Our new material is "Will the Real Don Rickles Panic?" written and penciled by Jack Kirby and inked by Vince Colletta. Clark Kent is almost taken to Apokolips by the UFO, which is a trap of Darkseid's, but is rescued by Lightray and sent back to Earth. Morgan Edge is visited by Don Rickles, but Jimmy Olsen and Goody Rickels appear in his office and are about to combust from the Pyro-Granulate.
The Golden Guardian appears, having forced Ugly Mannheim to give him the antidote, and cures Jimmy and Goody, having already cured himself and the Newsboy Legion. Don Rickles, maddened by the happenings, hitches a ride out of Edge's office with two members of the police bomb squad. Reprinted in Jimmy Olsen: Adventures by Jack Kirby Vol. 1 TPB (2003), Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Vol. 2 HC (2007), Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Vol. 2 TPB (2012), and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen by Jack Kirby TPB (2019).
Our reprint is (The Story of the Newsboy Legion) written by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, penciled by Jack Kirby, and inked by Joe Simon and reprinted from Star Spangled Comics #7 (1942). One evening in Suicide Slum, York City, rookie cop Jim Harper gets beaten up by some thugs and decides to take a new approach to crimefighting. He breaks into a costume shop, assembles an "action outfit" that includes a sturdy shield and a crash helmet, leaves some money on the counter, and goes after the gang. He finds them in a pool parlor and smacks the hell out of all of them. He can't arrest them, so he ties them up and leaves them for the regular police. Also one of them drops his wallet, and Harper checks the serial numbers on some of his cash; it turns out to match the serial numbers from an earlier ransom payment.
The next day, Harper arrests four quasi-delinquent, roller-skate-equipped young newspaper vendors, all orphans, pushed into crime by financial desperation, for shoplifting a hardware store. He accompanies them to their hearing and asks the judge to keep them out of reform school and remand them to his personal custody. He wants to try a different approach with these kids and legally becomes their guardian.
The boys don't exactly reform instantly, and soon a local lowlife, Frankie the Fence, uses them as a distraction for an armed robbery, in which a man is killed. This doesn't sit well with the boys, who go visit Frankie to tell him off, but Frankie decides to shut up these potential witnesses with a gun. The Guardian bursts into the room, and takes down the fence with one big roundhouse punch, then lets him get away, hoping he'll run back to his unknown boss.
Frankie pulls himself together and runs to the waterfront, gets in a boat, and speeds away, pursued by the Guardian, who borrows an unguarded boat, and who is in return pursued by the Newsboys, who now are stymied; the Guardian took the last boat. They convert a wooden wagon into a makeshift rowboat, and follow along as best they can, figuring along the way that a nearby lighthouse is the likeliest place for a hideout.
This turns out to be correct, and at the lighthouse, the Guardian has run into trouble. Frankie's boss, Chips Carder, a smuggler, has managed to head-konk the Guardian unconscious. The boys show up; Guardian sees them and the bad guys don't. Guardian suggests, in language that only Big Words understands, that they should paint the lighthouse light red. They very quickly accomplish this, then charge inside to brawl with Chips and Frankie, while the red light above draws the Coast Guard, who arrive just in time to shoot Chips Carder as he draws a bead on the Guardian's back. While the USCG is sorting things out, the Guardian slips away, and motorboats back to shore.
Before their first adventure is even over, the boys begin to suspect that the Guardian is Jim Harper.
Edited by Jack Kirby.
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