Jimmy Olsen's Blues
Don’t look now, friends. Comic-book fans are being racist again! What’s it this time?
A couple of weeks ago, DC Comics published a middle-reader’s graphic novel, Jimmy Olsen’s Supercyclopedia, written by Gabe Soria and illustrated by Sandy Jarrell.
Jimmy, of course, is Superman’s buddy, Clark Kent’s officemate at the Daily Planet. Jimmy has been, at times, an office-boy, Perry White’s gofer, a cub reporter, and a photographer for the paper. He’s also frequently the butt of jokes.
Jimmy will feature somewhat prominently in James Gunn’s upcoming Superman movie, played by Skyler Gisondo, and Jimmy, alongside most of Superman’s supporting cast, is part of a media blitz to promote the film.
The publisher describes it thusly:
Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, sometimes feels like he’s overshadowed by his extremely strong, flying, day-saving, super-heroic friend. Jimmy’s only a kid, after all, and taking pictures and documenting the heroics of the Justice League is great, but is it really as cool as being one of the heroes?
Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, sometimes feels like he’s overshadowed by his extremely strong, flying, day-saving, super-heroic friend. Jimmy’s only a kid, after all, and taking pictures and documenting the heroics of the Justice League is great, but is it really as cool as being one of the heroes?
Well, now that he’s been entrusted with the incredible Supercyclopedia (it’s a whole thing, you’ll see it in a little bit), Jimmy hopes to be more of an action hero himself…as soon as he figures out all the cool things that he can do with its powerful alien technology. But when the villainous Toy Boy and his Mischief League of the Multiverse get their hands on knock-off versions of the device, they won’t stop until they use them to devastate the fabric of space-time itself.
Can Jimmy save the day? With his buddies Rip Hunter and Linda Park by his side, he’s definitely up for the challenge. They embark on a planet- and dimension-hopping adventure, encountering a who’s who of the DC Universe and discovering that not all heroes wear capes. Look out, world!
Hey, you know what? That sounds fun to me, and I certainly hope it's appealing to the kids it's aimed at.
But what might be the problem? Peep the cover, and you tell me.
Cried the white-boy comics fan: “That’s not MY Jimmy Olsen!”
The copy makes it clear this is a dimension-hopping Jimmy, and presumably not the same one in DC’s regular line of Superman comics. Y’know, the guy who looks like this:
Of course, Olsen hasn’t always looked like this. Though an unnamed blonde-headed office boy appears in early issues of Action and Superman, Jimmy first pops up with the name Jimmy Olsen in 1940, in The Adventures of Superman radio serial, where he looks like … uh, wait, it’s a radio serial. He looks like whatever the listener imagines him to be.
Olsen makes a number of live-action appearances over the intervening decades, and the list of men who’ve played him is longer than you’d probably guess. The one I want to mention, though, is the Jimmy—or rather, James—Olsen who shows up in the 2016 premiere episode of Supergirl. Maybe you remember this guy (Mehcad Brooks, pictured here with Melissa Benoist as Kara Danvers/Supergirl):
So depicting him as Black isn’t new, but who really cares, anyway? Jimmy has been many things over the decades. Have a look:
Y’see, apparently it is not ridiculous for Jimmy to swallow an elixir that makes him a rubber band, nor is it silly for him to grow into a giant turtle, and nor is it whimsical for him to shrink down really tiny along with his pal who comes from another planet to patrol a city shrunken by a green robot and placed in a bottle.
None of these things require flights of imagination because they’re real! We see them all the time! What is horrible, though, and utterly beyond the pale apparently, is to render a photojournalist as a Black youth! NO! HERE’S WHERE WE DRAW THE LINE! THAT’S NOT MY JIMMY OLSEN!
I do hope you understand I’m being sarcastic. When I made these points on Facebook, people thought I was serious. Jimmy Olsen serves many narrative purposes in Superman stories: he’s comic relief; he’s a surrogate kid brother to Lois Lane and Clark Kent; he’s a reader POV character, allowing us to peek into Superman’s world through his eyes. At times his manic zeal to get to the truth of a story he’s investigating even helps ground Superman fantasias in a type of real-world truthiness.
But not one single aspect of Jimmy Olsen’s character requires him to be a red-headed white guy.