This issue begins with our cover-story "When Olsen Sold Out Superman" by Leo Dorfman and Murphy Anderson. It clocks in at a short nine pages. Jimmy Olsen is kidnapped by gangsters who try to make him reveal Superman’s secret identity. Knowing that Perry White is not Superman, he tells them that Superman is “really” his editor at the Daily Planet--but Clark Kent has been named editor for a day, and the crooks capture him with Kryptonite.
This is the kind of story that Mort Weisinger loved, where a misunderstanding or unexpected coincidence leads to a completely bogus, yet somehow representative cover. If only someone like Jack Kirby could take over this book and make it actually interesting.
The back-up is "The Winner's Prize... the Loser's Grave" by Bob Haney and Pete Costanza. An island forms in the tropics and, due to its strategic importance to both the U.S. and Russia, is contended for by both superpowers. It is decided that the claim to the island will be decided by a battle between two champions from each nation...the Russian, Bors, against the American, Jimmy Olsen.
This sounds suspiciously like the February, 1970 TV movie, "The Challenge" starring Darren McGavin and Mako, wherein an all-out war between the United States and an Asian country is averted when the two sides agree to settle their differences by each choosing a single soldier as champion and having the two men fight to the death on an isolated island. I'm not judging, just saying.
Edited by Mort Weisinger.
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