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Friday, September 09, 2005

Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #139 - The Four-Armed Terror

This issue opens with the Evil Factory creation the Four-Armed Terror making its way towards the Project, attracted by the atomic radiation it feeds on, taking out the Outsiders on the way.

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Meanwhile, our heroes are participating in a "Hairies" experiment that converts radio signals from the stars into sounds and images, which leads to three collage pages by Kirby before they're disturbed by the shockwaves from the Terrors attack on the Habitat in the Wild Area. Superman goes out to confront it, with Jimmy and the Newsboys defying his orders and following. As the Terror reaches its destination, Simyan and Mokkari hatch a whole army of Four-Armed Terrors.

It's pretty amazing how many concepts Kirby had introduced in his early issues on this book, many of them dropped into this issue. Unfortunately a lot of them would sort of fall by the wayside in the second half of the run, and never be as fully explored as I'm sure Kirby planned. Still a lot of fun while it lasted.

A 22-page story inked by Vince Colletta (with Murphy Anderson doing the DC-ification of Superman and Jimmy) and Neal Adams inking Kirby on the cover.

Published 1971

1 comment:

kirkm5computer001abc said...

I have been reading both Kirby Jimmy Olsen Paperbacks and was hoping that there would be more. I do like the reproduction.

Just be glad that they weren't re printed in a Essitials like format in black and white. Kirby's art loses something if not in color.
That isn't the case with his original pencils; which I wish we got to see more of in both paperbacks.

Perhaps the Kirby Meuseum will publish all those fantastic original pencils in the gallery section. I go through a lot of my Kirby collector issues just to get inspiration to draw and paint. There are few comics related material I buy other than Comics Buyers Guide.

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