Jimmy Olsen

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James Bartholomew "Jimmy" Olsen is a main and minor character in a series of comics that have been published by the US publisher DC-Comics since 1938 . He is the main character in the comic series Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen (German: "Superman's Kumpel Jimmy Olsen") and a minor character in the comics and films for Superman and Lois Lane .

history

Jimmy Olsen was originally created as a supporting character for the Superman comics. He was first introduced as an anonymous editorial assistant ( Copy Boy ) in a story in Action Comics # 6 from November 1938. The author of this story, and thus the inventor of the character, was Jerry Siegel , who had already created Superman.

The name "Jimmy Olsen" was given to the copy boy in the April 15, 1940 episode of the radio show The Adventures of Superman . In Superman # 13 of November / December 1941, the name Jimmy Olsen was carried over to the Superman comic book stories. In later stories it was revealed that Jimmy Olsen's full name is James Bartholomew Olsen while Jimmy is his first name.

The optical design for Jimmy Olsen was developed by Siegel's company, the illustrator Joe Shuster . Fixed, since the 1930s, has remained unchanged optical characteristics of the figure are Jimmy Olsen bright red hair , be with freckles strewn face and his youthful face. Until the 1970s, Olsen often had a green suit with a bow tie drawn on his body. Personality traits that Olsen consistently display are youthful optimism, recklessness, and a certain degree of hastiness.

Character biography

After the disappearance of Jimmy's father James Jacob Olsen, who has been missing since participating in a secret military mission in Southeast Asia, Jimmy was raised by his mother Sarah alone.

During his school days, when he was noticed as gifted but also lazy, he worked as a photographer for a school newspaper. He also frequently skips school to take courses at the University of Metropolis . After the Daily Planet reporters Lois Lane and Clark Kent hear about him, he gets a job as a junior photographer for the newspaper.

Soon after, Olsen meets Superman, the heroic protector of his hometown. The encounter occurs when a school friend of Jimmy's is in a life-threatening situation. Jimmy creates an ultrasonic signal with which he attracts the attention of Superman, who can hear such sounds. The plan works and Jimmy's friend can be saved. Superman is impressed by Jimmy's ingenuity and allows him to keep the distress signal so that he can call him again if necessary, but admonishes him to use the signal only in emergencies. Olsen later refined his invention and put the circuitry as a microchip in an old wristwatch. With this signal clock, he can now call Superman at any time if he needs help.

As a photographer for the Daily Planet, Jimmy regularly accompanies Lois Lane and Clark Kent as they hunt for the headlines. While Kent and Lane investigate events as reporters and write about these articles, Olsen contributes the images for the articles. Important caregivers Jimmy has to deal with over and over again are the young reporter Ron Troupe , his boss Perry White , the bartender and ex-boxer Bibbo Bibbowski , the Professor Hamilton and the adventurous newsboys . Until the 1990s, Lois Lane's sister, Lucy Lane, appeared again and again as Jimmy's eternal friend. After the love affair between the two was built into the Superman booklet as an occasional sub-plot for almost forty years (from the early 1950s to the mid-1990s), the relationship between the two came to an end. Instead, Lucy begins a relationship with Ron Troupe, whom she later marries.

In the 1990s, Olsen temporarily quit his job at the Daily Planet to work as a reporter for the television station WGBS, for which he accompanies all sorts of sensational events as Mr. Action .

Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen

Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen (abbreviated: SPJO) was a so-called spin-off series that emerged from the popular comic series Superman in 1954 . The focus of the series was the young photo reporter Jimmy Olsen apart from his experiences with Superman in his main series.

The series is set in the field of adventure comics, but also has elements of the fantasy genre and entertainment comics .

Publishing history and makers

The edition of the series, the first edition of which appeared in October 1954, fell from 450,000 initially to less than 200,000 copies per edition, so that the series was finally discontinued in March 1974 with edition # 163, or as one of several features of equal rank in the Anthology series Superman Family was incorporated.

The authors who wrote for Jimmy Olsen include the science fiction writer Otto Binder , the specialist in unusual stories Mort Weisinger and the all-round talent Jack Kirby . Artists such as Jack Kirby, cartoonist George Papp , Sheldon Moldoff and long-time Superman regular artist Curt Swan were entrusted with doing the drawing work for the series .

action

Jimmy Olsen is a young man who works as a photographer for the Daily Planet newspaper . Jimmy is also the self-proclaimed "best friend" of Superman, the protector of his hometown Metropolis . Alone, or together with Superman, Jimmy experiences all sorts of improbable adventures in his hunt for sensational stories and pictures for the planet .

In the first sixteen years of the series, she mainly told cheerful and absurd, adventure and fantasy stories that were decidedly child-friendly in their style. In the later years of the series, these childish stories give way to other stories.

A particularly frequent topic of the series in the phase of the absurd gimmick stories were Jimmy's routine transformations into strange creatures. He transformed himself into a " porcupine man ", another time into " Turtle Boy" -Olsen, then into a werewolf ("werewolf-Olsen"). These metamorphoses are often caused by accidents in which he comes into contact with ionizing radiation , drinks extraterrestrial serums or the like. Further metamorphoses show how Jimmy gets a lush, overgrown beard, and how he temporarily transforms himself into the rubber man Elastic Lad - as such, he acts as a superhero modeled on Plastic Man and Elongated Man .

