DC Finest - Superman Family

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I haven't been looking forward to this collection quite as much as the upcoming Superboy one, but still I'll likely get around to reading it sooner rather than later, hence the stub. (If anyone else wants to delve into it ahead of me, please feel free to do so.) This one includes Action Comics #266 & #277-278, Adventure Comics #287, Superman #142-143 & #147, Superboy #87, #90 & #92, Lois Lane #19-28 and Jimmy Olsen #47-56. I don't know why these issue in particular, but at least their choice demonstrates that someone has put some thought into it.

I used to like those b&w DC Showcase and Marvel Essential collections... at least I liked the idea of them. Although I would have preferred color, I bought the ones I didn't have and didn't expect to see reprinted in color any time soon, including the DC Showcase edition  of Superman Family. I am pleased to report there there is very little duplication between the  DCF volume and the four Showcase editions:

• Vol. 1 - Jimmy Olsen #1-22 and Showcase #9
• Vol. 2 - Jimmy Olsen #23-34, Showcase #10 and Lois Lane #1-7
• Vol. 3 - Jimmy Olsen #35- 44 and Lois Lane #8-16
• Vol. 4 - Jimmy Olsen #45-53 and Lois Lane #17-26

That's only 15 issues of duplication, and only with Showcase volume four.

(All covers illustrated by Curt Swan and Stan Kaye unless otherwise noted.)

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I couldn't wait. First up is...

ACTION COMICS #266 - "The World's Mightiest Cat" by Jerry Siegel and Jim Mooney

This is the one in which one of Linda Lee's fellow orphans is a young Bruce Banner. We already covered this in the "Supergirl Archives" discussion. Here's what Bob had to say about it.

^{1) We open with Superman and Krypto doing stunts to amuse the orphans, which is nice of them.  One boy, Paul, imagines what it would be like if Streaky had super-powers.  (Side Note: I notice that we only see Streaky when there’s a Streaky-centric story. Once they’d established him, they could easily have thrown in the occasional shot of him sleeping in the background, something that cats do about 90% of the time, anyway.)}

 ^{2) Streaky finds the X-Kryptonite and drags it into the orphanage cellar and gains super-powers again.  He sets out to show his powers to Paul.  We get the old cliché of Paul being the only who sees Streaky using his powers, with Supergirl racing around to cover up for him.}

 ^{3) Supergirl and Streaky go to Africa where they help some natives deal with hostile animals. So, I guess it’s OK for her to reveal herself to “primitives”, knowing that “civilized” (i.e., white) men won’t believe them?}

 ^{4) Supergirl feels bad for Paul because everyone’s calling him a lying scumbag, so she summons Krypto and, with his cooperation, “frames” him for Streaky’s misdeeds.}

 ^{Overall:  An OK gag story, I suppose. That cover was kind of misleading, though.}

This edition of DC Finest begins in 1960.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Next up is...

SUPERMAN'S GIRLFRIEND, LOIS LANE #19:

This issue has three stories, all drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger and written by three different writers. The cover story, "Mr. and Mrs. Clark Kent" by Jerry Siegel, was previously covered in the "Imaginary Stories on Infinite Earths" discussion. The other two are...

• "The Day Lois Forgot Superman" by Robert Bernstein - Lois agrees to have herself hypnotized to forget Superman. The ending is telegraphed on page three.
• "The Superman of the Past" by Otto Binder - The scent of a certain "rare cave blossom" knocks Lois out and cause her to dream of Samson (and Caesar). "Not a hoax, not an imaginary tale... a drug-induced hallucination."

