Superman is a Dick

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

Tom DeFalco brought this site to my attention. Basically the guy who runs it reprints, unchanged, some of the more insane covers from the Mort Weisinger era of “Superman” with truly hilarious comments (my favorite so far is the one on page 2 about the time machine).

http://www.nationallampoon.com/supermanisadick/default.asp

PAD

33 comments on “Superman is a Dick”

  1. Yeah, I stumbled across this site a while ago. Freakin’ hilarious, especially with all the mean stuff he does to Jimmy Olson. Then again, it’s Jimmy, so maybe he deserves it.

  2. Yeah, but many of them were from the Julie Schwartz era.

    It was Julie who, according to lore, had the clever gimmick of cooking up a lunatic cover and asking the writer to create the story that went with the cover.

    Lunatic and inventive just go together like chocolate and peanut butter!

  4. It’s an amusing website even of they don’t do much more than reprint Silver Age DC covers and caption them “what a dìçk” or some variation.
    But isn’t this basically what Fred Hembeck and Tony Isabella have been putting a whole lot more thought and effort into doing for decades now?

  5. Well, he certainly had good reason to be a dìçk to Jimmy. As I recently posted on rec.arts.comics, the following thought balloon from the story “Baby Jimmy Olsen” just sums up the Silver Age Jimmy so well….

    “Hmm…Superman told me to destroy this age-acceleration kit because some day I might get into trouble with it! But Superman’s a worry-wart! What could go wrong if I took a few swigs of the growth serum?” [with the visual showing Jimmy taking those swigs…and in the next panel, he learns just what could go wrong]

  7. I found this site a while back…in fact I THOUGHT it was someone here who first turned me on to it! I would have mentioned it sooner if I’d known.

    Soon to be followed by AndJimmyOlsonIsAClosetedHomosexualWithSeriousIssues.com

  10. Yah, that’s an awesome site. My comic store now has all these silver age Superman / Jimmy Olsen comics posted up front, and I’m sorely tempted to buy them.

    Another great bit of Superman humour has to be his REAL origin, presented here:
    http://www.jaypinkerton.com/superman/

  11. I shoulda thought to let you know about it back when it was still an in-joke at a Transformers chatboard I’m on, Peter. Ah well, you see it now, that is enough.

  13. I love this site…

    I’ve seen some people online bemoan why oh why DC would portray its flagship in such an unflattering light…

    I gotta say, every cover I see like these not only sparks several story ideas but it makes me want to buy the issues.

    “Iconic pose covers” don’t do that and so I constantly miss out on good stories and find myself months later debating whether to hit the back issue bin.

    If you look, many popular magazines thrive on paradox covers or covers that make you want to know what’s inside with clever celebrity pose/placement.

    I don’t get why comics don’t do this.

  14. Made it to page 14… there was some serious insanity in comics back there, huh. Amazing. I had no idea.

    My favorite was Supes stirring a pot and making Jimmy marry a monkey. priceless.

  15. Did any of u guys make see the “slap a Jap” cover on page 7?

    That site is chock full of sin, man!

  16. “Soon to be followed by AndJimmyOlsonIsAClosetedHomosexualWithSeriousIssues.com”

    Homosexual? Naw. Unless he’s ‘bi’. Byrne had him pretty openly drooling after Lois’ sister if I recall correctly?

  17. I love the one where a teenage Clark Kent is showing a teenage Bruce Wayne a machine that lets him see into the future and…(from the site)

    List of more pratical uses Superboy can make of a machine that can see through time:

    1.) Betting on the outcomes of sporting events.
    2.) Forseeing natural diasters and catastrophhe.
    3.) Letting Bruce Wayne know that his parents are going to be gunned down in front of his very eyes in a filthy alley, you dìçk.

  18. My personal favorite is the one where he’s making Jimmy Olsen and Aquaman compete for that glass of water out in the desert. It’s just such a bizarre thing to look at.

  19. Homosexual? Naw. Unless he’s ‘bi’. Byrne had him pretty openly drooling after Lois’ sister if I recall correctly?

    Jimmy will forever be to me the amazing doofus from an imaginary story where he married Supergirl.

    Do whatever you have to do to get this issue. I wish I could give you the number but I’m not home right now. It’s one of those where there is a plot twist every 8 panels or so, enough story to fill a whole years worth of issues.

    And you’ll pass a bottle of Mountain Dew through your nose while you read it. If MST3K had done comics, this would be the one to use. Riotous dialogue (“So how long have you been an orphan?” Jimmy asks Linda Lee. “Since my parents died, you incredible ášš!” one hopes she would reply) and just sheer goofiness (Linda decides to get Jimmy to fall in love with supergirl so that he won’t keel over from a heart attack when he realizes that he already IS married to supergirl…or something…Worst. Idea. Ever.) And there’s just this amazing homoerotic subtext that just permeates the story. Quick example–Jimmy is investigating an abandoned amusement park that was–and pay attention here–closed down due to faulty equipment. He spies the Superman Ride, where one is supposed to climb onto the back of a lifesize superman figure and spin through the air.

