TwilightEL
Well-Known Member
On my birthday, my father bought me The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen TPB. This is scientific evidence that I have the best father in the history of the universe. This book made me think I was in some kind of overdose coma. It's so stupid in the best way possible. Why? Let's review:
Number of times Jimmy pilots a helicopter: ONE
Number of times Jimmy crashes a helicopter: ONE
Number of times Jimmy is exposed to the one thing that can cure him due to a ridiculous deus ex machina: ONE
Number of times Jimmy and Professor Potter join forces to **** up everyone's day, proving two dumbasses are worse than one: TWO
Now it's time for the first appearance of Elastic Lad!
Number of times Jimmy pilots a helicopter: ONE
Number of times Jimmy crashes a helicopter: ONE
Number of times Jimmy is exposed to the one thing that can cure him due to a ridiculous deus ex machina: TWO
Number of times Jimmy and Professor Potter join forces to **** up everyone's day, proving two dumbasses are worse than one: TWO
Number of times Jimmy joins the circus: ONE
Number of times Jimmy is exploited by the stupidest criminals ever: ONE
Number of times Jimmy pilots a helicopter: ONE
Number of times Jimmy crashes a helicopter: ONE
Number of times Jimmy is exposed to the one thing that can cure him due to a ridiculous deus ex machina: THREE
Number of times Jimmy and Professor Potter join forces to **** up everyone's day, proving two dumbasses are worse than one: THREE
Number of times Jimmy joins the circus: TWO
Number of times Jimmy is exploited by the stupidest criminals ever: TWO
This post has bloated to ridiculous proportions, so I'll do a couple more of these. The next one, Octo-Jimmy, is my personal favorite. It made me notice that the art is actually pretty good, it has criminals who are even more spectacular failures than the two I already told you about, and it even has some blatant Superdickery, though Jimmy really has it coming for being a ****up.
- Jimmy gets a toothache. He won't go to the dentist, but he accepts random pills from the crackpot old doctor whose inventions are mocked as a regular feature of the Daily Planet.
- As part of his job, Jimmy is allowed to use the Flying Newsroom on a regular basis. It's a helicopter. Someone decided Jimmy should be allowed to pilot a helicopter alone. The first time it appears, the dumbass flies it into a storm and crashes.
- "A famous foreign official is coming to America by ocean liner! I'll... meet him at sea...!" Jimmy crashes over the ocean. I'm telling you this because he wakes up on an island with these incredibly racist stereotypes of primitive villagers who look like stereotypical African tribesmen. A yacht also passes by the island. Is he supposed to be in the Caribbean?
- Apparently, a concussion will make you into a developmentally retarded manchild saying things like "ME CATCH LITTLE DOLL!" At this point, Jimmy Olsen is on display as a giant in Metropolis and the little doll is Superman.
Number of times Jimmy pilots a helicopter: ONE
Number of times Jimmy crashes a helicopter: ONE
Number of times Jimmy is exposed to the one thing that can cure him due to a ridiculous deus ex machina: ONE
Number of times Jimmy and Professor Potter join forces to **** up everyone's day, proving two dumbasses are worse than one: TWO
Now it's time for the first appearance of Elastic Lad!
- Superman finds a random lead chest floating in outer space. Clearly, the only thing to do is to bring it to Jimmy Olsen. Naturally, neither of them assume that there might be some kind of RADIOACTIVE SUBSTANCE in this LEAD BOX which someone felt the need to SHOOT INTO SPACE. Superman allows Jimmy to open and photograph the items in the box, but not touch them. Maybe this is a complicated eugenics plot to sterilize Jimmy before he breeds.
- Jimmy sees a glowing green substance in the box and thinks it might be Kryptonite. Again, this substance is in a LEAD BOX. So what does our hero do? If you guessed "He shuts the ****ing box", you're smarter than Jimmy Olsen but not smart enough to know just how stupid everyone's favorite cub reporter is. He runs off with the bottle, trips and smashes it, and decides that since Kryptonite is only harmful to Superman, he'll just dispose of the bottle and hope that Superman doesn't notice. He soon discovers that his body is completely elastic and deduces this is an effect of absorbing the green liquid, apparently not Kryptonite. I dunno, Jimmy, no one else has been such a colossal ****up that they absorbed an entire bottle of liquid Kryptonite into their skin. Maybe that's what always happens.
- Jimmy joins the freakshow in disgrace and hopes that none of his friends see how far he's sunk.
- The dumbest criminal ever poses as a scientist with a cure in order to exploit Jimmy. His first trick is to have one of his cronies pose as a window-washer whose ladder is too short to reach his windows. Jimmy helpfully reaches up and scrubs the window for them. Turns out that he just used acid to wash the bulletproof coating off of the DA's window. Why couldn't they just do that with a longer ladder? "A longer ladder would have been suspicious!" Less suspicious than a man with an EXTENDABLE ARM?! I think a rag on a stick would've been less suspicious than that!
