With Pals Like This, Who Needs Enemies?

Unless you were deep into comic books as a kid like I was, you might wonder why Superman was always showing up to get Jimmy Olsen out of the scrapes he had gotten himself into, only to find Jimmy wasn't worth the bother. It's also reasonable to wonder why Superman called Jimmy his best friend in the first place, seeing as how Jimmy didn't spend that much time around Superman.  Olsen worked with Clark Kent every day and never susptected Clark was Superman, so it would have made more sense if Jimmy Olsen was Clark Kent's pal.  But the title of this book was "Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen."  And DC was stubborn about that title.

At any rate, the MacGuffin that launched most of Jimmy Olsen's adventures that included Superman (which was pretty much every one of them) was a special signal watch Superman gave to Jimmy that emitted a supersonic EEEEEeeeee....EEEEEeeeee....EEEEEeeee.... that only superman's super hearing could detect.  If Jimmy got in a jam he was to hit the button on the signal watch and his super pal would come flying to the rescue.

DC really knew how to separate me from my 12 cents every time a new Jimmy Olsen comic hit the stands.  In the first place, what kid didn't wish Superman was his best friend? And second, all I had to do was see the cover featuring Superman's best friend trying to do him in, or trick him into admitting his secret identity, or set Superman up to be humiliated, or pull some other dastardly trick that a real friend would never pull, and I was easily sucked in. I rarely had any spare change an hour after I'd received my allowance, but I did read a lot of imaginative comic books. 

The thing is, although I find nothing appealing about modern comic books, I still find the Silver Age comics that grabbed me during my pre-teen years as irresistible now as I did back then. Maybe it's because I'm nostalgic for that time, but I kinda think it's because those stories are more imaginative.

Here's something I didn't know back then about the comic books I was buying from DC: editors Jack Schiff and Mort Weisinger rarely came up with a story that could be turned into a boffo cover.  Instead they frequently invented an impossible situation to put their heroes in first, and then assigned the writers to come up with a story to explain how Jimmy or Superman got into the shocking fix illustrated on the cover.  As a result, quite often it would turn out that the only reason Superman was about to be done in by his best friend was because Jimmy had fallen under the influence of aliens or he had been hypnotized by some mad professor, or been accidentally hit by some weird ray that made him more powerful than Superman, or some other reason that provided the denoument for the story.

I never got any wiser.  All I needed to see was a cover showing Superman in peril, and I would hand over my money, no questions asked.  I was a very easy mark.
 
Below is a short collection of covers illustrating how easy it was to play me for a sucker:

If you ever asked yourself, "Man, how did THAT DUDE ever become Superman's pal?" Well, it's because Jimmy olsen had once travelled through time, landed on Krypton before it exploded, and spent some time as young Kal-El's babysitter.  Apparently Superman feels he owes him.

Here's comic book historian Brain Cronin with the illustrated run-down:

That Time Jimmy Olsen Spanked Superman



Previously: I Just Wanted To Be Davy Jones.