes.

Kirby made Jimmy independent, he separated Jimmy from Superman, he made Jimmy a counter-cultural Youth symbol for his readers and gave the big red S the role of the State. The conflict between the two characters was generational, it was the fight his readers were having with their parents (perhaps in the case of Jimmy, the fight his readers’ older brothers and sisters were having, Jimmy Olsen always seemed aimed at younger readers).

The King addressed the origin of generational conflict, Vietnam. His character Angry Charlie (# 145) bursts out of a prison door and grabs youth wearing army of the street while their friends can do nothing to stop him. The cover of # 148 echoes the cover of # 145. While all the news in the early part of 1972 was about President Nixon’s efforts to end the war, the battles in Vietnam that year leading up to ‘peace’ were some of the biggest of the War.

The villain of the issue # 148 is Victor Volcanum who bears some physical resemblance to Ho Chi Minh, receding hair, moustache and goatee-like beard. Volcanum is a wholly unconvincing villain and Superman, Jimmy and the Newsboys deal with him in summary fashion. Superman frees them from the cage on the cover, ‘…liberty and justice for all!!’, they battle Volcanum’s robots and finally stop his spinning killer gondola, bringing with them a sleeping Angry Charlie. Almost devoid of Fourth World references, the last panel sees Jimmy, Superman and the boys return to Metropolis for a bath.

Jack Kirby dropped Jimmy Olsen due to the pressures of his other titles. His three Fourth World comics would soon be joined by Kamandi, the last boy on earth. At the time he wasn’t aware that National/DC publisher was about to end the Fourth World, citing low sales. His farewell to Jimmy Olsen follows his greatest achievement on the title, ‘A Superman in Supertown’ (# 147). Issue # 148 reads like a coda to all that is gone before. All the cultural and personal forces that drove his stories are ending, the counter-culture, the War, his own Fourth World carte blanche.

Jimmy’s immediate future is in stories like ‘Attack of the locust creatures’ as his independent persona, his Kirby Sunday punch is absorbed back into the mid -70s DC mush like counter-cultural kids attending business school. Just for a moment though, Kirby made Jimmy somebody. Kirby’s Jimmy was someone you could see yourself in, he was part of a world where younger voices mattered, where there was a new way to express who you were. Kirby took us, his character and himself to a better place. No one can take that away.

¹The Hanoi Hilton was the nickname captured American soldiers gave to Hỏa Lò Prison prison in Hanoi where they were held for years in terrible conditions.

 Research this article:

Comics

-According to Jack Kirby (Michael Hill, Lulu, 2021)

-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)

-The equally indispensable Old Gods, New Gods (Jack Kirby Collector # 80: TwoMorrows)

Popular culture:

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

-The Games People Play (Eric Berne, Penguin, 1964)

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

-The Vietnam War: The Definitive Illustrated History (Penguin Random House, 2017)

-Time Magazine, January 17, 1972, January 24, 1972, January 31, 1972, February 7, 1972, February 14, 1972

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

-Vietnam: An Epic History of a Tragic War (Max Hastings, William Collins, 2019)

Michael Mead is a 55-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 38^th of a projected 48 Fourth World commentaries (more than three quarters of the way there!). Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake!