Jimmy Olsen Adventures, Vol. 1

Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen (1954) #133-139, 141

by Jack Kirby

One of the most influential writers and illustrators in the history of comic books, Jack Kirby co-created such legendary heroes as the X-Men, the Incredible Hulk, Captain America, the Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer. In this breathtaking volume by "the King of Comics, " Jimmy Olsen's highly popular adventures from the early 1970s are beautifully reprinted. Showcasing his creative genius, Kirby used these monumental stories of Superman and Jimmy Olsen to introduce his Fourth World mythological epic. Featuring the first appearance of Darkseid, these groundbreaking tales forever revolutionized the art of storytelling across all genres.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Superman, Fiction, Dc Comics, Comic Book

160 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2003

About the author

Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg) was one of the most influential, recognizable, and prolific artists in American comic books, and the co-creator of such enduring characters and popular culture icons as the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Hulk, Captain America, and hundreds of others stretching back to the earliest days of the medium. He was also a comic book writer and editor. His most common nickname is "The King."

Reviews

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice collection of all the pitfalls jimmy got into and had to have superman save him from. Recommended

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kirby does Superman! Well, sort of. Not only were the faces of Kirby's Superman & Jimmy Olsen retouched by other artists (to make them more consistent with DC's current image of the character), but Superman does play second fiddle to Jimmy Olsen & the (new) Newsboy Legion (wait, that would make Supes third fiddle, wouldn't it). Kirby's take on the concept of a Superman's Pal comic series was that it needed to be derailed and then updated, and that's exactly what Kirby did. Gone was the need for Superman to constantly rescue Jimmy and in was a newly empowered Jimmy who could handle himself in most situations. Also, the addition of the (new) Newsboy Legion (and later the return of the golden age Guardian) gave Jimmy a whole cadre of sidekicks. 
I didn't read Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen before Kirby took over the book, and I can only imagine the shock regular readers must have suffered. It might have been similar to my shock when Kirby took over The Black Panther a few years later, which was like an atom bomb when off in my skull (it took Marvel years to finally wrap-up the aborted Panther vs. The Klan story act when Kirby took over, but they eventually did). 
This is Kirby at (arguably) his creative best, with each issue featuring new characters and new concept that could completely revolutionized the DC universe, had DC been able to grok Kirby. 

[Jamil · Rating 3 out of 5]

jimmy olsen is f-cking cool. don't let anyone else tell you different.

[Eamonn Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. Tidying up my old comic collected editions, I came across this volume of Jimmy Olsen stories from 1970-71 by Jack Kirby. Issues # 131-139 and 141. 140 was a reprint. There was great excitement at the time about Kirby moving to DC to start exciting new projects.

I think ‘Jimmy Olsen’ was the first Kirby comic from his new company and, although he had no real interest in working with someone else’s characters, it started off well. I’d never heard of the Newsboy Legion before but the Whiz Wagon was a nice bit of Kirby Kit and the art was up to scratch, even inked by Vince Colletta. Olsen and his friends went to investigate the Wild Area and found Habitat, a tree house town, and a motorcycle gang called the Outsiders. Then came The Mountain of Judgement. Wow!

Or not. The Mountain of Judgement turned out to be a big vehicle inhabited by the Hairies who were super-scientific hippie geniuses working on a top-secret government project making clones. Olsen met a cloned Olsen and the Newsboy Legion saw clones of themselves, miniature Scrappers as a paratroop force, for example. This was all very clever and modern but the ethical dilemma of having yourself duplicated without permission, not to mention the problem of being a duplicate, were never explored. Did little Scrappers ever wonder why they were kept one inch tall? Plus all the clones were fully mature, without any childhood or experience. How? For Kirby the gee-whiz-wow-science factor was enough to make a story. No further thought needed. It simply never occurred to him. It also never occurred to him that Superman had a variety of powers. All he ever uses is flying and strength. Once he creates electronic energy by rubbing his hands together but that’s not one of his abilities.

Meanwhile, in the Evil Factory, Simyan and Mokkari, servants of Darkseid, grew monsters of their own to attack the Project. A big green Jimmy Olsen clone coated with Kryptonite to deal with Superman. A four-armed monster called the four-armed terror which ate radiation. I think it became obvious with the four-armed terror from the Evil Factory that Kirby wasn’t giving this comic his best. That was reserved for the proper Fourth World strips, ‘The New Gods’, ‘Mister Miracle’ and ‘The Forever People’.

The art deteriorated to space-filling splash pages, collages and four panels per page with big figures to fill them up. Not always, but too often. It was still Kirby art so it was still pretty good but the stories weren’t great and it soon became obvious that Jack needed an editor to rein in his excesses and maybe somebody to write the scripts, too. They weren’t terrible but the characters tend to tell you what they’re doing, which is quite clear from the drawings. Stan Lee let Kirby’s pictures convey most of the action and used the dialogue to add drama, emotional content and jokes. Kirby’s not that kind of writer. When DC went large and started filling the back pages with forties reprints, it became clear that Kirby’s scripting style hadn’t really changed from back then.

