Okay, once you’ve given Jimmy Olsen his own comic book title, what exactly do you do with him?
Well, among other things, you transform him into something more interesting than a cub reporter.
“Cocky, courageous and clever, that’s Jimmy Olsen, cub reporter for the Daily Planet,” So said the first issue of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen (Sept.-Oct. 1954).
One might also add foolhardy, as there was rarely an alien potion or an untested super-scientific formula that he did not immediately imbibe.
Jimmy’s second issue (Nov.-Dec. 1954) began the long series of fantastic transformations the impulsive journalist would endure.
Finding an overlooked bottle in his souvenir collection, Jimmy reads a note from Superman saying that the alien formula is supposed to confer “great powers.”
“Huh! Sounds phony to me!” thinks Jimmy. “Well, can’t do any harm to try it, just in case it’s some kind of super scientific potion from another world!”
Glug, glug!
With his newfound anti-gravity abilities, Jimmy gets himself a green Superman-like costume, performs with a circus, and stops some armed robbers — but Clark Kent is wounded by gunfire in the process!
And by now you’ve guessed that Jimmy was merely having a vivid dream because the harmless potion had put him to sleep.
“The Olsen stories tend to have limitations,” observed comics historian Michael E. Grost. “They are usually short: like Lois Lane, the stories in Jimmy Olsen tended to come three to a magazine, shorter than the two-to-an-issue stories in Action, for instance. “Unlike Superman or Superboy, the stories were rarely two or three-parters, either. The Jimmy Olsen stories tend to be comic in tone. Usually, they are little comic adventure stories, showing Jimmy getting involved in some task, and generating some laughs along the way before their happy ending. Jimmy Olsen rarely introduced any events that affected the mythos of the Superman family. Nor are the plots as overwhelmingly ingenious as the friendship series in Superboy, or the many detective stories in Lois Lane. Despite these limitations, the best Olsen stories are a good deal of fun. The magazine has a sense of joy.”
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