Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #10 – Matt Fraction, Writer; Steve Lieber, Artist; Nathan Fairbairn, Colorist
Ratings: 9/10
Ray: The most bizarre series in DC’s stable continues to unravel its absurdist mystery with Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #10, which starts with Jimmy in an interstellar love triangle, and ends with a surprisingly dark murder mystery twist.
That love triangle involves Jimmy’s space thief wife and her evil conqueror husband who has crossed the galaxy to get her back. Jimmy’s making the best of it, continuing to produce viral content, even as he tries and fails to sort out his life. But his sister is getting tired of his antics, and his revenue stream is drying up. That leads Jimmy to look towards clearing up the contract on his head, and that opens up a massive sequence of events that pulls in just about everyone who’s appeared in the series so far. I wasn’t expecting the Porcadillo to be the source of a story about the failures of the juvenile justice system, but that’s the kind of book Matt Fraction is putting together.
The character of Julian Olsen factored prominently into the first few issues but mostly disappeared. As rich and corrupt as he was, he still seemed like an overall benevolent figure compared to Lex Luthor.
But as the story zooms back to the beginning and shows what was going on before Jimmy accidentally destroyed the lion statue, it turns out there was a lot we didn’t know about Julian. Unless there’s one more twist to come in the final two issues, he may be one of the cruelest villains to appear in DC Comics at the moment. And yet, just when you expect this series to take a topic seriously, it ends with an absurdist joke that reminds you this is Matt Fraction at his most Fraction-y. I don’t know how he can wrap this up in only two more issues, but I do know I’m excited to see how he tries. More oddball books like this from elite creators, please.
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
Disclaimer: GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
