Silver Age Comics

 Kevin Ahearn shared this with me and now I'm sharing it with you.  It's a continuation of his wildly entertaining interpretation of the Lady Blackhawk saga, this time focusing on the time that Zinda Blake was turned into a mermaid.  Yeah, I didn't know about it either, but it happened:

But whereas the original was your basic Jack Schiff absurdity, Kevin turns it into a witty and intelligent movie against the backdrop of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Meryl Streep plays Zinda, Robert Redford is Blackhawk and Killer Shark is Bill Murray.  Now I don't know about you, but I'd pay good money to see that flick.

Kevin does amazing work with these.  I'm continually awed at the number of images he packs into his PDFs, and all of them come with that nostalgia catnip of "I remember that guy/gal/cartoon character!"  Just plain fun to read, and there are a LOT more; we haven't even gotten into Kid Blackhawk yet.  Highly recommended!

 I wrote a long time ago about the saga of Lady Blackhawk, one of the female characters that DC introduced in the late 1950s to try to get more girls to read their magazines. Zinda Blake was an aviatrix who aspired to become the first distaff member of the Blackhawk family. Unfortunately for her, Blackhawk himself was dead set against it, and at least in her initial appearance she proved to be not quite ready for primetime when she did the eekamouse routine.

However, she returned often and proved herself worthy.  Then in Blackhawk #200 she lost her memory and became the villainess, Queen Killer Shark, pairing up with the team's worst enemy for the next two years or so, before eventually recovering (shortly before the Blackhawk series ended).

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Lady Blackhawk, and so when a writer named Kevin Ahearn asked me to read his Lady Blackhawk comic, I was intrigued and clicked on the link. And read through the entire thing in one go.  I don't want to get caught up in summarizing it, but it's really cool. Kevin has put together an awesome collection of images, connected them with his writing, thrown in pop culture and history and technical references in a collage that ends  up being a history of the Blackhawks, as well as a "her" story about Zinda and her quest to join the team.  I had a blast reading it and hope that you folks will as well.  Please feel free to leave comments for Kevin here.

As it happened, I had been working on a post about Blackhawk and women, so the timing was right as well.  My own personal collection of Blackhawk issues was all 1960s issues, so apart from a few reprints I really hadn't read much of the Quality stories. And since Quality published right up to the end of 1956, there are technically quite a few issues that I consider to be in the Silver Age.

So I set out to read those issues, and I discovered something quite startling, which sheds a new light on why Blackhawk may have been suspicious of Lady Blackhawk. All I can say is that you'd be suspicious too if you'd had the experience with women that he had, especially with women who professed to admire the team.

Consider Blackhawk #87. A lovely young flier crashes on Blackhawk Island:

Blackhawk at this point was not the female skeptic that he would later become, and this gal goes a long way to showing why he moved rapidly in that direction:

That same issue:

 You mean my uncle?  Yes, but I'm not a Nazi submarine commander myself.  Oh, wait, I totally am.

 

In Blackhawk #90, the team rescues a gal from the Reds:

Beautiful woman? Check. Professes to admire the Blackhawks? Check. Turns out to be evil?

Check.  Name ends in "a"? Check.

In Blackhawk #93 we meet Sirena:

Although she at least never pretends to be anything other than a commie rat.

 

And in #94, the Black Widow trapped the Blackhawks in her web:

 

One must admire how advanced the Soviets were in their treatment of women, who were constantly being given positions of power.  In Blackhawk #95 the gals took over completely. First there was the commie pirate Madame Fury:

And then the more fittingly named Terra:

and closing with Lahla of the desert:

Blackhawk #96 featured Madam Furia:

And another beauty who tried to kill Andre:

#97 had two more lady killers, Vampira:

And Hitla, a gal who claimed to be Adolf's daughter:

She pretends to be leading a revival of the Nazis, but secretly she is aiding a communist invasion. Her plot is foiled by Hendrikson, who gets in a pretty good dig:

That's even before we talk about Communa and Zera and Dr Leza and Vendetta.  Keep in mind this is all in the course of about a year and a half.

 And things did not entirely change when Blackhawk switched over to DC.  In #109 they met Maria, the daughter of communist revolutionary. She initially betrays them, but rebels when she learns they are to be executed and repents her evil past.

But perhaps the clincher came in Blackhawk #110. Once again, the Blackhawks met a pretty gal who pretended to be a big fan:

Yes, we admire you Blackhawks so much, would mind walking over this trapdoor here?

