Does my head hurt because of the impacted wisdom tooth, or that article? The world may never tell.


Loved it. It's kind of funny how it even began losing its own internal logic by the end.

Ah, I was going to show a site that has caploads of bad comics but it's linked in the article. Good thing I checked

Anyway nice recap. I never understood the point of concealing your identity, even in a world that does not know you.



If he fights in that world long enough, people will know him but it still don't make any sense anyway

Great article!

The faux Cap'n America looks to be the Guardian, created by Kirby and Joe Simon after they created.... Captain America. :0 He featured in a series called "Star Spangled Comics" with a bunch of hideously ugly (thanks, Kirby) kids called the Newsboy Legion. Looks like the issue referenced here also had the origin story for the NL. Don Rickles PLUS ugly kids? WOW!

"Wait here, and don't touch anything!"

Oh, yeah, that always ends well...

The whole "red cape/blue cape" thing.. Ok, I know it's still a difference, but really, it's irrelevant. Bulls are colorblind, and are drawn by the MOTION of the cape, not the color.

"My friend Batman"

Isn't that a bit presumptuous? I mean, maybe he was different back then, but the Batman of recent years probably wouldn't like some annoying Superman hanger-on calling him his "friend"...

BTW, as a resident of Arizona, I had to check; and, sure enough, there IS a Mount Tipton here in Arizona! I'm sure you're all thrilled to know that, eh?

So, they set up Jimmy's vulnerability to the "Tiptonite", then don't use it in the climax? And instead, they just bring up this other thing out of nowhere (ok, it's Kryptonite, but it's still pretty much out of the blue). That's just terrible storytelling, right there.

BTW, this was an awesome article, Albert! Thanks for the fun read.

About Don Rickles anyway, was this before or after Kirby made Darkseid? Because that main contribution of his while in DC sure trumps any blunders he might have made while there.

Pretty much at the same time. Kirby's JIMMY OLSEN was one of the "Fourth World" books- DC was hesitant about just putting him on three entirely new titles, so they had him take over one where the current talent was leaving (and which wasn't selling very well, so he couldn't do any worse.)

I rather like his Olsen run, though the Rickles stories go off track even more than usual.

As for this issue, I think what happened most of the time was that a cover was designed first and the writer's job was to come up with a story that justified whatever insane image was on the front. I have a feeling office tensions were high after some entries. ("Let's see, I have to make Jimmy- a giant Turtle man? Oh, FUCK YOU JULIUS.")

The sad thing is, this story seems to make more sense than most of the others from this era.

My mistake, then; I've never been to Arizona (and, apparently neither have the authors of this comic book), so I've mostly had to rely on documentaries that emphasize the deserts in Arizona (when they aren't emphasizing the Grand Canyon, that is).

Great article. As someone who spent a lot of time visiting Superdickery and seeing all these ridiculous covers it's nice to see an article that shows, in-depth, that yes, back then they were that ridiculous.

Lileks has been riffing on a string of Guardian/Newsboy Legion covers: look here and here and here and here and here and here and here. Amazingly each cover is more WTF than the one before.

One line at the end would have greatly increased the entertainment value of this comic:

"Oh! Did I say, 'dimensional-travel machine'? I meant, 'fevered-hallucination machine'!"