January 1954: Superman’s Pal Runs the Show

The popularity of Jack Larson as Jimmy Olsen on TV’s The Adventures of Superman elevated the character’s prominence in the comic books.

The show debuted in 1952, and DC Comics rewarded Jimmy with his own comic book title in 1954.

Comics historian Mark Engblom observed, “Although Jimmy Olsen has been banished to the status of window dressing for the past three decades or so, he was clearly a major star from the late ‘50s through the (Mort) Weisinger years, and quite a ways into the ’70s. It’s hard to fathom today how a cast member could carry a solo series, to the point where I can’t think of anything comparable since the Jimmy and Lois Lane series.”

Even several months before Jimmy’s own title debuted, the cub reporter starred in a story written by Bill Woolfolk and drawn by Wayne Boring — Jimmy Olsen … Editor! — in Superman 86 (Jan. 1954). 

An almost identical story written by David Chantler — Jimmy Olsen, Boy Editor — aired Feb. 13, 1954, on the TV show.

In fact, the sharing of plots between the comics and the TV show caused some friction. 

Screenwriter Jackson Gillis, who wrote several of the series’ best episodes, was blunt about it. “The comic book began to rip them off,” he said. “This was before the Writer’s Guild was beginning to get after that kind of stuff.” 

In both the comic book and TV stories, Jimmy is elevated to the editorship of the Daily Planet as part of a Metropolis city program in which young people temporarily assume important positions. And in both stories, Jimmy stirs up trouble by looking into an old, unsolved criminal case.

“I was a big Superman comic book fan,” Larson recalled in an interview with the Archive of American Television. “My dad said to me when I was doing the Superman television show, ‘Hell, they’re not paying you anything. You’re just getting back the dimes I gave you for that comic book.’”

December 1953: Gotham by Gaslight

What is Robin without Batman? Well, the protagonist of a pretty good story, for one thing.

In Dick Grayson's Nightmare! (Batman 80, Dec. 1953), Bruce Wayne’s young ward falls victim to a gaslighting scheme before rallying as the Boy Wonder, escaping a death trap and giving the criminal gang a good, satisfying beating.

The term “gaslighting” sprang from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gas Light, in which a scheming husband tries to convince his wife she’s going insane. It’s a technique utilized by extreme political propaganda as well.

The Man of Steel also got a dose of gaslighting that same year in TV’s The Adventures of Superman during the Jackson Gillis episode The Face and the Voice.

In Nightmare!, an uncredited writer tells us that while Batman is away at a murder trial in Chicago, painters are coming in to redecorate Wayne Manor. Wayne has arranged for Dick to stay at the nearby home of his vacationing mystery writer friend Freddy Hobbs.

Hobbs’ cottage is full of weird murder-mystery artifacts. “It’s enough to give a person the creeps,” the boy thinks.

In short order, Dick encounters a mysterious veiled woman who vanishes after handing him an envelope containing $10,000, dodges a thrown dagger and sees a ghostly turbaned face in the cottage window.

“That horrible face — am I going mad?” he thinks.

The Boy Wonder discovers that a gang of Halloween-costumed criminals led by a mastermind called Doc is stealing valuable paintings from a nearby warehouse, and arranged the gaslighting to discredit Dick as a witness.

As a boy, Dick Grayson is less emotionally constrained than Bruce Wayne, who is an icon of 1950s masculinity. Dick can shiver at a horror story and be startled by developments, and gives this story a Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew vibe — a different feel than it would have had if Batman were staying alone in the cottage. The unflappable Batman would have faced the same events more stoically, but perhaps less interestingly.