So after all that, is it really surprising that Blackhawk was a little cynical about Zinda?

Maybe it has something to do with sequences like this:

A young man writes in Action #297 (February 1963):




560 different Superman family comics may not sound like a lot these days, but back then this was very impressive.  First, I estimate that there were about 960 comics featuring Superman/Superboy or his friends, so it's almost 60% of the total.  Second, this was before there were comics shops, before there were the yellow-colored ads offering back issues for sale.  I'm sure that Ward had to scrounge everywhere to find that many comics featuring the Man of Steel.

I checked ahead in the next few issues and didn't see anybody writing in to claim they had topped his total.

Years ago, I wrote a post noting all the female characters that were introduced in DC comics starting in the late 1950s, and wondering why it all happened so suddenly:

1956: Batwoman makes her first appearance in Detective #233 (July).
1957: June Robbins makes her first appearance with the Challengers of the Unknown in Showcase #7 (March-April) Lois Lane makes her solo debut in Showcase #9 (July-August) Queen Arrow makes her only appearance in Adventure #241 (October).
1958: Lois Lane gets her own title (March). Supergirl tryout in Superman #123 (August).
1959: First Lady Blackhawk appearance in Blackhawk #133 (February). Supergirl (Kara) launched in Action Comics #252 (May). First Mademoiselle Marie in Star Spangled War Stories #84 (August). First Aquagirl (Lisa Morel) appearance in Adventure #266 (November).
1960: First Miss Arrowette (Bonnie King) in World's Finest #113 (November).
1961: Batgirl (Betty Kane) debuts in Batman #139 (April).

 I was focused on what was happening in the culture that would cause this sudden interest in female characters and I missed what was right in front of me all the time:

 1958: Lois Lane gets her own title (March).

We don't have circulation numbers for any comics before 1960, but I suspect Lois Lane sold like hotcakes right from her first Showcase appearance.  By 1960 her mag was the #11 selling title in all of comics, moving 458,000 copies per issue. So of course the DC editors realized that there was a market to be tapped, and they rushed to try to fill it.

Although Mort Weissinger did a terrific job of editing the Superman titles during the late 1950s-1971 or so (while simultaneously being a notorious jerk to his underlings), he had one enormous blind spot that became more apparent as he approached the end of his tenure.  He was always willing to put up with awful characterization for Superman if it was in service to an entertaining plot.

Consider this story, which ran in Action #368-369:


Superman returns from paying his respects to his parents on a faux-Krypton world he created complete with Jor-El and Lara (in reality androids), to discover the situation shown on the cover. Yep, Earth has become a paradise, with no war, no crime, no disasters.  People don't even get sick anymore.  You might think that Supes would be happy, but instead he focuses on the fact that he will no longer be a subject of adulation:

Yep, no more giant gold cups.  Even his job as a reporter offers no excitement, as Perry assigns him to cover a chess tournament. Eventually he goes to his fortress and commands his robots to attack him but:


 Initially he resists exile, but the Sentinel talks him into leaving. Of course, he carefully scouts out worlds with red suns to find one where he will fit in.  Or not:


And later, he makes a social blunder:


You can probably guess what the king's decision is.  Fortunately for Supes,  he happened to pick a world where the sun was only half-red and half-yellow. When the yellow half returns, he flies rapidly away and back to Earth.

Now the predictable story here would have Superman discovering something about the Sentinels which makes him realize that they are too controlling, or that they have nefarious plans for Earth now that they have gotten rid of its greatest defender, Superman destroys the Sentinels, preventing their evil plot.

This story isn't predictable.  Oh, yes, Superman goes back to Earth and destroys the Sentinels, but they really were just trying to make Earth a paradise:

On his way back to Metropolis he spots a plane crashing, but is too late to save it. Everybody on board dies and Superman realizes that he's to blame, and in fact he will be to blame for everything bad that happens.

And that is the way the story ends. So the next time you feel a cold coming on, or some jerk breaks into your car, or war breaks out somewhere, you know where to point the finger.

In January of 1966, the Batman TV show debuted and it seemed like the whole country went Bat-mad.  Perhaps in an effort to make clear the other comics that were coming to us from the fine folks who brought us the Caped Crusader, DC came up with the Go-Go-Chex idea; all of their comics starting in January 1966 or so had a checkerboard pattern at the top.  Here's the first Batman issue:
As you can see, it prominently features the Riddler, the villain Batman and Robin faced in the first episode of the TV show.

