Jimmy Olsen: Adventures by Jack Kirby - Volume 1
In 1970 Marvel Comics mainstay Kirby rocked the comic-book industry by moving to competitor DC Comics. Among his initial DC projects was revamping a sagging title starring Superman's kid-reporter sidekick, Jimmy Olsen. The Man of Steel and his straight-arrow pal were a couple of squares amid such products of Kirby's feverish imagination as "The Hairies," a passel of high-tech hippies who travel in a gargantuan converted missile carrier called the Mountain of Judgment, and clone-making scientists who produce miniature versions of Jimmy and his friends and unleash fearsome "DNAliens." Kirby drew it all with the full-bodied flair and verve he had bestowed on such Marvel creations as the Fantastic Four and Captain America. If Kirby's Jimmy stories sometimes brave near-incoherence (as Kirby admonished in a famous cover blurb, "Don't ask! Just buy it!"), their silly brilliance shows Kirby's feverish imagination up to full advantage. Too outre for today's young comics fans, who prefer a straighter-faced Superman, these stories' primary audience now is middle-aged fans who first read them three decades ago.Gordon FlaggCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved