Jimmy Olsen is a prick

[jkcarrier]

Seeing superboyprime's Jimmy Olsen scans reminded me of this Silver Age classic:



From Jimmy Olsen #65, 1962. Select panels from a 7-page story.

Mr. Mxyzptlk's girlfriend, Miss Gzptlsnz, is bugging him to marry her, but he turns her down cold. She decides to find a nice Earth boy to hook up with.



"Confirmed bachelor"? Yes, I think we all suspected as much, Jimmy.

Anyway, Miss G overhears Jimmy telling Superman that he'd rather marry one of the zoo animals than her (TMI, Jimmy!).



Jimmy tries to make sure that the first animal he sees is something cool, like a lion ("The gals will LIONIZE me, ha, ha!"), but Gzptlsnz is one step ahead.



So Jimmy is now The Human Porcupine, with quills all over his body. The first person he runs into is Lucy Lane, who takes the news with her usual calm and good humor.



Insert your own "flying off when you get excited" joke here. Some straight lines are too obvious even for me.

Lucy tries to hide in a hot air balloon, and Jimmy gives chase, with predictable results.



Superman saves the falling balloon, and tells Jimmy that the only way to break the spell is get Miss Gzptlsnz to say her name backwards. Jimmy calls in a favor from a friend who owns a Chinese restaurant, and has him prepare a special fortune cookie. Alas, Miss G isn't that gullible.




Dejected, Jimmy turns to Perry White for some sympathy and advice. No, I can't imagine why he thought that was a good idea, either.



Inevitably, Jimmy takes a job working at a freak show.



Seeing the tattooed man gives him an idea, and he paints a message on his chest.



Really, this seems even less likely to work than the fortune cookie trick, but we're almost out of pages, so roll with it. Nice abs, Jimmy.

So the spell is broken, and Jimmy is back to normal (or what passes for "normal" in J.O.'s case). Superman has been watching the whole thing from a distance, like the voyeuristic dick he is, and points out that things might've been worse.



Keeping a skunk in an open-mesh cage seems like poor planning on someone's part. But that's Silver Age Metropolis for you.

Comments

[blackruzsa]

..... but porcupines don't shoot quills. oAo

[psychopathicus_rex]

HUMAN porcupines do. (Anyway, it was long thought that porcupines did indeed shoot quills, because they move so fast when they hit you with their tails that most people don't even see it happening. A lot of fictional porcupines shoot quills.)

[blackruzsa]

COMICS LIE TO ME~~!

Although I got really weirded out when people used to think they shot quills. Ever since I was 5 I knew porcupines DIDN'T shoot quills and when someone said they did, I was kinda shocked, thought I was wrong.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Nah, it's just a popular misconception. It's like bats getting tangled in your hair - people talk about it happening, but just try to find someone who it actually happened to.

[icon_uk]

Indeed, there's a nice scene in a Teen Titans story where Gar recalls being trapped in a sealed room and he challenges Dick to work out how he escaped.

Actually it can be found in this post.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Well, to be fair, Gar doesn't necessarily have to turn himself into a porcupine that actually FUNCTIONS like a normal porcupine. He's a shapeshifter - he can turn himself into a quill-firing porcupine if he wants to, just like, as Dick mentions, he could turn himself into an electric eel that could actually cause short circuits, instead of just causing a brief shock like in real life. The whole gamut of incorrect animal abilities are open to him.

[icon_uk]

Oh yeah, as discussed in that posts responses, Dick's comment that "Knowing you" may well refer to the fact that Dick knows real porcupines can't do that, but Gar can.

[psychopathicus_rex]

He knows him well. Really, Gar's powers have been far underutilized in that regard - he could do stuff like become a skunk whose stink causes you to pass out, as in old cartoons, or a cat who has regenerative powers (i.e, really DOES have nine lives, of a sort).