Anyway, since we have pretty good circulation data on a bunch of DC mags for 1965 and 1966, I thought I'd take a look at what the Batman effect was like on the rest of the line.

In a word, grim. This was definitely not the case of a rising tide lifting all boats.  Although it is undeniable that Batman brought lots of new comic fans to DC, they mostly only bought Batman titles, as did a lot of existing comics buyers, to the obvious detriment of almost the rest of the DC line.

Superman, which had forever been DC's best-selling title, not only dropped out of first place, but it sold a startling 100,000 fewer copies per issue than it had the year before.  And that was only the beginning; his related titles also took big hits in circulation--Superboy down 64,000, Lois Lane down 25,000, Jimmy Olsen down 32,000, Action and Adventure down about 35,000 each.  No surprise, the only Superman-related title that did better was World's Finest (up 47,000), the one he shared with Batman. 

Nor were other comics spared.  Green Lantern and the Atom both shed about 25,000 buyers per issue. GI Combat dropped a stunning 65,000.  All of the comics mentioned were still selling over 200,000 copies per issue, and the Superman titles were almost all selling over a half-million.

Keep in mind too that in general comics circulation had increased quite nicely after the sudden drop caused by the increase in price from 10 cents to 12 cents.  For example, Superman, which sold 740,000 copies an issue in 1962, was up to almost 824,000 copies by 1965, a rise of over 11%.  Generally we would expect given the times for all these comics to show modest increases in circulation due to the bulge of the Baby Boomers coming into their comic-buying prime

But there is no denying that the declines must have been painful to DC editors not named Julius Schwartz. Batman and Detective Comics sales under his editorship soared (as did sales of the Brave and the Bold, which began to feature Batman in most issues).  But Schwartz made sure to feature Batman prominently on the Justice League of America covers, sometimes ridiculously so:

Okay, there's Batman flying in outer space punching some alien who supposedly can destroy him instantly.  And there's the usual floating heads to tell us that this is a JLA-JSA team-up.

Batman again dominates the foreground and this time there's even Robin.

Justice League of America was one of the very few DC superhero titles that actually gained circulation from 1965-1966, with a pickup of 18,000 copies per issue.

Flash was another character who gained some circulation (about 27,000).  This obvious bit of cross-selling may have helped:

For the superhero titles DC reported sales for in both years, it is quite obvious that DC's overall circulation was up quite substantially.  For those titles (including all the Batman titles) they showed a increase of about 3 million issues per annum. But Batman and Detective sold about 5.6 million more copies, which means the rest of DC's superhero line got crushed.

Metal Men had a very odd pattern of sales from 1965-1967, which leads me to believe that there was an error somewhere.  They sold 334,000 copies per issue in 1965.  They reportedly sold 396,000 copies per issue in 1966. While this seems unlikely, here's the statement from MM#24:

I wonder if they just didn't reverse the two columns by accident, as a decline to 316,000 seems much more likely than a 62,000 increase, especially when you consider that in 1967, Metal Men's circulation dropped all the way down to 239,700.

And I confess, enjoying the time much more than I would have expected.  I wasn't a big Ramona Fradon fan from her work on Aquaman, but she really shines in this series, showing creativity and style.  Check out this panel from Metamorpho #1:



The other half of the creative team was Bob Haney. Now Haney obviously had talent, but I gotta say, he phoned it in on the Brave & Bold team-up tales, which are among the most wince-worthy stories of the late 1960s.  But here he had his own characters, not a random assignment to characters he otherwise had no connection to, so he put more effort into it and the results show.

I was startled to see this very early Easter Egg in Metamorpho #7 (July-August 1966):

Cave Carson had eight tryout issues in the early 1960s. Haney wrote the last three of them, which were the best of the lot.

Rex (Metamorpho) Mason's girlfriend, Sapphire, was a bubble-headed blonde with a rich scientist father. Simon Stagg sent Rex on missions for him, one of which resulted in him being transformed into a freak, capable of using all the elements found in the human bond in some pretty wild ways.  Ironically this gave Stagg greater control over Rex, because now he could claim that whatever he wanted Rex to find was needed for a cure.

