Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
... or: "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once, When You Aren't Anywhere At All...?"
(PART THREE)
Most knowledgeable comics fans nowadays (i.e., those for whom the word "crisis" is -- quite properly -- understood to be an epithet, when used in conjunction with the phrase "DC Comics") firmly and sincerely believe that said company's premiere time-traveling hero of the '60's was the estimable Rip Hunter: Time Master.
Most knowledgeable comics fans are wrong in this particular. 
The real, true "chrononaut" of DC's Silver Age was -- in demonstrable point of fact -- a red-headed, freckle-faced cub reporter for that great metropolitan newspaper, The Daily Planet; given to wearing the same nightmarish combination of green, checked sports coat and bright red bow tie on a daily basis, and exclaiming "jeepers" a whole lot whilst pestering the holy living heck out of Superman.
I am, of course, referring to Green Arrow.
Kidding! Kidding!
James Bartholomew Olsen -- better known to his friends (I'll grant the assumption if you will) as "Jimmy" -- broke through the time barrier no fewer than a wholly remarkable sixty times during the Silver Age of comics.
By way of comparison: Rip Hunter's own eponymous title lasted for twenty-nine issues.
The word wanted here, I believe, is: piker.
We've already covered Jimmy's inaugural temporal two-step (to ancient Krypton) on the previous page of this entry. You will, of course, recall that said trip occasioned the lad's very first meeting with the alien Man of Steel.
Except for this one, I guess. Maybe. [See panel reproduction, below]
Now you know why "time travel" stories nearly always occasion savage,
blinding migraines in your humble narrator.
It starts (as the introductory caption so helpfully informs us) "In Smallville one morning, [as] Superboy's super-hearing picks up a strange sound, undetected by anyone else." The perplexed Teen of Tomorrow -- wondering idly, perhaps, if said auditory oddity might possibly presage the need for yet another stern admonishment to a sheepishly grinning uberhound "Krypto," to the effect of: "Stay away from the cows, you twisted canine freakaholic! Pa's beginning to wonder why so many of them are all walking funny, lately!" -- flies off to investigate.
The source of said sound, in fact, is an extremely confused-looking Jimmy Olsen [Insert Easy Joke Here], standing smack dead in the center of what passes for "town" in Smallville, and thinking: "I... I'm confused at where I am! [sic] I set off the secret signal in the wristwatch! Only one person in the world has super-hearing, and will answer my call, as usual... Superman!"
[Side Note: Yep... that's right, folks: Jimmy (apparently) thinks
nothing whatsoever of using The World's Number One Hero as a sort of ambulatory
AAA map, whenever he manages to get himself turned around in a strange city,
direction-wise. An important object lesson to bear in the mind, the next
time you feel the urge to make a gift of some sort of "signal device"
to the next amiable adolescent muffinhead you happen to run into whilst
out crime-fighting, or whatnot. I'm just sayin', here, is all.]
Be that as it may, however: once Superboy has tracked that relentlessly annoying zeee-zeee-zeeeing noise to its tow-headed Source Ultimate, there is no little bit of (perfectly understandable) confusion as to how, precisely, Superman's Favorite Half-Wit has managed to maneuver himself alllllllllll the way back to the days of "the adventures of Superman, when he was a boy."
(I just adore the self-congratulatory line of dialogue in panel three, above,
by the by: "I'm Jimmy Olsen, cub reporter, also known as Superman's
Pal!" Oh, yeah: there's a legitimate claim to fame.
"Yup. That's me: Professional One-Man Entourage." Back
in the olden days, we used to refer to this sort of thing as "bootlicking.")
In any event, the good-natured Superboy genially offers Jimmy the opportunity to stick around Smallville for a while, rather than carving the words "I don't think so" on the latter's head with a diamond-hard fingernail and super-punting him all the way back to the proper epoch. This turns out (as pretty much anyone who's actually read an issue or three of SUPERMAN'S PAL, JIMMY OLSEN could have readily foreseen) to be as disastrous an exercise in simple, homespun charity as might be inviting Hannibal Lechter into one's home for "just a quick bite to eat."