- Next, he and Jimmy find a bomb near City Hall. The criminal has Jimmy stretch between two trees as an impromptu slingshot and flings it into a junkyard, except he actually aimed over the junkyard. The bomb blows up a bank and two criminals quickly run into the hole. Okay, even assuming this crime lord has some kind of super aim with a slingshot, how the hell was that less inconspicuous than a guy dropping a backpack or grocery bag next to the bank?
- Then the crime lord tricks Jimmy into stretching into a vault to get Kryptonite, claiming it's the cure. Surprise surprise, it actually is, but it doesn't take effect until after Jimmy's helped Superman defeat the villain.
Number of times Jimmy pilots a helicopter: ONE
Number of times Jimmy crashes a helicopter: ONE
Number of times Jimmy is exposed to the one thing that can cure him due to a ridiculous deus ex machina: TWO
Number of times Jimmy and Professor Potter join forces to **** up everyone's day, proving two dumbasses are worse than one: TWO
Number of times Jimmy joins the circus: ONE
Number of times Jimmy is exploited by the stupidest criminals ever: ONE
- Now it's time for Jimmy's Jovial Jovian Journey! Jovians talk to Jimmy through his TV, but he thinks it's an actor playing a prank on him and goes along, planning to turn the tables on the actor with Superman's help. The aliens talking to him through his TV thing is pretty dumb, but so far Jimmy's not looking too bad. The aliens make Jimmy build a device and he wakes up as a scaly green Jovian with mind-reading superpowers, but cleverly disguises himself by wrapping himself up like a mummy and claiming he lost a World Series bet. Eh, this story isn't as crackalicious as that summary makes it seem. Anyway, Jimmy's gone Jovian for a week, but he needs to turn back sooner than that, but fortunately it turns out the Jovian week is shorter than ours. I've decided not to count that as a deus ex machina cure.
- OH GOD THE BAD SCIENCE. "Behold, Jimmy! If the cold fire produced by those fireflies could be converted to real fire, it would save tons of coal for heating homes!" "But how can you turn their cold fire hot, Professor?" "A special gas in the jar absorbs the heat... look out, Jimmy! Don't pick it up... it's hot!" It's like listening to Victorian doctors talk about the four humors or alchemists talking about how amazing mercury is. I expect them to start talking about how scandalous it is that Lois' dress doesn't cover her ankles. The best part of this scene is that the jar is completely normal. It's just a big glass jar with a weird fabric covering on the top (yeah, it's weird, but "I can't tell what it is" weird, not technological-lookin' weird). It's not attached to anything or being monitored. It's just a jar with fireflies inside.
- "Ouch! I...I got burned and dropped it! The glowing gas escaped and is settling on me like... like radioactive fallout! What will it do to me?" "If my experiment is a success, you'll heat up to 587 degrees!" And the best part is? This gives him fire breathing superpowers. I could probably make this stuff up, but I'd have to spend some quality time with DiB first.
- Jimmy burns up one thousand dollars in charity money and joins the circus to make it up. He almost gets it, too, but somehow a guy who magically breathes fire isn't worth it if he heats up the tent. I guess there's no such thing as performing outdoors in this universe.
- Criminals kidnap Jimmy while wearing asbestos suits and the ****up melts his own signal watch (without incinerating his own hand, somehow), so they get him to melt a steel vault, then imprison him in a cabin on the outskirts of town (town? What town? Isn't this Metropolis?) with dynamite hung on the walls so he can't burn his way out. Because nobody's going to notice that. He shoots fire up the chimney to make smoke signals and spells out a message in Morse code--luckily, Superman is flying by! The message Jimmy gives is 36 characters long, so I'm not sure how long Superman just hovered there watching it. I mean, the first signal Jimmy puffed was "SOS", and you can see the dynamite on the outside of the house.
- WHAT THE **** PLAIN WATER IS THE ANTIDOTE TO THE HUMAN FLAMETHROWER
Number of times Jimmy pilots a helicopter: ONE
Number of times Jimmy crashes a helicopter: ONE
Number of times Jimmy is exposed to the one thing that can cure him due to a ridiculous deus ex machina: THREE
Number of times Jimmy and Professor Potter join forces to **** up everyone's day, proving two dumbasses are worse than one: THREE
Number of times Jimmy joins the circus: TWO
Number of times Jimmy is exploited by the stupidest criminals ever: TWO
This post has bloated to ridiculous proportions, so I'll do a couple more of these. The next one, Octo-Jimmy, is my personal favorite. It made me notice that the art is actually pretty good, it has criminals who are even more spectacular failures than the two I already told you about, and it even has some blatant Superdickery, though Jimmy really has it coming for being a ****up.
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