Ironically, Sapphire had no problem with Metamorpho's appearance, which gave quite a bit of anguish to the third member of their romantic triangle:

Java was a million-year-old pre-human whom Rex had found petrified in a swamp in Java, and whom Simon had brought back to life.  He was clearly intended to provide the humor (and some of the menace) in the series, and for the most part it works.

He's "so different" from the original Superman of Krypton?  He's got a slightly different appearance, but he still has all of Superman's powers, wears the same uniform, does the same kind of superheroic feats, and still works as a reporter.  Yeah, they give him a futuristic sounding name, and his weakness is not to Kryptonite, but to ordinary seawater.

The story begins with Superman being made a lawman for the Federation of Planets.

Now there are some obvious problems with that statement.  First since this story was set 1000 years in the future (when it was published), that implies something like 40-50 generations later.  Presumably our Superman would have many descendants, not just one.  And some of them would no doubt be Superwomen, not Supermen.

This Superman's first task is to stop a rogue planet from destroying the solar system.  Of course, this is just a slight variation on our Superman's continuing battle save the world from asteroids and meteors.  This Superman also has his Fortress of Solitude, although his is so different; it's located out in space.  Some crooks try to get into it to steal some weapons, but Superman catches them.  We get more of the creepy DC scientofascism here:

Doesn't that "click...whirr" inspire confidence in the infallible nature of the computer?  What's the slowdown, you ask?  Well, they have a ray that slows people down to about 1/10th the speed of normal humans, which renders them harmless.  And also defenseless.

The story ends somewhat abruptly with Klar getting an assignment from his robot editor.  Muto, the future Superman's greatest enemy, has been spotted robbing a Neptunian bank.  Klar realizes he must track the alien down.

The tale of the future Superman continued about six months later in Action #338-339.  Muto reveals to three of his henchmen why he wants to kill Superman.  See, his parents were on a trip in space when Superman (actually the father of the 2965 Supes) accidentally ripped open a dimensional warp while saving Earth from yet another comet.  Their rocket went into the dimensional warp where Muto was born and:

He forces Superman to dive into some water to save three children from drowning. Supes discovers too late that they are not real children at all, but androids:

Fortunately Superman is able to reprogram the android kids with his heat vision so they drag him to safety.

That pretty much sets the tone for most of the rest of the final chapter of the story.  Muto tries various tricks to get Superman surrounded by sea water. Oh, and at one point Muto aims a growth ray on everybody in Metropolis, which causes havoc:

Eventually Superman manages to trick Muto into attacking him near a lightning rod.  The lightning opens up another dimensional warp, which sucks Muto into it.

Comments: The decision to make the future Superman's weakness sea water seems kinda silly.  Basically crooks could just carry water pistols around with them to handle him.  Indeed, in a later World's Finest issue, the future Joker is shown on the cover downing Superman with a squirt from the trick flower in his lapel.

For most of their history up until about 1959, DC's war and science fiction magazines had not featured continuing characters.  Instead the stories had been one-shots, with characters never returning.  Apparently a decision was reached by management to require continuing features, and very quickly they were put in place:

March 1959: All American Men of War #67 introduced Gunner and Sarge.  The team continued in the next issue, before moving over to Our Fighting Forces, beginning with #45, the May 1959 issue.

April 1959: Sgt Rock made his first appearance in Our Army at War #81 (as Sgt Rocky).

May 1959.  Tank Killer makes his first appearance in All American Men of War #69.

May 1959. The Space Museum opens its doors for the first time in Strange Adventures #104.  It would eventually settle into a rotation with Star Hawkins and the Atomic Knights, with each feature appearing every third issue, until Julius Schwartz turned the editorship reins over to Jack Schiff in 1964. 

August 1959: Mademoiselle Marie, a French resistance fighter, debuted in Star Spangled War Stories #84.

August 1959.  Mystery in Space, which had occasionally had regular features but not for awhile at the time, began running the Adam Strange series, starting with #53.

August 1959.  Space Ranger became the regular feature in Tales of the Unexpected #40.

August 1959.  House of Secrets #23 introduced Mark Merlin, a supernatural detective/debunker.

March 1960. Star Hawkins begins in Strange Adventures #114.

April-May, 1960.  Star Spangled War Stories  publishes the first of many zany War that Time Forgot stories, a series which featured US soldiers battling dinosaurs and other oddball creatures (including a memorable white King Kong).

June 1960.  The Atomic Knights make their first appearance in Strange Adventures #117.