As a bonus, there’s a nice introduction by Mark Evanier, one of Kirby’s assistants at the time, and a few one-page essays by the man himself that featured in the issues when they came out. The first is a bit of autobiography, the second is about the Whiz Wagon and the third is about the Hairies. Kirby’s prose style is odd. Scatterbrained. But he was. Evanier has many stories about how Jack set out to draw one tale and then ended up with something completely different, including the Don Rickles yarn that concludes this issue.

There are things to enjoy. Kirby’s art always has a certain magic and his Science Fiction concepts have that sense of wonder associated with the early days of the genre, the 1930s before John W. Campbell changed the field. It fits in comics because Gardner Fox and other DC writers dabbled in Pulp SF before they went over to comics and have the same style. It’s innocent and fun but the characters aren’t real human beings who resent being one of many inch-tall clones of a New York scrapper. On the other hand, it’s meant for eleven year-olds and, when I was eleven, I thought it was okay. Not great, but okay. Even now, it’s okay. A little frisson of nostalgia and remembering days gone by.

[Olivia Plasencia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I can honestly say I bought this book because it was written and drawn by the great Jack Kirby. While I am a huge fan of Superman, I have never really liked Jimmy Olsen much. A lot of writers have tried to write him, and a lot have done him a huge disservice. Perhaps it's his age that do not understand, or maybe his past writers treatment has confused people how to handle Jimmy. No so for Jack Kriby. It took a few books in for Kirby to get the grasp of Jimmy's book, but he did it. Olsen is working for the shady Morgan Edge and given the job of checking into the outside of town known as the wild. In this book Kirby's imagination is fully unleashed. We met the Harries, outsiders of a kind, and the News Boys Legion is brought back for a great touch of nostalgia and comic history. I was pleased to see them and the later their fathers. Not only that we see Darksied, and Lightray, as well as Don Rickles for some reason. If you are under 30 google him, I barely knew of him too. Sadly, this book is not the omnibus collection, so the end felt very sudden, and you still have a lot of unanswered questions. While I enjoyed this book, I did struggle to stay interested but I will say reading this, that Kirby was so far ahead of his time sci-fi wise. What an imagination. I hope to own as many books of his as possible which is why I got this one.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nostalgia really drove my decision to purchase this book. I had read my brother's stash of comics when I was in grade school, and I remembered liking the Newsboy Legion from this era (the early seventies). I enjoyed re-reading this as an adult, but my same childhood approach to the material is sorely missing. I used to love these stories and I loved the Whiz Wagon, but the stories now no longer evoke the same sense of wonder the once held for me. I enjoy the snapshot the book provides of that time in my life, but the comics don't hold up for me outside this realm. Especially the stories with "Goody" Rickles. Never really liked Rickles as a comic, and his appearance here doesn't help. Those stories seem muddled and pointless - it's as if something was left on the editing room floor that would help the reader in understanding what the story was aiming for. The art is great, and I was surprised to find out in the forward that Kirby's work in drawing Superman and Olsen was re-done before publishing to fit the style of the time. I am by no means knowledgeable about comics, so I also appreciate the book's explanation of some of the workings of the comic book industry. A good, but not great, example of late silver age comics.

[Rick Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I have no context to what the first 132 issues of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen was like, I can only imagine the whiplash longtime readers of the title must have felt when the great Jack Kirby took over the book. Art wise, I have minimal complaints since Kirby takes every ounce of his signature weird creative energy and translates it into a book about a young reporter who happens to be a member of the Man of Steel's inner circle. What makes this title even more bizarre is that it is technically the first series Kirby worked on towards his more grandiose "Fourth World" saga. The connections, however, are quite incidental and one could read titles like New Gods and Mister Miracle without having read a single issue of Jimmy Olsen's ongoing. Perhaps that drives my frustration with this title is that the stories are rather banal and meandering, despite the rather spectacular artwork. Sure, this title is where characters like Darkseid first appear, but it doesn't help that the connection is really just frivolous at best. Jimmy's adventures with the Newsboy Legion are quite forgettable, making this one of the weaker links to Kirby's overall spectacular stint with DC Comics.

[Burton Olivier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like I know Kirby loves his weird shit but for what I was expecting from a Jimmy Olsen story, this was buck wild. I never would've in a million years guessed that we would start out a story with Jimmy leading a rogue gang of tree dwelling bikers on the zoomway to the Mountain of Judgement in his Whiz Wagon with the Newsboy Legion

[Nicolas · Rating 3 out of 5]

While it's cool to see how Kirby reshapes the corny Jimmy Olsen book, it's not without flaws. Apparently DC ordered retouched faces for Superman and Jimmy to de-Kirby them and bring them more in line with the traditional look. That's insane. Also, it's very heavy on the Newsboy Legion and that really drags the story down.