    So naturally, our red headed dûmbášš does just that. And he’s having WAY too much fun riding the buns of steel before the aforementioned faulty equipment breaks and he goes plummeting to a deserved death only to be saved by Supergirl. Later, he ignores his hot wife to watch sweaty men pummel each other on TV. Hey, you don’t have to be Felini to figure this out…

  20. Thanks a lot Peter; I’ve got an eight thousand word Hitchhiker’s article due by lunchtime and I’ve just spent the better part of an hour strolling down memory lane! But it was worth it.

  21. It almost boggles the mind to think that all those are genuine.

    Some folks at DC just really seemed to have it out for Supes or something. 🙂

  22. “Thanks a lot Peter; I’ve got an eight thousand word Hitchhiker’s article due by lunchtime and I’ve just spent the better part of an hour strolling down memory lane! But it was worth it.”

    Can you switch and do an article on this instead of the currently planed article?

  23. “My personal favorite is the one where he’s making Jimmy Olsen and Aquaman compete for that glass of water out in the desert”

    That’s an easy one.

    Olsen: “Aquaman, take the water, then use your enhanced strength and endurance to save me.”

  24. They musta been smoking some pretty strong stuff when coming up with these covers — and the stories to go along with them!

    I knew writers could get bored doing the same “villain does something, hero finds villain, they fight, hero sends villain to jail, villain escapes, repeat ad nauseum” stories, but having Superman kill people? Jimmy getting killed or jailed? Lois continually in peril? (Actually comics are full of women in jeopardy; Wonder Woman got her own wall in the NYC Museum of Sex’s first exhibit from all the bondage covers and stories.) Oy…

    Still frickin’ funny, though!

    Jim Lynch

  25. I believe the “Jimmy Marries Supergirl” issue was #100 of Jimmy’s own book.

    I recall reading, more than once and in more than one place, that Mort Weisinger used to have the neighborhood kids come over and tell him what they’d like to see Superman or Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen do, and that’s where some of the nuttier ideas came from. That would certainly explain the lack of concern on the part of the world’s greatest hero regarding his repeated, public, and often spectacular humiliations of his closest friends–including a woman who repeatedly professed to love him.
    “Oh, that Lois! When will she learn her lesson? I’ll just arrange for her to end up naked in the middle of Times Square at rush hour, and have it broadcast all over the world! Ha, ha! I kill me…”

    Paul

  26. Yeah, I first heard about this on Neil Gaiman’s blog. He says that these Cruel Superman covers first started to go big after the Gorilla on Cover (the original and still best way to get anyone to open a comic) schtick started to pall. Doubtless, this is the reason for the unholy marriage of both as demonstrated on page 9.

  28. Yeah, those covers are pretty funny alright. Unless you actually care about the integrity of these characters. I’m 53 and I grew up during the Weisinger era. I think he was an uncaring editor who should not have been the caretaker of icons.

    Try to convince someone of the legitimacy of comics as an artform when they’ve seen the kind of ridicule that these kinds of stories display for what are supposed to be symbols of truth and justice.

  29. I’d seen the site before, but it’s absolutely hilarious.

    I just wanted to know if seeing these two posts back to back:

    Oh, and congratulations to Tom on the new job.

    and

    The Pope. Brilliant!

    gave anyone else the weird sensations that I got. 🙂

    TWL

  31. “Try to convince someone of the legitimacy of comics as an artform when they’ve seen the kind of ridicule that these kinds of stories display for what are supposed to be symbols of truth and justice.”

    Yeah, because whenever I’m trying to convince someone of the legitimacy of comics as an art form, I never show them Gaiman’s Sandman, or Herge’s Tintin, or Speigleman’s Maus, or even PAD’s Fallen Angel. No, when I’m faced with a critic, I *always* trot out covers from self-conciously kiddie books from the sixties and seventies…

    Yeesh.

  32. Canuck Redux wrote:

    “Yeah, because whenever I’m trying to convince someone of the legitimacy of comics as an art form, I never show them Gaiman’s Sandman, or Herge’s Tintin, or Speigleman’s Maus, or even PAD’s Fallen Angel. No, when I’m faced with a critic, I *always* trot out covers from self-conciously kiddie books from the sixties and seventies…”

    Well no, of course you wouldn’t. My wife, who never read comics before she met me, has read Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns and she really misses Ms. Tree. These are the titles I exposed her to. If I had shown her Mort Weisinger’s product, she probably would have had serious reservations about marrying me.

    My point is those embarrassing stories do nothing to advance the status of comics and are better left to the dust bin of history.

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