Jimmy Olsen this time, and as usual we’ve got multiple stories, and of the stories in this one, it’s a bit of a toss up so I’ll cover the two better ones. The odd one out is the title story of Jimmy Olsen; Crooner, in which Jimmy suddenly gains incredible fame as a crooner when attending the 1950s equivalent of a Karaoke bar and his recent bout of laryngitis gave him a gravelly Leonard Cohen-y voice, but then learns that celebrity is a hollow pursuit, and also that fame is especially fickle when it’s tied to not quite recovering from a cold. Also he stumbles ass-backwards into a wanted embezzler and that makes him famous for crime fighting by instead of sounding like a proto Tom Waits.
So let’s, instead turn our attention to
The Betrayal of Superman, in which Jimmy co-opts British culture to an extent that I think it’s a hate crime? Anyway, it’s written by some combination of Henry Boltinoff, Otto Binder or Jack Schiff, and drawn by any possible combination of Henry Boltinoff, Curt Swan, Ray Burley and Win Mortimer. My money is on Henry writing and Curt drawing but that’s a vibes thing not a textual confirmation thing.
Anyway, Cub Reporter Whose Age I Can Not Determine Jimmy Olsen is on the hunt for a scoop and decides to visit his old pal, the detective Dick Crane. And pops in just as Dick is about to keel over dead.
Traditional format for a noire detective story would mean that Dick has been murdered and now Jimmy is caught in a whirlwind of danger and intrigue, but no. He’s just very sick. With what? No idea. But it’s apparently fatal and he’s exactly $1100 short of being able to afford the life saving operation needed to survive. And that’s in 1955 dollars so that’s probably enough to buy, like, a smallish Baltic country.
Anyway, as luck would have it, and with what *may be* his dying breath, he reveals that the most recent bit of detective work pays out $100 up front and $1000 on completion and it’s nothing dangerous or the sort of thing that would get you caught in a whirlwind of danger or intrigue, so Jimmy figures “Okay, I’ll be a detective this month.”
Then he looks up what the actual assignment was and discovers that he has to find out Supermans secret identity for a client. Oh no!
So, logically, Jimmy decides to dress like a Sherlock Holmes and meet the client under the alias of Sir James Cedric, a detective prodigy from Scotland Yard, who Dick Crane hired as a consultant.
The client doesn’t really stop to wonder why a guy who was $1000 away from death would spend money hiring a detective from England to assist with the case but he does notice everything else about him, since it’s a bad disguise and Jimmy is acting like his only reference for British people was war propaganda from 1776.
Anyway, the client, Bart Gordon, simply wants to know Supermans identity and is willing to pay $1000 to learn it, and in a thought bubble explains that then he can blackmail Superman into committing crimes for him, but, like… that requires a pretty severe misread on Supes’ temperament, and makes Jimmy sign a contract stipulating all the ways he can’t possibly sneak around getting out of revealing Supermans identity once it’s discovered.
So what follows is Jimmy, still in a bad Sherlock Holmes costume, following Superman at his myriad of charity appearances over the week gathering clues that point to his identity.
This was a pretty crime-light week so Superman can spend his time lifting rocks to Impress orphans and standing in front of large thermometers instead of fighting Parasite or Metallo or anything.
Anyway, after a weeks worth of measuring Supermans show size and exactly how heavy he is in relation to a bunch of rocks, Jimmy has incontestable proof of who Superman really is, and calls up Bart Gordon so he can confirm it himself, and sends him to the very same building that Clark Kent just went in to!
The Daily Planet is a poorly run newspaper so “A house was made…
entirely out of glass?!?” Is a front page story that warrants one of their star reporters to cover it.
…is the Daily Planet a pennysaver? That would explain a lot.
Anyway, there’s only one other person in the glass house so Bart figures “that must be Superman” and decides to prove this theory by shooting him in the back and seeing if he dies.
Luckily, it
is Superman, so he doesn’t. Also, for all the conditions Bart laid out in that contract to expose Supermans identity, he didn’t think to include “Superman has to actually face me in his civilian identity” so he just walks right out of the building without turning around.
