One of the things I love best about the covers to "Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen" are the premises which were depicted to hook a potential reader into buying the comic. Covers, and premises, like these would be unthinkable now. I love to imagine some kid in a drug store wondering "How DOES Jimmy Olsen cut Superman's hair of steel?" and immediately rushing to the cash register to buy it and find out.
Nowadays, Superman is so busy, he barely has time to eat an entire meal with his wife, let alone don a chefs hat and cook for an eating contest. What I wouldn't give to write a comic book series like this now.
How DOES Jimmy cut Superman's hair?
ReplyDeleteHere's Jimmy's answer from that very issue:
ReplyDelete"Superman never needs a haircut! Neither his hair nor his fingernails can grow in Earth's atmosphere! He could only get a haircut on a planet with a red sun, where he wouldn't be invulnerable."
Sounds spurious to me. Never mind that mullet hair phase that Superman went through about a decade ago, but this would suggest that Superman never sheds any of his hairs (or, I'm guessing skin for that matter). It also means the hair on his head is the same fine baby hair he landed in the Kent's pasture with. No puberty for Clark Kent either, what's on his head is all he's got.
Amazingly, in the same story, we also learn that Superman can survive indefinitely without air to breathe! Once, as a charity stunt, Superman submerged himself in a water tank for a week without coming up once. That must have been the week with out crime or disasters.
Ah, the good old days!