Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #146--"Homo Disastrous!"

IF THEY'D TURNED HIM INTO A GORILLA, THEN THEY REALLY WOULD HAVE HAD A COMIC.

When last we left Jimmy O., he’d been genetically regressed into a Caveman by Simyan and Mokkari, the Apokoliptish scientists who run the Evil Factory, or Brigadoom as we recently discovered it to be named. Once again, Kirby shows that he’s willing to play along with the rules of the comic he’s reinventing, since of course Jimmy Olsen was being transformed into something bizarre on a regular basis all throughout the Silver Age. Now he’s broken loose and is trashing S & M’s laboratory as the two watch impassively. “You know, there’s something about his general appearance that resembles—your own!!!” cracks Mokkari to Simyan. Of course, he’s one to talk, since Simyan’s just a relatively hairy, ugly guy, and Mok’s a dopey-looking lemon-flavoured Darth Maul.

In fact, this leads to some bad feeling between the two as Jimmy cuts loose and starts wailing on Mokkari—while Simyan takes his sweet time with the tranq gun. “Experimentors take risks—even with humor, Mokkari!!” says Simyan dryly.

Of course, their dazzling repartee is interrupted by the alarm, so they take off, leaving Jimmy lying, unconscious but unrestrained, in the middle of their lab filled with equipment that a moment ago they were worried he was going to trash. And naturally Scrapper and his Scrapper Trooper walk through the door immediately, bemoaning what the two creeps have done to their pal.

And now it’s time once again to check in on Superman and Dubbilex, whose plotline seems to be moving forward at an absolutely glacial pace. Fortunately, Kirby assures us that “the fates are weaving a master channel for all to meet!” but they’d better hurry the hell up, that’s all I can say. In the meantime, Dubbilex is practicing with his newfound psychokinetic powers on the Hippie Lois Lane, Terry Dean, who doesn’t seem to mind at all that a purple horned dude is tossing and buffeting her around like a rag doll with a mysterious mental ability that he literally just learned about a few minutes ago, and which he still can’t control very well, and just try and tell me he isn’t looking at her cleavage here:



Terry’s ultimate response is a simple, “Mister Dubbilex, you’re weird and wonderful!!!” Oh, for the heady days of the sexual revolution, when a freakish alien dude could manhandle a girl with mental powers and still have her wanting to sleep with him. Let’s hear it for women’s lib.

Superman describes Dub’s power as “E.S.P.--only ten times more potent!” but the Guardian, emerging from the floor, corrects him: “E.P.S. is more like it, Superman! ‘Extra-Physical Status!’ I’ve heard the geneticists at the ‘Project’ discussing it!!” Uh, no doubt. Because that totally doesn’t sound like something you just made up.

The Guardian, it turns out, was investigating the abandoned tunnels beneath the club from which the homicidal musicians attacked the gang in the previous two issues. So, wait, wait—they had Superman and a telekinetic mutant handy, and those two decided to hang around the club while the unpowered Guardian went down and explored a maze of dangerous tunnels? Is he like a Superhero Pledge, who has to do all the dirty and dangerous work for the senior members?

The Guardian pretty much reaffirms what we already knew, that the tunnels lead to the Project. For some reason, Superman then reasons that “The war between New Genesis and Apokolips—now involves the ’Project!’” Which isn’t a huge shock, since Morgan Edge, dupe of Intergang, tried to blow it up, but I guess Superman doesn’t know who Edge is working for…since he’s made absolutely no attempt to find out other than barging into Edge’s office a couple of times, right before heading back out on dodgy assignments that invariably end up turning lethal. So, umm…what was my point again?

Anyway, Superman now decides that, since The Guardian wasn’t attacked by any more low-rent Sgt. Pepper’s wannabes (and I’m talking the Peter Frampton/Bee Gees Sgt. Pepper’s, here), it’s safe for the invulnerable Man of Steel to go down. Man, when did he become such a Super-pussy? Zipping down the tunnels at his usual blinding speed, he encounters… “a light up ahead!! It’s growing brighter!! --Brighter!!” Can your heart take the suspense?!?

Yet another group of our intrepid adventurers are, at that very moment, smashing through the Evil Factory in the Whiz Wagon, causing even more chaos, until they’re hit by a “Repello-beam” that spins them around, knocks them unconscious, and sets them down on the ground. Simyan and Mokkari emerge in a little floating bucket, identify the Newboys by name—even Tommy, who I don’t think has even had a line of dialogue since this storyline began—and grabs hold of the Wagon with a grappling hook that whisks it over to a conveyor belt, leading to the atomic incinerator. Then, in classic bad guy tradition, they leave the room.

