State Your Opinion on A DC Character - Part 2

[Anubis]

Yup, moving on from the House of EL

Spoiler

Jor's got some dynamite 70's hair.

Jimmy Olsen

Superman's Pal

 

[Kurosawa]

Jimmy is another character that doesn't work in modern comics and therefore has to be watered down and made generic. Jimmy Olsen is best when he is involved in the most insane **** that can be thought of. A young, hip news photographer=zzzz. Superman's Pal who travels back to caveman days and becomes a rock star and gets married to a gorilla by a witch doctor Superman=

 

[BLACKVULCAN]

^ Bwahahhaha!!!
Level 4 on the Rocktor scale! I thought that dude sucked when i was young. just a boy hostage, but that dude has pulled Supes ass out the kyptonite fire plenty of times and got to be cool! like kuro said i also dig the elasta lad, turtle boy, Captain Amazing ,honorary member of the Legion crazy &^%% too.Supes gave Batty boy the kryptonite cause he knew Bats could do what Jimmy could never do! Him and bats have a partnership,but jimmy's a pal!

 

[Anubis]

 

[BLACKVULCAN]

those dudes had to be smokin sumthing!! Hahahaha

 

[SpideyInATree]

Ah, the Silver Age.

 

[SpideyFan866]

Superman, while the very first superhero as well as the stereotypic mold for a superhero, is NOT the greatest hero ever, nor is he the worst.

 

[Anubis]

That's nice, but we're talking about Jimmy Olsen.

Also Spidey sucks.

 

[Kurosawa]

 

[Anubis]

And people thought Supes was a dick back then.

 

[Kurosawa]

Superman, while the very first superhero as well as the stereotypic mold for a superhero, is NOT the greatest hero ever, nor is he the worst.

Superman is the greatest superhero of all time and might be the greatest pop culture character ever created.

 

[RoughNTumble]

Superman is the greatest superhero of all time and might be the greatest pop culture character ever created.

Even as someone who prefers batman, I find it hard to argue with that.

 

[BLACKVULCAN]

Superman is the greatest superhero of all time and might be the greatest pop culture character ever created.

I third That!! plus if the term "Super-hero" is coined from your Name... you are the G.O.A.T baby!

 

[Wesley Dodds]

Jimmy's okay. I've never really thought about the guy.
He's probably the only mainstream, widely known comc book character I could take in a fight. So there's that...

 

[Anubis]

You couldn't take Aunt May?

 

[random_havoc]

You couldn't take Aunt May?

The sad thing is that Aunt May probably is tougher than Jimmy

 

[Wesley Dodds]

You couldn't take Aunt May?

Y'know, it's funny, I was about to add May when I posted that and then I thought 'Nah, Aunt May's exactly the sorta tough old gal who'd randomly pull some kung-fu **** on your ass at the last minute.'

It's always when you least expect it...

 

[Mystirious]

Depends

He could beat mainstream Aunt May but Ultimate Aunt May would mess him up

What the what

Superman is shocked that Jimmy is laughing but not shocked that he's collecting his tears

What the what

Jimmy is another character that doesn't work in modern comics and therefore has to be watered down and made generic. Jimmy Olsen is best when he is involved in the most insane **** that can be thought of. A young, hip news photographer=zzzz. Superman's Pal who travels back to caveman days and becomes a rock star and gets married to a gorilla by a witch doctor Superman=

I would so read a Jimmy Olsen ongoing if he got into wacky adventures like this every week. I cherish my silver age Jimmy Olsen back issues they are completely insane and I love them

Being turned into an ape is probably a pretty normal day for Jimmy

And apparently in Metropolis no one thinks a gorilla in clothes roaming the streets is odd as long as it has a sign on it saying its tame. Amazing

 

[Mystirious]

t:

That bride of jungle Jimmy cover may well feature the greatest dialogue in the entire history of comic books

 

[The Question]

Jimmy Olsen is one of those characters who has a lot of potential in a lot of different ways but is, generally, under used. He's a photojournalist, one of the most notoriously idealistic, outgoing, and borderline suicidal groups of people in the world, in one of the strangest and most intricate sci-fi universes in all of fiction. I just really want to see someone take that and go all James Robinson's Starman with it.

 

[Wesley Dodds]

Jimmy Olsen is one of those characters who has a lot of potential in a lot of different ways but is, generally, under used. He's a photojournalist, one of the most notoriously idealistic, outgoing, and borderline suicidal groups of people in the world, in one of the strangest and most intricate sci-fi universes in all of fiction. I just really want to see someone take that and go all James Robinson's Starman with it.

God, that's a good idea. Now I'm sort've pissed off that's not a real book...