No sooner has Superboy arranged for "Clark Kent" to afford the tow-
headed time traveler temporary lodgings (sans confiding the true nature of his dual identity with him, natch) than Jimmy has thrown his nosey lot in with certified super-snoop Lana Lang, and is gathering evidence preparatory to solving Big Secret Numero Uno.
" *Gulp*! Together, the two of them may pin me down!" the uberteen morosely concedes. "There's only one way out... risky though it is!"
A few panels later, Superboy is standing over a small, unmarked grave on a hillside just outside the Smallville city limits, and...
... okay. False alarm. Just wanted to make sure you were all still
paying attention, is all.
Taking Jimmy aside privately, Superboy reveals the secret of his dual identity to the flabbergasted teen (!!), stating: "Since you're Superman's pal in the future, why shouldn't you know the truth now?"
Thus initiated into the ranks of the knowing, Jimmy is promptly enlisted by his super-pal in a scheme by means of which Lana is (yet again) temporarily thrown off the scent, secret identity-wise. (It's the standard "... so, while you're disguised as 'Clark Kent'..." dodge, for which the hapless Lana has always shown such a marked susceptibility. Sweet kid... but about as art-smay as a bag of ammers-hay, if you know what I mean.)
Once that particular grounds fire has been decently attended to, the nowhere-near-as-dumb-as-he-looks Superboy offers Jimmy "... this rare Amnesium to add to your collection [of super-trophies]."
Jimmy -- amiable, grinning dopeasaurus that he is -- rises to the "bait," never once pausing to wonder why the substance is called "amnesium" in the first place (easy to see why he was just a cub reporter all those years, huh...?); a visibly relieved Superboy sends him rocketing back towards his proper time period by throwing him up into the air [again: see page reproduction, above]...
... and the rest, as they say, is history.
Regular readers hereabouts are well aware, by now, of my own proclivities towards saving the the Most Awfulest Entries Of Them All for the very end of any given page.
Rest assured, one and all: I have no intentions whatsoever of
abandoning that singular tradition on this page.
"Jimmy the Red, Thor's Best Pal" (you only wish I was making this one up, fanboy) opens up with a bespectacled, hag-ridden gent approaching Our Jimmy; a graven stone tablet cradled protectively against his chest.
"Olsen," he begins (and rather rudely, if I might say so); "I'm Professor Yale, the archeologist! Please contact Superman at once! I've discovered this Viking rune tablet... and it must be destroyed by Superman!"
(As potential cocktail party "ice breakers" go, you gotta admit... that's one
heck of an opening conversational gambit. I think I might
try that one, next time out. "I'm Professor Cheeks, the... ummmmm... professor!
Please contact your teenage sister at once! I'm lonely!")
"But I can't reach Superman now!" Jimmy exclaims. "He's in the future, on a scientific mission!"
(Is it just me, here... or does anyone else think that Harold
Pinter and Eugene Ionesco would have fit right in with the DC writing staff
of the Silver Age...?)
The agitated educator leaves the mysterious tablet in Jimmy's care -- yeah, yeah; I know, I know -- and the red-headed rascal promptly sets about to researching ancient Norse runes in the local library ("Reading Is FUNdamental!"), the better to translate glyphs.
Said scribblings proclaim themselves to be a mystic cantrip, enabling "anyone who reads the last line on this tablet [to] go back in time, to the age of the Vikings."
Next thing you know, Jimmy's tarted himself up in some of the cheesiest faux "Viking garb" since ABBA stopped making music videos, and -- with fellow news hound Lois Lane attempting to serve as the voice of (comparative) reason -- is packed and pumped to go back in time and get in touch with his Inner Sigfried.
Upon reading the fateful final line from the tablet -- "Foolish mortal! Loki hath tricked thee! Forever wilt thou be a prisoner in the past!" D'OHH!! -- Jimmy gets alakazammed by a sorcerous lightning bolt... and disappears...
... only to find himself, nano-seconds later, centuries removed from his own rightful temporal milieu!
If (much like Your Humble Narrator) you're hoping against hope for a pack of ravening, blood-crazed velociraptors to happen by, at this point: no such luck, dammit. What we do get, instead, is a shot of Jimmy standing outside a mysterious-looking cavern of some sort, with what sounds like The Granddaddy Of All Earthquakes going on within.
