Monthly Archives: October 2006

Kirby’s second issue of JIMMY OLSEN is mostly one wild ride, with Jimmy and the Newsboy Legion being taken in their Whiz Wagon to “Habitat”, the tree city that houses the drop-out motorcycle gang the “Outsiders”, and then leading them on the “Zoomway” to find the “Mountain of Judgment” of the mysterious “Hairies”. Yeah, really. Not your dad’s Jimmy Olsen…

The Mountain turns out to be a converted missile-carrier used to scare away intruders, and it turns out that hidden on the Whiz Wagon is a bomb designed to blow up the Hairies and their ultra-advanced scientific society.

The end of the issue has Morgan Edge on a video phone with his mysterious master, Darkseid, marking the villain’s first published appearance (although job codes and comments in interviews with people there make it clear that Kirby had actually already drawn a few full stories with Darkseid before this, though they were released later).

Kirby also includes three collages in one two-page segment. As usual the reproduction doesn’t do them justice, you can see better copies of a part of two of these on the cover of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #31. They also look a bit clearer in the recent collection of these issues.

Colletta inks the 22-page story, with Al Plastino doing some of the “corrections”. This issue also includes a text page by Kirby, “The Whiz Wagons are Coming”, about the futuristic car he created, and also includes a small self-portrait by Kirby, and a full page ad for the upcoming Kirby first issues, with slightly different versions of the NEW GODS #1 and FOREVER PEOPLE #1 covers.

Published 1970

Cap battles aliens out in the country in this issue, called by a farmer who, in an odd throw-away set-up line, called Cap after seeing him on a talk-show debating the topic of super-heroes, fantasies and UFOs. So that’s what Cap does between battling super-villains. Anyway, the first alien, called only the Captive, is being pursued by others, and manages to convince Cap and the farmer that he was an innocent being held in a black hole for a million years. Seems to me Cap is being unusually trusting, until the farmer is killed, as the Captive reveals himself to be the last of an evil race of life-energy sucking parasites.

Cap doesn’t take well to being duped, and is able to disable the Captive, allowing the aliens to take him and shoot him out into a nova. Later Cap makes a report to the government, who decide to hush up the incident. There’s even a reference to Cap fighting the Kree and the Skrulls, which I’m guessing was added by someone in New York.

A pretty decent story, overall, although depending a bit on Cap being overly trusting. A lot of very neat bits of art, from the various alien designs and spaceships, and an interesting precursor to some of the themes in Captain Victory in the 1980s.

Inking on the 35-page story is by Frank Giacoia and John Verpoorten, the cover is inked by Giacoia.

Published 1976