DC throws back to the Silver Age of comics but keeps one or both feet firmly planted in the present. And tongue firmly planted in cheek.
It’s cheeky, irreverent, and appealing, this Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #1.
From the strange cover, where Jimmy is lying down, tilting his head back, smiling and telling us in retro balloon style: “Boy, do I have a STORY to tell you…” we know we are going to be sent a box of marvelous trinkets. The doorbell will ring, and someone will drop this comic off with the milk, bread, and newspaper. Grab your pipe, vape pen, and slippers, kids, it’s a weird retro adventure with Jimmy Olsen!
Matt Fraction writes in multiple dimensions, this comic of splintered cross-references. Small stories, a few pages long, that interconnect, take tangents to unknown destinations, that hail Uber rides that go into strange neighbourhoods. Steve Leiber treads softly in the thin atmosphere of drawing in 1960’s DC Comic style but brings that beautiful clean, sterile (kinda) linework into today’s frantic go-gettum world. Nathan Fairbairn colours the whole shebang, keeping the shapes nicely separated, colour crisp and clean, and story flow progressing.
There are four chapters here, some strictly narrative, some back story. No matter, it’s all-new, all fresh, with a sense of abandon and reckless naiveté. Okay, so we wreck a bunch of highrises in downtown Metropolis. No biggee, just build them again. Who’s fretting?
New, random, fun.
DC Comics, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #1, $3.99 for 21 pages of content. Rated Teen +
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