…OK, I can’t judge them too harshly, here—I don’t find myself staring at garbage as it goes down the chute, either—but still, do you really want to give these guys the opening?

But either way, their intelligence level remains in question, given their amazement when they return back to the lab and find Jimmy Olsen missing. Somehow they intuit that Scrapper and his double are behind this, since there’s obviously no way the specimen could have just, I don’t know, gotten up and walked away.

This seems to be a common misconception, since Scrapper and Trooper didn’t bother to tie Jimmy down either, while making their getaway on one of those tiny airport golf carts (included with every mid-sized villain’s lair). Recovering from his tranquilized sleep instantly, Jimmy picks up the golf cart and starts trying to swat Scrapper with it. Because Neanderthals were just that strong, you know.

This is more serious than you might have thought, because as it happens they’re passing the cages containing hordes of bizarre genetic aberrations—the kind that have supposedly been bedeviling the Scottish highlands for the last few months. Sure enough, CaveJimmy manages to smash the power supply, shutting down the electric fence and setting free a saber-toothed tiger. Now, if movies starring Raquel Welsh and Ringo Starr have taught us anything, it’s that cavemen and saber-toothed tigers are mortal enemies, which works to Scrapper and Trooper’s advantage, but the outcome is still surprising: CaveJimmy
Pounds on the tiger and knocks him out with one blow, then beats his chest and wanders off. Man, if all cavemen were like that, it’s no wonder the Smilodon went extinct.

Meanwhile (and I really hope the characters reunite soon, so I don’t have to keep writing “meanwhile”), the intense heat of the furnace has revived the Newsboys, or at least Flippa Dippa, just in time. Given Flip’s orgasmic obsession with water, you’d expect him to freak out at the sight of fire this close to devouring them, but he remains admirably cool and shows he’s not completely useless when not in his element. Realizing the Wagon’s hooked to the track, he drops a concussion bomb right underneath the vehicle, causing some damage but shaking them free. He then proceeds to go all French Connection on Brigadoom’s inner corridors, sideswiping hordes of the Factory’s heretofore-unseen workers. But then, it seems like most of them were running away in a panic anyway. From what? From this:



In the midst of this stampede, the Newsboy Legion is reunited, but CaveJimmy spots Simyan and Mokkari trying to shut the titanium doors to their little bunker, but he leaps in and blocks the door with an iron bar (showing remarkable presence of mind for a rampaging brute). He then proceeds to lay out some serious payback on the dudes who have been tampering with his DNA.

Actually, this whole comic is a brilliant example of Kirby doing what he does best—it’s just non-stop chaos, destruction, and hairbreadth escapes from about the moment the Whiz Wagon bursts in. Things get crazier and more tense, until they climax with Jimmy’s rampage:



Until the second-last page is literally nothing but a series of explosions. Brigadoom is, needless to say, done for—and the Newsboys and Jimmy have to scramble to escape not only the blast that takes out the entire compound, but the potential for being trapped as microscopic beings forever. Remember, Brigadoom is actually really tiny, and to get in you have to pass through a shrink ray—but once Brigadoom goes up, the reverse grow-ray that people pass through to leave goes with it. Needless to say, Jimmy and the Newsboys make it out by a whisker, and the last page shows the aftermath of the destruction: Jimmy passed out in a quiet dale, the Whiz Wagon planted nose-first in the hillside, and a tiny crater where the Evil Factory once resided.

I gotta say—apart from the interesting subtext of his first few issues, this is probably the highlight of Kirby’s run on Jimmy Olsen, accomplishing much more successfully what he tried to do with “The Big Boom” back in #138. At least part of the reason it works better here is that there actually IS a “Big Boom” at the end, but it’s also the conclusion of the main plot running through the series, which lends it a satisfying finality. After this, Kirby gets to toy with a storyline that he hinted at earlier, and which he wanted to make the focus of his run on the book, which probably would have made everything more interesting. Certainly, given that the book was cancelled a few issues later, you’d think Kirby had a better idea of what he was doing. It’s too bad this couldn’t be the end—it would have let him go out with a bang instead of a whimper.