Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #114 (On Sale: July 9, 1968) has a cover by Curt Swan and Jack Abel (I never much cared for Abel's inks on Swan; a real let-down after all those years of George Klein's superb inks)."The Wrongo Superman" is by Richard Hughes and Pete Costanza. This is only one of four stories that Hughes wrote for DC. Mr. Mxyzptlk makes a bet with a friend from his home in Zrfff that he can make a fool of Superman for a week without giving himself away. He then visits Earth and hires salesman Jethro Hale to sell a line of Jimmy Olsen endorsed products. Whenever the products are used near Superman, he begins acting like a fool.
Superman suspects that Red Kryptonite is to blame for his strange behavior. However, analysis of the Olsen products detects no trace of Kryptonite.
The back-up story is "A Visit from Superman's Pal" a reprint from Superboy #55 by Otto Binder, Curt Swan and Jack Burnley. This story was originally a Superboy story and has been altered to be a Jimmy Olsen story. An accident causes Jimmy Olsen to travel back in time. He lands in Smallville during Superboy's time. He meets the Boy of Steel, who agrees to send Jimmy back to his own time period. Jimmy asks to stay briefly, so that he can get a story.
Jimmy soon meets Clark Kent. When Lana Lang voices her suspicions that Clark is Superboy, Jimmy also becomes curious. Superboy reveals his secret to Jimmy and working together, they fool Lana.
Edited by Mort Weisinger.
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4 comments:
The artist on the OUR ARMY AT WAR comic would be Eugene Hughes, not Richard Hughes.
Blame Mikes Amazing World of DC Comics for the error. I will correct it here. Thanks.
Even though I didn't know the names of the artists at the time, I remember a distinct shift in the Superman art starting around mid-1968, which I suspect was due to different inkers doing Swan. George Klein definitely contributed to a "classic" look circa mid-60's, but I liked Abel's inks, too. He tended to use a lot more shading which created a more "realistic" look. For example, look at Superman's abs on this cover; there's somewhat of a 3-D effect, perhaps with a bit of cross-hatching, whereas Klein's technique would've been more "cartoony."
I didn't know the DC artists' names either back then, but I remember loving the classic look the Swan-Klein team imparted on the Legion stories in Adventure. When all of a sudden Abel took over the inking chores (Swan was still the penciler), I really thought it was a totally different artist--I did not recognize Swan's work at all! IMO Abel flattened Swan too much. I did like Abel on Win Mortimer, though (on the Legion a bit later on).
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