[Jeff of Earth-J]

SUPERMAN'S PAL, JIMMY OLSEN #47:

•  "The King of Crime" by Robert Bernstein and Surt Swan: Jimmy masquerades as escaped convict "Winky" McCoy. This is not a well thought out plan in any case, but Superman happens to be on a mission in outer space and is therefore unavailable should Jimmy happen to get into any trouble. I suspect Superman spent more time on "space missions" in the Silver Age than Green Lantern did. I suspect that will be the case in many stories in this volume. It might be fun to track them.
• "Jimmy Olsen Grows Up!" - by Otto Binder and Curt Swan: Jimmy visits "zany scientist" Professor Potter and ingests a growth serum which ages him to adulthood. Then his "friends" conspire to make him regret his choice.
• "The Monsters from Earth!" - by Jerry Siegel and Curt Swan: This story is a sequel to one I have not read.  Basically, an alien race wants to film a movie starring Jimmy Olsen. (Classic alien design.)  This premise sound like Bereet and the Hulk (or rather the reverse, I suppose), but it reads more like the X-Men's "Mojo". Although he does not appear, Superman is not on a space mission in this story, but one is mentioned. (He once saved the world of Xantha from axploding.) I'm not going to count that one in my tally, but it strikes me that there was probably enough fodder for an entire series of Superman's space missions.

Superman's "Space Missions": 1

[Jeff of Earth-J]

SUPERMAN'S GIRLFRIEND, LOIS LANE #20:

• "Superman's Flight from Lois Lane!" by Jerry Siegel and Kurt Schaffenberger - This is an odd one. DC had pretty strict rules concerning time travel back in the Silver Age. I don't know for certain when they were established, but this story (from 1960) seems to break two of them. The premise is this: in order to get away from the increasingly annoying Lois Lane, Superman decides to time-travel to the past and take a job at somewhere other than the Daily Planet so he never has to meet her. First, I thought there was a strict admonition about altering the past, and second, I didn't think it was possible for two versions of the same person to exist in the same time frame. That doesn't seem to be what's going on, however. Clark Kent seems to travel "Dark Shadows" style and inhabit the body of his younger self. that is not made explicitly clear, but neither is the whereabouts of Clark's younger self specifically mentioned.Clark takes a job as a midnight to six A.M. disc jockey, but still ends up interacting with Lois Lane. In addition, Clark's co-worker at WMET is Liza Landis, who is just as annoying as Lois Lane.Everything in this story appears to be contemporary 1960 rather than 1938. It doesn't work out, of course, and Superman/Clark returns to the present, where in encounters the present-day Liza Landis and body shames her (to the readers), by thinking, "Gerat Scott! That was Liza KLandis grown enormously fat trhough the years! *GASP* Thank goodness I never married HER! WHEW!"
• "The Luckiest Girl in Metropolis!" by Robert Bernstein and Al Plastino - Tbhis is an improbably story about Lois Lane who apparently gains the extrasensory power of predicting the future after being the first person to enter the tomb of a "Norse sorcerer." (The accident which caused her to "hear spirits whisper strage prophecies" also temporarily damaged her eyesight, requiring that she wear dark glasses.) [SPOILER] The whole thing is an elaborate hoax perpetuated by a gangster to lead Superman to destroy photographic evidence with his x-ray vision. [END SPOILER] The whole thing is quite incredibly unlikely; something could have gone wrong at any point in the gangster's impossible plan, yet it went off without a hitch... until Superman got wise.
• "Lois Lane's Super-Daughter!" by Jerry Siegel and Kurt Schaffenberger - This is a sequel to "Mr. and Mrs. Clark Kent" from Lois Lane #19. I'm not going to spend too much time on it because it's an "imaginary story" and never really "happened." It can also be found in the Superman in the Sixties collection (1999).

[Jeff of Earth-J]

SUPERMAN'S PAL, JIMMY OLSEN #48 - (all stories by [unknown], Curt Swan and John Forte):

• "The Story of Camp  Superman!" - Jimmy is counselor at Camp Superman but the campers outperform him at every turn. The real "conflict" (more of a mystery, really) arises when one of the boys knows the endings to all of Jimmy's stories. Superman is away for most of the story on an "outer space mission" which plays into the resolution of the plot.
• "The Disguises of Danger!" - In a formulaic story, Jimmy tries to get a 50¢ tip from a gangster in order to obtain a particular half dollar in pursuit of a tip. He dresses as a window washer, a bell hop, a shoeshine boy, a barber, a waiter and a beggar.
• "The Mystery of the Tiny Supermen!" -  The first appearance of the "Supermen Emergency Squad"... because Superman is on a mission, not in space but in time. I think I'll count it.

Superman's "Time/Space Missions": 3

A variation on a theme: