Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Jimmy Olsen #146

[Andy Bentley continues his issue by issue look at Jack Kirby's New Gods.]

“Homo Disasterous”

There’s little to be said of this Jimmy Olsen title that hasn’t already been said. Olsen has once again been mutated, this time regressing into a powerful prehistoric man. We see him resisting and destroying throughout the issue, all the while grunting and howling. His destruction ultimately causes the Factory to explode, but not before Jimmy and the Newsboys leap through the shrink ray to return them safe and sound at full size. The cover image depicts Superman taking on the cro-magnum Jimmy, however that never occurs in this issue. Superman is only briefly glimpsed watching Dubbilex’s mental powers and ruminating over the influence of the New Genesis/Apokolips battle’s effect on Earth. The only significant scene involved the other Newsboys being dragged into an atomic furnace, which resembles a large oven. Above them are human bodies being trafficked in tubes. This scene is reminiscent of the horrors the Third Reich unleashed on the Jewish population. Symian and Mokkari then become the fabled mad scientists that worked for Hitler’s army. The issue actually resembles an earlier issue where the two scientists unleashed a mindless and powerful Jimmy Olsen clone. Kirby took the Jimmy Olsen book as a favor to DC and by now seems to have lost interest in the title. The next New Gods issue looks pretty great so stay tuned.

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