Investigating the oddly rhythmic boom-boom-BOOMing, Jimmy is confronted by none other than Odin's Favoritest Boy, his own big, bad, burly self: Thor, the God of Thunder.
The Big Fellah immediately proves himself no mean slouch in the Helpful Verbal Exposition department, explaining to the startled and disbelieving Jimmy: "Loki, the god of mischief and magic, tricked me and bound me to these rocks with magic chains!"
Politely refraining from (possibly) unhelpful commentary on the types of individuals who enjoy chaining up large, semi-nude muscular men in remote wilderness locations -- just one of the many, many reasons we should all be undyingly grateful that DC's Vertigo imprint has never expressed any real interest in producing an ongoing JIMMY OLSEN title -- Jimmy uses Thor's own enchanted hammer to liberate the thunder god, and is rewarded, in turn, by:
a.) The re-christening of his given name into the more "Viking"-ish (it says here) "Jimmy the Red"; and --
b.) The big, good-hearted goombah's unswerving and eternal friendship.
We soon discover, in short storytelling order, that being an actual, for real, no foolin' Norse deity (in the DC universe, at any rate) was pretty much the same as (say) being in the modern-day Justice League of America, sans the modern-day conveniences of roll-on deodorant; toilet paper; and twenty-four hour Chinese take-out. Thor, f'rinstance, had his own "arch-enemy" (the aforementioned Loki); flitted about the skies on a regular "patrol," looking for evil-type heads to stave in; and (now) his very own "kid sidekick," to boot.
It was just as Jimmy was finally becoming acclimated to the notion of spending the remainder of his days gadding about with a nigh-
omnipotent being who didn't get all huffy and red in the face whenever you accidentally brought up the third and fourth Superman films in conversation that evil stinker emeritus Loki made yet another of his periodic attempts to whittle down the Norse pantheon by precisely one.
Boondoggled by the Norse god of evil onto a deserted beach by means of the
old "pirate raiders bugging the local fishermen" ruse (that one always
works, by golly!), Thor quickly finds himself, once again, wrapped helmet to
toe in the usual magic chains -- Loki, you see, had this "fetish," of sorts
-- and the hapless Jimmy, in turn, is staring down the prospect of being magically
transformed into something a bit lower on the evolutionary ladder. Assuming
that's even possible, I mean.
However: a wholly gratuitous (and remarkably unconvincing; even for this
comic) intuitive "leap" on the part of "Jimmy the Red" -- i.e., "I had a hunch
Loki was [...] like Mr. Mxyzptlk, the imp from the 5th dimension who
plagues Superman!" -- saves both the deity and the day.
(He tricks Loki -- Loki, mind you -- into saying his own name backwards,
see, and... oh. You've already read that part by now, haven't you?
Sorry. Didn't mean to make it hurt twice.)
Once again, we're treated to the jaw-dropping spectacle of a human being being hurtled through the time barrier by means of Being Thrown Really, Really HARD By an Inordinately Mesomorphic Guy (Quick! Someone get Stephen Hawkings on the phone... right now!), and -- just like that -- "Jimmy the Red" settles back into his pre-ordained, present day existence as "Jimmy the Incredible Moron" once again, little worse for the wear...
... except, of course, for his newfound (and inexplicable) series of facial tics and twitchings whenever someone inadvertently uses the word "Ragnarok" in his presence...
... or -- for that matter -- the word "Spam."
That's three pages, then, on the more studiedly "zany" instances of time travel in the Silver Age DCU... and I apologize, most sincerely, for having only just managed to cover the relevant examples from the SUPERMAN canon, this time out.
In the weeks to come, we'll be taking similarly goggle-eyed looks at stories involving (among others) The Legion of Super-Heroes; The Atom; The Flash; The Batman; and The Justice League of America.
See you sometime in the next seven-to-ten days... no matter which way
you're headed through the time stream. )))
Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age (PAGE ONE)
Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age (PAGE TWO)
Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age (PART FOUR)
Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age (PART FIVE)
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