The house being made of glass doesn’t factor into the story at all. But they keep bringing it up like it’s supposed to.
Bart runs back out of the glass house saying “Well… that hardly counts” and demands his $1000 back and Superman shows up to reveal, the loophole of not requiring actual eye contact and he should be grateful that trying to figure out Supermans secret identity isn’t a crime so he isn’t going to be punished.
I mean, he
did shoot a guy in the back. Pretty sure that’s at least a misdemeanour.
Anyway Superman also explains that Jimmy came to him right away and helped him spend the entire week planting fake clues to his identity to help fool Bart, which doesn’t really explain why Clark Kent had to be involved at all since Jimmy didn’t know that was actually Supes.
Anyway, later at the Daily Planet Jimmy is telling everyone about his week and then complains about what a bad artist he is because his mugshot profile of Superman was so badly drawn that it looked like Clark Kent without his glasses.
And then Clark says “What an imagination you have!” then stares straight at the ceiling of the room and gives a big wink, which had to have looked weird as hell for everyone else in the office.
The second story is a bit slighter, but it’s also (probably) an Otto Binder story so it’s also more bonkers, as we learn with some misplaced loyalty and just a l’il bit of attempted child murder, as a treat, in
Superboy for a Day.
So we’re kicking off this time back in Clark Kent’s hometown of Smallville where he’s been invited to… umm… look at Clark admire his parents’ gravestones.
Jimmy is quick to realize this isn’t the particular time or place for his unique brand of nonsense and decides to skeedaddle to somewhere more receptive to a Jimmy Olsen audience, and naturally finds the Superboy Museum, dedicated to Supermans teenage adventures. Which, largely, are the exact same as his regular adventures, but Smallville stopped caring about him as soon as he was old enough to vote.
Anyway, after seeing how proud Smallville was of Superman before he could get a learners permit and how kids today only have a stodgy old Super
man to look up to, Jimmy has a brilliant idea; to steal Superboys clothes from the museum and pretend to be Superboy so the people of the town can be filled with nostalgia again!
He didn’t clear this with Supes who’s reaction was more along the lines of “Jimmy get the hell out of my old clothes ya friggin’ weirdo, I’m busy mourning”, but then realizes that Jimmys right; it’s important that kids today become wistful for something they never experienced and decide to let Jimmy imitate a random smattering of his feats of incredible strength and speed.
And we get a montage of Superman helping Jimmy imitate flying around the town, busting open a bank vault safe and digging a big ditch. Which, yes, involves demolishing a bank vault and flooding the town.
But meanwhile, someone is trying to subtley sabotage their efforts, removing from the records of where Superboy dug those ditches and also trying to drown Jimmy a l’il bit.
But there’s no time to dwell on this mystery because this is an 8 page story, so we quickly learn it was the curator of the Superboy Museum! And don't worry, the explanation is ten shades of bonkers. The curator was aware that one of Superboys feats was building a very large tin cup to catch hailstones that threatened the town, then melted those hailstones with lightning because… why would a Superman story do things by half measures. He also buried the cup in some random-ass backyard somewhere in town. However, the curator was worried that Superboy left his finger prints on the tin cup afterward so, when it was donated to the museum initially, and *so defensive* was the curator over maintaining Superboys secret identity, that he had the cup excavated from the now uninhabited part of Smallville and he was worried that Jimmy and Superman would have uncovered it during their ditch-digging demonstration.
But Superman tells him not to worry; the tin cup was blasted by lightning after all and that's... like... not going to leave some very readable fingerprints, especially 10 years later. And besides, if he was that panicked over the possibility of someone getting a fingerprint analysis from a long buried cup that, even if there was any evidence in the museum that could tie Superboy to his civilian idenity, it's obvious that this is the guy who should be in charge of protecting it.
Also, the curator was *really sure* that Supermans secret identity was Some Guy who disappeared from Smallville around the same time Superman appeared in Metropolis, but it turns out he just had amnesia for about 10 years and just recovered.
Another Super End, to a Super Day.
Jimmy doesn't seem to mind this guy tried to drown him to death.