Nov-Dec 1960.  Johnny Cloud, Navajo ace pilot of World War II debuts.

May 1961.  GI Combat #87 hosts the first story featuring the Haunted Tank.

It should be noted that several titles held out even longer; My Greatest Adventure and House of Mystery did not have recurring features until May 1963 (Doom Patrol, #80) and June 1964 (Martian Manhunter, #143).  And of course DC's romance titles resisted continuing characters until Heart Throbs and Secret Hearts began running their soap opera series around 1966.

Gotta love this panel from World's Finest 113:

That's using your head, Supes!

Report to follow soon:

Report: I bought myself a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 10.1 inch from Amazon. My comments here will focus on the comics-reading experience on the tablet. The good: Just about everything. The colors are bright and sharp. The screen is back-lit, so you don't even need a light to read by; handy if you're reading in bed and your significant other wants to sleep.

The size of the page is not too far off of an original comic book especially when you account for the gutters. When you get to a two-page spread you can just turn the device sideways and the picture rotates.

The bad: The only negatives I noticed are operating system and software-related. Android ignores folders; it would be easier to navigate between issues if they showed up. On the software side, for some reason Gallery displays the last (alphabetical) picture in every folder; if it showed the first it would be much easier to figure out which comic it was.

Update: I downloaded from the Google store a free program called Perfect Viewer which solves the above two problems; it shows the folders and the files in correct order.  Not bad!

One of the continuing sagas in the Silver Age Superman was the Anti-Superman Gang.  Actually that's probably overstating things a bit; in reality they were just a convenient plot point for Weisinger and his writers.

The Anti-Superman Gang first appeared (as far as I can tell) in Jimmy Olsen #39, and in that story they're something of a sidelight to the main plot.  See, Jimmy is so obsessed with making sure that he doesn't lose his signal watch that he hides it someplace while sleepwalking, can't find it the next day, and wears a spare wristwatch.  Of course, he ends up having to signal Superman that day several times, and each time he has to come up with a creative means of doing so.  At least twice the Anti-Superman Gang tries to steal the (wrong) watch, and in the climax, Jimmy spots the leader of the group, Ace Manton, improbably hiding out at a drive-in movie theater.  Oh, and Jimmy finds his wristwatch hidden around his ankle.

The gang apparently didn;t give up after that, as they popped up in Lois Lane #13 a few months later.  Lois is wearing a blonde wig in an effort to get a photo of a movie star and his new bride, when two members of the gang spot her.  Hey, aside from that blonde hair, she's a dead ringer for Lois Lane and we can use her to get Superman.

Their next appearance was in Action #261.  Two visitors to the Fortress of Solitude (which has been transported to Metropolis as an attraction to raise funds for charity) are members of the gang planning to blow up Superman's HQ.  The plot is foiled in a typically convoluted fashion.  See, the Kandorians had been trying to radio Superman to warn him (they were in deadly danger themselves).  But a jewel in the fortress was interfering with the radio signals.  Fortunately, the crooks had brought one part of the bomb in a lead-lined container (so Superman couldn't see what was really inside) and when one of the crooks discarded the container it conveniently covered the jewel so the radio waves could get to Superman.

They try their luck against the Fortress of Solitude again in Lois Lane #21.  The plot again is absurdly convoluted.  An inventor comes up with a Lois Lane doll (possibly inspired by the Barbie phenomenon) that sells like hotcakes.  For the 10,000th doll, the inventor plans to make a life-sized Lois doll which will contain a nuclear bomb.  See, the inventor is a member of the Anti-Superman Gang, and he correctly reasons that Lois will give the doll to Superman for his memento collection at the Fortress.  I'd explain what goes wrong, but it's even more convoluted.  We do get to learn the gang's motto:

The gang returns in Action #276.  A wealthy philanthropist is dying and he summons Clark Kent to his deathbed.  He's a great admirer of Superman and believes that Clark is secretly the Man of Steel.  After checking the man's pulse (feeble), Clark figures what the heck and divulges that he is indeed Superman, doing a couple of super-feats to establish it convincingly.  A few moments later, the old man passes away.  But... it turns out that the wealthy philanthropist is secretly the head of the Anti-Superman gang, and had been inhaled a drug that briefly caused him to appear to be dying,  However, the doctor who had given him the drug warned that it might cause hallucinations, and becoming aware of the hoax, Superman sets up an elaborate plan to convince the gang boss that Clark's revelation was in fact a side effect of the drug.