I guess what I'm saying is that the third star was a kindness.

We discussed this further on an episode of Comic Book Coffee Break: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMs6E...

[Michael P. · Rating 1 out of 5]

After the creation of Superman, probably the people who most shaped modern comics are Jack Kirby with Stan Lee. After redefining super heroes in the sixties, telling stories that had never been told in comics before, Kirby moved to DC Comics with ideas for a huge galactic story in the three titles he created and the one he took over for his new company. The results are not very good.

Without Stan Lee, these comics lack personality. All but one are team comics, and there is little beyond the costume or speech patterns to distinguish one character from another. Kirby does not make you care about them. Some of the writing is just awful. The concepts are big and should be fascinating, but the execution is not as fine as it had been with Lee, and Kirby spends too much of each tale on fights instead of developing those concepts and characters.

The worst of the lot is SUPERMAN’S PAL, JIMMY OLSON, the first eight issues by Kirby collected in this book. The dangers are so silly, the villains so dumb, and some of the dialogue so imbecilic that I feel sorry for Kirby. He does not understand the character of Superman and cannot make him interesting. His Olson is interesting, perhaps for the first time, but he is hardly Jimmy Olson in Kirby’s version.

Kirby’s Fourth World stories, as there are commonly called, are venerated by many comic book fans who read them when new. I’m delighted for them that these reprints make the stories easy to collect, but cannot help but feel they have a Kirby shaped blind spot.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first time I read part of Jack Kirby's run of Jimmy Olsen, I learned to have a new appreciation for Superman. Grounded in the human instead of the superhuman, Jimmy Olsen stands as a testament of humanity's own ability to strive in the face of danger. Story-telling of this nature allows Superman to exist within the primary story structure, but prevents his near invincibility from curtailing any possible drama. This storytelling device, however, is not necessarily due to Jack Kirby since he took over the series as he constructed the Fourth World. Like the Forever People, Kirby comments upon Hippie era issues, in this case through the Hairies and the Wild Area. Unlike the Forever People, the central theme to the story arc collected within this edition is hectic. Strange subplots including comedian Don Rickles and cloning experiments with strange subjects make the text less "believable" and takes away some of the story's power. The essays included in this edition by Kirby help reestablish this lost power, but it is not a masterpiece. Hopefully the second volume better achieves this effect.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pure guilty pleasure, fun read.
Jack Kirby takes a fairly weak DC series and pulls it into his New God series, builds up a great supporting cast by bringing back some characters from the Golden Age of comics, adds a ton of wild sci-fi ideas and some very odd humor.

Even though his name is on the cover, Jimmy Olsen still spends most of the stories as a sidekick, either to Superman, the Guardian or as chaperone to the Newsboy Legion. He occasionally gets to save the day.

The saving grace is even if some of the stories are uneven, they are all drawn by Jack Kirby, so everything looks cool and funky. THe monsters are fierce looking, his Superman looks big and heroic and even Jimmy looks less like a geek and more like he could be the hero if they let him.

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd like to make some sort of obnoxious comparison here between the superheroes of comics and heroes of Greek mythology. But Jimmy Olsen's never been a heavy lifter. He's more the Metamorphoses type. Unfortunately, I don't think Ovid ever intended one boy reporter to do ALL the metamorphosing himself. But aside from all the pluck and gumption, that's kind of his super power, right? Getting accidentally transformed/shape-shifted/given strange powers/replicated/turned into an evil hippie? Then handling it all with a kind of Jimmy Stewart grace. Sort of like if the ancient Greeks had been American...

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

jack kirby at his wildest. you can see how much he needed a writer, but this is so much fun. in two issues he uses the word 'groovy' more times than the entire partridge family series.
and don rickles is here and the first appearance of Darkseid.
a couple times he takes the easy way out and doesn't illo a couple of battles. how did the gaurdian escape? how did clark kent escape?
as far as a cultural history written by a fifty year old new yorker living in lala land goes, this was Boss!

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kirby's first Jimmy Olsen issues, from 1970-71, introduce some of the Fourth World stuff in inventive, loopy stories that look a bit weird because his art was modified to make Jimmy and Supes look more like they always had. Lots of neat-o ideas, not really well thought through (e.g. people's tissue being taken and clones of them being made without their knowledge or consent is just accepted as cool).

[Ed Wyrd]

When Jack Kirby first went to DC he started working on the then silly comic, "Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen," a comic that had never been on my radar before he went there and which, for whatever reason, was off my radar even with my hero Jack "The King" Kirby at the helm. So for me, this will be my first exposure to the Kirby Olsen. I'll let you know what I think.

[Patrick Nichol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anybody who grew up in the 1970s and loved comics loved Jack Kirby.

And the best of his non-Marvel work was the Fourth World, launched in his special Jimmy Olsen series.

Bold, imaginative, and a cult classic. An absolute must for comic fans.