Jimmy Olsen – Review

By: Nick Spencer (writer), RB Silva with Amilcar Pinna (pencillers), DYM & Rob Lean (inkers), Dave McCaig (colorist

The Story: Meet Jimmy Olsen, Boy-Man of Steel, and about to save the world in his underpants.

The Review: If you flip through the television nowadays, it’s amazing how hard it is to find something to watch that’s entertaining without being spiteful or just plain dumb.  But as a recent Slate article pointed out, there’s still an audience for feel-good stuff—shows that assemble a cast of likeable characters and gives them silly premises to play around with.  These can be a much-needed palette cleanser after all the overwrought drama you get served most of the time.

Jimmy Olsen may be the Parks and Recreation of the comics world: rich, unadulterated fun.  This issue includes the stories which appeared as co-features in Action Comics, but the other half is all new: Jimmy’s alternate life as Co-Superman; converting the Planet’s flying newsroom into a spaceship; and preventing a virus-ridden Superman video game from taking over the world.  It’s the wacky underbelly of comics fiction—maybe the best part of all.

In short order, Spencer creates the most lovable cast of possibly any comic book on the stands today.  Of course our titular semi-hero is the hapless, goony underachiever we all know and love, but you also get the no-nonsense Chloe (who, if possible, is even more awesome here than her live-action role in Smallville—“He was trying to take over the world, so I beat him up with my purse.”) and Sebastien Mallory, who somehow comes across endearingly pompous.  Even guests Maggie Mxyzptlk, Perry White, and Natasha Irons get warm, fully-realized personalities.

Action Comics #896 – Review

By: Paul Cornell (writer), Pete Woods (artist), Brad Anderson (colorist), Nick Spencer (feature writer), RB Silva (feature penciller), DYM (feature inker), Dave McCaig (feature colorist)

The Story: Lex Luthor enlists the Secret Six to get him out of a tight spot.  But things aren’t so cut and dry when they’re facing Vandal Savage, who just happens to be the father of the Six’s Scandal Savage.  In the co-feature, Jimmy Olsen’s on auction—but what kind of money would you pay for Superman’s pal?

The Review: With the Secret Six literally dropping into the party, this issue officially kicks up the action into high-gear.  By themselves, the Six already bubble with story gold: magic-wielding Goth, Louis XIV-themed banshee, and babbling killer harlequin, among other things.  When you add robot-women and mind-controlling caterpillars into the mix—well, this is why you buy comics, don’t you?

Paul Cornell really shows off his writing chops by not only keeping the pace going full-speed, but also by making sure that events don’t escalate so quickly they completely go off the rails.  Somehow, in the midst of all the craziness going on, he inserts a few scenes that set off some of the mines he planted in the very first issue of his run, and he drops clues about even bigger explosions to come.  There are clearly larger, invisible forces at work in Lex Luthor’s life, and as high the stakes are now, even greater ones will be coming down the pike.

This issue features an old trope of classic mysteries, executed in typically Cornell-wacky fashion: the innocuous supporting character who turns out key to all the ongoing weirdness.  What makes the revelation even sweeter to read is the realization of how well Cornell has played us.  After all, with everything Luthor has gone through, this character has remained in the thick of it.  Yet when the new facts about this character’s possible connections to all that has gone on comes to light, it still strikes you with surprise, and anticipation of how this will all turn out.

Cornell also manages to keep up the great character work even while the characters skirmish in the middle of a battle royale.  No matter how small the role or limited the dialogue, each character gets across a clear personality, even the nameless secretary (“We can use our feet, heave the table—I was about to tell you when!”).  The showdown between the father and daughter Savages has touches of resentment, mockery, and underlying tenderness—in other words, a typical father-daughter relationship.  Kudos to Cornell for bringing great family moments like these as the family members attempt to kill each other.

Once the action of the first feature has passed, Nick Spencer’s Jimmy Olsen serves as the perfect palette cleanser, offering pure, unadulterated fun.  If Spencer doesn’t get a Jimmy Olsen ongoing after this run closes, then it will be an enormous loss to comics, because there needs to be a title like this on the stands.  The premise starts off grounded enough, then quickly spiral into full-blown fireworks—and by that I mean bright, colorful bursts of delight.  Who knew Mxyzptlk even had a daughter?  And through it all, Spencer keeps the characters bouncing and the dialogue zipping.  He seems to have honed the trick of writing comedy not by trying to be funny or writing funny lines (which, I might add, almost always end in disaster), but simply having strong personalities meet in unexpected settings.  And Jimmy Olsen, Chloe Sullivan, and Sebastien Mallory meeting at a widow’s charity date auction certainly fits the bill.