There were quite a few more appearances of the Anti-Superman Gang--Superman #145 and #152, Jimmy Olsen #75, etc.  In Lois Lane #60 we learned the gang had a standing bounty out on Supes and his friends:

Jimmy only worth half as much as Lois?  But that's actually an increase over the amount offered a couple months earlier in Jimmy Olsen #85:

In Jimmy Olsen #87, we learned that the Anti-Superman Gang included some of his more famous foes:

But aside from that story, the A-S G is made up of ordinary crooks.

It was not in my collection back in the 1960s, and although I am a Batman fanatic, I somehow missed reading this story even when I got the issue:

But it ends up being an amazing issue for me.  For starters, there is a Riddler clue:

That one might not be obvious to you, but it is to me, because it refers to my birthday: March 4th (March Forth!)  But it does not end up being a Riddler story, or a Getaway Genius story as implied by the cover.  In fact it is the final Outsider story:


I talked about the Outsider series years ago; I honestly thought I had read them all.  I am a little chagrined to find out that there was another tale.

In Jimmy Olsen #28, Jimmy gets caught in a whirlwind that Superman created to stop a hurricane from hitting Metropolis, and is transported to the Metropolis of 5921.  He is startled to learn that he is reviled as the man who killed Superman, way back in 1958 (when the story was published).  He is arrested, but hopes to get off as there are surely no witnesses who can attest to his identity. 

DOH! This is the April 1958 issue, which came out three months before the first green-skinned, pink-shirted Brainiac story in Action #242.  So is this the first Brainiac?  Or since it takes place almost 40 centuries in the future, well after the Legion of Super Heroes Brainiac 5's era, is it the sixth?  This time travel business can sure make things confusing!

We learn at the end of the story that Jimmy's murder of the Man of Steel was actually faked; it was all a ruse that Superman had come up with to trick a gang.  Later, Superman hurls a time capsule into the future to clear Jimmy's good name.

I talked a few years ago about a very goofy story in Lois Lane #36, where everybody at the Daily Planet pretended that they never heard of Lois Lane, with the apparent result that she committed suicide by hurling herself off a cliff.  It turned out (of course) that she didn't really off herself, and that it was all just a test to see if she could handle the wily tricks she'd have to face as a foreign correspondent for the Daily Planet.  It took a couple issues, but eventually we got the follow-up.

Well, tonight I was reading some old comics and found out that this was actually a swipe from an earlier Jimmy Olsen tale:
In the Jimmy Olsen story, just as in the Lois Lane tale, the protagonist has just returned from a little vacay:

Jimmy insists on checking the back issues of the Planet, as does Lois, but there is no record of their award-winning scoops.  They both head back to their apartments, but are startled to find other tenants in occupancy (in Lois' case it's especially cruel as her sister declines to recognize her).

Eventually we learn it was all a trick by Perry to test them as mentioned above for their suitability as foreign correspondents:


They realize that they're being tricked for different reasons.  Jimmy had called for the "Chief" when Lois didn't recognize him and as he's the only one who calls Perry by that nickname, he realizes that since Perry emerged from his office he knew Jimmy despite his denials.  Lois goes to see Lex Luthor in prison, but since Lex is in solitary she figures out that the warden would never let her see him.

But perhaps most surprising of all is that both stories turn out to be lead-ins to future tales.  I discussed the rather ridiculous Lois Lane, Foreign Correspondent story, but Jimmy had his own follow up:


Jimmy's story is a little better.  He and Clark travel to Hoxana, to find out if the new king is going to be a tyrant or a good guy.  Jimmy quickly finds out that it's the former:

But the king overhears the clicking and only Clark's swift grabbing of the camera saves Jimmy from the firing squad, although Clark himself is imprisoned.  From there the story develops rather predictably; Jimmy has a secret key that can open the prison door, so he tries to get himself arrested, but every time he ends up actually helping out King Otto.  Eventually he succeeds, but the key subplot apparently gets forgotten and Jimmy and Clark are facing the firing squad.  But Clark blows the bullets away, and then takes care of things as Superman.

This swipe is a little quicker than some of the other ones Weisinger did--Lois Lane #36 was published in October 1962, a little less than five years after Jimmy Olsen #25 (December 1957).  But it is certainly noteworthy because of the lead-in nature of both stories to later tales.