Other frequent content in the first few years of the series were stories in which Jimmy tried unorthodox methods to make a name for himself as a journalist, stories in which he argues with other photographers and stories depicting his strained relationship with stewardess Lucy Lane .

For the last three years of SPJO's running time, the series was incorporated into the cross-series epic New Gods by author Jack Kirby . While Kirby in the series Mister Miracle , Forever People and New Gods describes the clashes of extraterrestrial, godlike beings on the planets Apokolips and New Genesis , SPJO Jimmy Olsen describes the clashes with the henchmen of the evil gods of Apokolips stationed on earth. So he has to deal with the criminal Intergang, a criminal syndicate that is supposed to prepare the ground for an invasion of the earth by the inhabitants of Apokolips and for this purpose is equipped with futuristic weapons. Jimmy Olsen also has to deal with the creations of the DNA Project (also known as Project Cadmus ), a genetic research facility of the US government in which strange creatures are created from extraterrestrial DNA in a test tube, the so-called DNAliens . Among them, he made friends like the telepath Dubbilex and the superhero Guardian (a clone of a deceased superhero of the 1940s), as well as the Newsboys (a group of newspaper boys). Jimmy also meets the Hairies (a group of futuristic hippies) who traveled in a high-rise vehicle called the Mountain of Justice in the Wild Area, an abandoned area outside of Metropolis inhabited by monstrous creatures. Common enemies in the Kirby stories are Bruno Mannheim and Morgan Edge (the leaders of the Intergang), the scientist and clone expert Dabney Donovan , the aliens Simyan and Mokkari (both belong to the DNAliens ) and Victor Volcanum.

Elseworlds

Alternative interpretations of the character Jimmy Olsen are presented in so-called Elseworlds . So Jimmy Olsen appears in the miniseries JLA: The Nail (1998; Eng. JLA: Der Nagel ) as a mentally ill person who tries in classic comic villain fashion to usurp world domination . The miniseries Superman: Red Son (2003; Ger . Comrade Superman ), on the other hand, shows Jimmy Olsen as a CIA agent who, in the face of a communist threat - from a Superman who grew up in the Soviet Union - is appointed American Vice President.

Adaptations

Jimmy Olsen has been used in almost every adaptation of the Superman story in non-comic media. So Jimmy Olsen was built as a character in movies, television series and computer games. Jimmy Olsen was also marketed in various forms as a merchandising product, for example as an action figure or as a motif on posters , fridge magnets or stickers .

films and series

Jimms Olsen is a routine figure in cinema and television adaptations of the Superman material . Since the 1940s, Jimmy Olsen has accordingly been embodied by a large number of actors.

In the television series The Adventures of Superman (dt. Superman - Savior in need ) from the 1950s Jack Larson took over the part of Jimmy Olsen. In the series Superman - The Adventures of Lois & Clark from the 1990s, Michael Landes (1st season) and Justin Whalin (2nd to 4th season) appeared as Jimmy Olsen. Aaron Ashmore appears in the role of Jimmy Olsen in the mystery series Smallville .

On the Supergirl series , Jimmy Olsen is the ex-Daily Planet photographer and Superman’s best friend. He dropped the nickname Jimmy and would like to be called James. He left Metropolis and moved to National City to take a job as the new art director at CatCo , which also works for Supergirl's alter ego Kara Danvers . On the series, he is played as a tall, athletic and handsome African American with a shaved head by Mehcad Brooks . In the second season, James Olsen becomes the superhero Guardian .

Tommy Bond slipped into the role of Jimmy Olsen in the Superman series of the 1940s . Marc McClure played the role in the four Superman films and the Supergirl film of the 1970s and 1980s . In the movie Superman Returns , Olsen was played by Sam Huntington . In the film Man of Steel , however, he does not appear. That's why he appears in Batman vs Superman.

In the animated series Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League Unlimited , Jimmy Olsen was dubbed in the US original by actor David Kaufman . In the cartoon Superman: Doomsday , however, the actor Adam Wylie Olsen lent his voice. Jack Desera voiced Olsen during a guest appearance on The Batman .

Computer games

As a cyber character, Jimmy Olsen appeared in the computer and console games Superman (for NES and C64 ), Superman 64 (for N64 ) and Superman: Shadow of Apokolips (for GameCube , PS2 ).

Reference brand in pop culture

Jimmy Olsen - as a figure known far beyond the Superman comic series and even well beyond the medium of comics per se - has entered American pop culture in a variety of ways.

The band Spin Doctors dedicated the song Jimmy Olsen's Blues to the character (on the album Pocket Full of Kryptonite ).

Superman parodies and adaptations have spawned numerous characters modeled after Jimmy Olsen, such as Scrappy (in the cartoon series Mighty Mouse ) and Billy Friday (in the comic series Supreme ). The character Xander Harris in the mystery series Buffy - The Vampire Slayer is characterized within the series in several episodes as "a Jimmy Olsen type".

In addition, the freestyle wrestler Corey Branson used the stage name "Jimmy Olsen" at times.

Award

Jack Kirby received the Shazam Award (in the “Special Achievement by an Individual” category) for his work on the Jimmy Olsen comics, making it one of the most important prizes in the American comic industry.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andy Swift: Supergirl EP Reveals James 'Future as DC Comics' Guardian, Explains Why He and Kara Are 'Best as Friends' . TV line. October 11, 2016. Retrieved October 11, 2016.