 

[WompuM]

I typically do not care for Jimmy, but those back-ups from last year with Chloe Sullivan in them were superb. On the other hand . . . Countdown. So I don't know.

 

[Anubis]

There's no such thing as Countdown.

Also you left out how awesome he was in All-Star Superman.

And as far as Jimbo being a puss, well...

Nuff Said b***hes.....Nuff said.

ANYWHO!

Spoiler

Perry White

 

[Mystirious]

There's no such thing as Countdown.

It doesn't exist

Also you left out how awesome he was in All-Star Superman.

I am seriously dissapointed that Morrison didn't make Jimmy a transvestite in Action Comics it would have been amazing

And as far as Jimbo being a puss, well...

Nuff Said b***hes.....Nuff said.

ANYWHO!

Spoiler

Perry White

Great Caesars Ghost!

I like Perry

I like almost all of the Planet staff

I typically do not care for Jimmy, but those back-ups from last year with Chloe Sullivan in them were superb. On the other hand . . . Countdown. So I don't know.

Countdown never happened Womp

It never happened

Those Jimmy Olsen back up stories were fun on a bun I wish they had lasted for longer than they did I was enjoying the wackyness

 

[The Question]

Perry White has the same problem as most of the Daily Planet staff, he's a great well rounded character with a lot of potential who doesn't even get used for a hell of a whole lost besides filling the role of "Superman's boss when he's not being Superman." But I think he has it worse than some of the others. Lois is Superman's love interest, and while for pretty much the entirety of the Silver Age that meant she was stuck humiliating herself in uncomfortably sexist and ununny stories about her trying to win Superman's affections and him being an enormous ******* to her, as the years went on she really developed and basically graduated to the status of unnoficial co-main character of most of the Superman titles, especially after Clark revealed his secret identity to her and the two of them god married. After that she basically served the role as his primary confidant, and got a bunch of sub plots of her own involving her doing amateur detective/investigative journalist awesome stuff and even sometimes sharing the plot with Clark as she approached the problem from a non-superhero angle.

Jimmy, aswell, gets a little more spotlight because he holds the side-kick status by default. Yeah, Superman has had Superboy and Supergirl, but Jimmy's been around much more consistently, and in the case of Supergirl, well, maybe it's a holdover from the days of trying to copy Robin all the time but sidekicks of the same gender as the main hero tend to get the most spotlight. I still hold that Jimmy is underused and has a lot of untapped potential, but the fact is he's pretty consistantly there. When Clark hangs out with somebody outside of work, it's usually Jimmy. When either Clark or Lois are in a dangerous situation and they need somebody to talk to and do stuff for them, it's usually Jimmy. It's entirely a support role, and I think he's hindered in part by not being in on the secret, but at least he's almost always there.

Perry, though, he kind of drifts in an out. He had some really good storylines in the 90s, with his heart condition, his streined relationship with his son, His own rivalry with Lex Luthor that paralelled Superman's rivalry with Lex, his adopted son dying, his serving as Lois' surrogate father. All good stuff, but it kind of came and went, and was mostly limited to the early-to-mid 90s. And with a franchise that has as long a history as Superman, that's kind of a flash in the pan.

I think the big problem is the continuity-less nature of Superman. I mean, yeah, there's a continuity, but only because writers usually don't disregard what came before (excepting the damned recent reboot). Superman, like most of DC comics, lacks any kind of narrative focus or goals. Superman flies around and does stuff. Sometimes it's interesting stuff, sometime's it's boring stuff. But none of that stuff can really change anything of value so the next writer can still play with all the toys. It took over half a century to get Lois and Clark married, and they had to drag that out kicking and screaming. It's probably why Lois is Superman's best supporting character. She was allowed to grow, her relationship with Clark actually developed, her story went somewhere and had a purpose. Until Grant Morrison decided to be a nostalgia *****e and bring back the love triangle because all of those vaguely sexist sitcom hijinks had so much literary value and had so much more material for telling stories than a well developed commited romance.

But that's another rant for another day.

The point is that Perry is purposeless. He's just there, being Superman's boss who yells at him sometimes. He has a backstory, he has a lot of personality, he has a lot of things that could be done with him, but nothing is being done with him. If Superman were a story with tight continuity and an actual narrative goal, I think Perry would be a fantastic character.

It's why I think Superman, and most mainstream comics franchises, need their own Once and Future King treatment. The story of these characters, taking the best parts of all the different versions, finding what untapped potential of the core premise there is left, finding what the character and their story is about at the core and making that the focus, and telling a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. It doesn't have to replace normal comics, it shouldn't, but it would be a wonderful suppliment. It's what the new 52 could have been, but we all know that it's not going to be like that at all.

Alas.