Countdown Review - Jimmy Olsen Must Die

I'm bringing you another installment of my Countdown reviews, this time featuring Jimmy Olsen Must Die. If you have no idea what these reviews are all about, check out the introduction post, which has links to all the reviews.

Basically, Countdown is at the midway point of the year long series and they are changing the name to Countdown to Final Crisis. I took this opportunity to post summaries and reviews of all the major storylines and this review is one of several in that series of reviews.

Now that you know what this is all about, hit the jump for the full review.

Jimmy Olsen Must Die

Jimmy Olsen’s storyline opens in Gotham City with a rather mundane interview with Jason Todd in Countdown #50, if you can call a post-ninja stomping interview with a murdering, back from the grave psycho mundane. The interview deals with the death of Duela Dent from the previous issue. Todd, in a rather giving mood, relates the details to Jimmy and points him in the direction of the Joker, seeing as Duela claimed to be his daughter.

Seeing as he's in Gotham, Jimmy takes a trip to Arkham to see the Joker. The interview doesn’t go that well and Joker is as insane as ever, alluding to conspiracies and future disasters while claiming to not even having a daughter. Considering her name was Duela DENT, you'd think he'd pop in and say hello to Harvey Dent while he was there or at least get Superman to look him up for him.

Jimmy, seeing this was a dead end lead, checks in with Lois Lane. While Jimmy is talking on the phone, the guards decide to transport Killer Croc to his cell. Predictably, he breaks free and attacks his guards and the unsuspecting Jimmy, who obviously has a hearing problem, seeing as he couldn’t hear the giant lizard man killing several guards. Just as our intrepid photographer / would-be reporter was about to be maimed, he exhibits stretching powers even Mr. Fantastic would envy. Shortly after, the dazed and drugged Croc is taken down by incoming guards, leaving the confused and bewildered Jimmy, and readers, wondering what just happened.

Over the course of the next several issues, Jimmy begins exhibiting more and more new powers, such as super speed and the ability to project spikes from his body. They all seem to mirror old Silver Age stories where Jimmy seemed to develop a new power every other issue, but the reader and Jimmy are both left clueless as to why or how he has them here.

After witnessing the death of the New God Lightray, Jimmy begins having strange dreams of being trapped in the Source Wall with Lightray telling him to “Open Your Eyes Olsen”. These events, combined with his new powers, cause Jimmy to investigate further.

Shortly after, Jimmy receives a mysterious letter asking him to come to 666 Suicide Slum to find out more about what happened to Lightray. Compelled to find out more, Jimmy shows up to discover the New God Sleez. Just as Sleez informs him Darkseid can finally be destroyed, the building begins to collapse as Sleez tells Jimmy to get away, that “he” is already here. Sleez is then killed as the omnious words, “So Begins The End”, are heard.

Jimmy’s story picks up again after the death of Bart Allen. After the eulogies for the fallen Flash, Jimmy decides to put his powers to use and become the hero, Mr. Action. He becomes fairly popular and is even featured in several newspaper articles.

Basking in his newfound glory, Jimmy decides to seek membership in a super team. Not wanting to reach too high, too fast, Jimmy opts first for the Teen Titans. After a disastrous try out where his powers failed to even activate, Jimmy realizes he needs to be in actual danger before they will work.

Fresh off being turned away from the Titans, Jimmy reveals to the reader and Clark Kent that he knows he is Superman while ripping Clark's shirt apart to reveal the Superman costume beneath. This shocking cliffhanger was never followed up on in Countdown and I later found out I was supposed to buy Action Comics for the rest of that storyline.

Following those appearances in Action Comics, Jimmy convinces Superman to help him get a tryout for the Justice League, which resulted in similar results to his Titans tryout where his powers failed to activate against the non-threatening Leaguers.

These defeats lead Jimmy to another tie-in, er, I mean well thought out and meaningful plot development in his visiting John Henry Irons, which was coincidently on the exact week his Infinity Inc book launched. Irons just so happens to have a machine that will manifest what’s going on with Jimmy’s metahuman bio-feedback. This results in a huge backlash of energy projections which resemble the Source Wall and alternate Earths. Irons manages to stop the out of control machine and Jimmy is forced to look elsewhere for answers.

After this, Jimmy goes through a series of completely random meetings, first with people from Cadmus and then with the Newsboy Legion and finally meets up with the New God Forager in the most recent issues.

Forager requests Jimmy’s help in solving the rash of murders of the New Gods, to which Jimmy agrees, since he is the human with the most experience with the New Gods. It appears Jimmy’s story will be continuing in the Death of the New Gods mini-series currently going on as he is seen at the crime scene of the host for Black Racer. Whether we will see him in Countdown to Final Crisis remains to be seen, but I would expect him to be there in some capacity.

Kirk Says: This story started off fairly well. I assumed Jimmy would be the everyman that would connect us to all the major stories and offer a grounded view of everything.

However, what we got was a Silver Age throwback with Jimmy developing random powers every other issue while slowly, but surely, becoming more and more wrapped up in the deaths of the New Gods. This isn’t bad on its own, but it’s taken months to get to this point where Jimmy is finally interacting with the New Gods. We didn’t need week after week of him trying to activate his powers or his days as Mr. Action or the month or so of tests from various characters. It should have been “Lightray dies, Jimmy teams with New Gods, plot advances”, not these long, drawn out filler issues.

One last thing of note is that Jimmy unexplainably knows Jason Todd was Robin and died and came back to life. He also knows Nightwing was Robin and is Dick Grayson. He tells this information to Perry White and, while they don’t outright say Bruce is Batman, any idiot could piece together two former wards of Bruce Wayne turning out to be Robins would point to Bruce as being Batman. Despite this, it’s never explained and never even brought up and one of the major plot holes that is never addressed to my knowledge.

Verdict – Average. This story has its moments, but they are few and far between. I liked the early issues where he was tied more closely to the New Gods, but with his new found powers, he drifted away from that plot and only in the last few weeks is he now back on track with them. The next half of Countdown has a lot of potential and I’m optimistic about it being better than the first half.

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