Post by Admin on Dec 21, 2011 14:11:54 GMT -5
Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen
Issue #1: "Jimmy Olsen Can Not Die!"
Written by: Cody Bridges
Cover by: Joe Jarin
Edited by: Mark Bowers
Issue #1: "Jimmy Olsen Can Not Die!"
Written by: Cody Bridges
Cover by: Joe Jarin
Edited by: Mark Bowers
Staring into the mirror, he could see the circles under his eyes. The dark purple that hung like dreary curtains and accentuated the time he had aged over that day. It had not been a happy day. He looked down at the sink, the surface of the white porcelain gleaming cleanly in the artificial light. He rubbed a hand through his red hair, and sighed as he grasped the knife from the edge of the sink-bowl and held it morosely in his right hand. Another moment in the mirror, which passed like fog over a lake, a second stretched into the reaches of his mind. He considered the possibility that he might shed a tear over the pain he was about to inflict upon himself. But he considered it only briefly, and instead held the knife handle tighter.
He dragged the smooth, flat surface of the blade against the hairless skin on the inside of his forearm, stopping as the point came to his wrist. And he slid the point through the pale skin, and pulled it all the way down his arm, up to the elbow. Wincing, he pulled the knife away and dropped it on the ground. Blood dripped into the sink, but not much was spilled before the wound began to stitch itself together. Beginning at the wrist, it sealed shut and closed like a zipper, leaving a faint red line which at last faded completely. And at that, he looked into the mirror a final time. This was Jimmy Olsen, and after several days he was now positive of one thing.
Jimmy Olsen could not die.
Earlier That Day
Jimmy walked from the offices of the Daily Planet, with his work friends Lois and Clark trailing behind him. He tried to walk ahead of them to ignore their conversation, not wishing to butt into their drama. However it wasn’t long before Lois put a hand on his shoulder and dragged him into things.
“Take Jimmy for example, Clark. He got within a foot of that alien invasion that Superman stopped yesterday. And it paid off. He got some of the best pictures I’ve ever seen. Those are the kind of risks you should be taking,” Lois said.
“And then Superman had to rescue him from being abducted by the very same aliens. Those pictures, and Jimmy, almost never saw the light of day again. That’s not journalism, that’s risky. Jimmy’s lucky to have a friend like Superman,” Clark offered, adjusting his glasses.
“Jimmy,” Lois said, “tell Clark that being aware of risks but taking them makes you better off as a journalist.”
Jimmy backed away from them.
“I, uh, don’t really wanna get too involved in this. I do what I do well, and Clark does his own thing.” As he said this, he took a few more steps away from them. And as he took those steps, his heel slipped off of the curb in time for the 5:08 bus to hit him right on the side.
Many people have never seen a person get hit by a car. The car may receive damage. Buses, however, step away unscathed. And as the sleek white Metropolis Transit Express sat silently on the edge of the street, the driver stared from his unmarked vehicle at the ginger pedestrian who lay broken in the road. Clark and Lois ran to Jimmy’s side, but as they dropped to see if he was still breathing, he sprung awake from the ground, rubbing his head like he’d merely struck it on a cupboard door.
“Geez Louise, that stung! Oughta teach me to look both ways huh?” he said, laughing as he brushed some dirt from the front of his shirt. He stopped laughing when he saw the horrified looks on the faces of the people in the street. The bus driver had been wringing his hands, and now took a knee on the sidewalk.
“Jimmy,” Lois said, looking closely at him as he stood unaffected in front of the bus, “are you OK?”
Jimmy’s head felt as if it were full of sand, and instinctively he ran from the street and toward his apartment. He thought about what had happened while he winded through the city. He remembered talking to his colleagues, then slipping, and then...
He flinched. He remembered intense pain, a force striking him and sending his head reeling toward the earth. It felt like...
“Getting hit by a bus. Heh,” he said aloud.
He looked up to find that his wandering had put him in a strange part of Metropolis that he didn’t frequent very often. There was an alley to his left, and he saw a familiar storefront on the other side, so he headed to go through it. It was getting dark and the streetlights barely illuminated the way. About halfway down, a grimy man stepped out from the shadows and put his hand out.
“Change for an unfortunate soul?” He pushed his fingers against Jimmy’s chest. He had a battered old bowler hat on his head, and a wild look in his eye.
“I don’t have anything on me...sorry?”
And then the man had his gun in his hand. And now the gun was in Jimmy’s chest, the barrel pressing a circle into it.
“You better find that money.”
Jimmy panicked, and felt his head rush with blood. He had to do something, had to get away, and in a moment of activity grabbed for the gun and wrestled it away. A bang went off, then the man ran off and Jimmy headed the opposite direction toward the friendlier side of the alley. His breathing was heavy. When he looked down at his shirt, he saw a dark red spot that had formed on his chest.
“What the...” he thought, looking at the blood stain. “I was shot right in the chest but...I’m not hurt at all, no wound, no nothing?”
Jimmy walked home with his jacket wrapped around his chest to hide the red blotch that had grown on his chest, despite the lack of any wound at all. He checked when he got back to his apartment, taking off the bloody shirt and looking into the mirror. There wasn’t a wound, no scratch, no scab, no sign of any cut at all. There wasn’t even a bruise, or a red mark from the muzzle flare being so close to him. He shook quietly on the tiles of his bathroom floor, when he felt a lump rising in his throat. He hacked and coughed into the sink, and heard a clink against the porcelain. Sitting on the bottom near the drain there was a little hunk of metal, flat at one end, and rounded at the other. It had a little bit of blood on the rounded point. Jimmy picked up the bullet and put it on a shelf in his medicine cabinet. He shuddered, looking at the unnatural thing sitting amongst his toothpaste and aspirin. He decided that he would have to figure out what was going on. In the meantime, he needed to eat something to keep his mind off of it.
He started up his stove with a pot of water on the burner and broke out a package of dried pasta from his cupboard. He was reading the back of a jar of red marinara sauce when he heard the bubbling on the stove-top. He went to the pot and felt something give under his foot, a wet rag that had fallen to the floor. As he slipped, his hand smacked the pot from its perch on the flame, and the big pot of boiling water came down from above and bathed his skin in heat and pain.
A scald is a burn resulting from heated liquid. They are very painful and have the capacity to scar the body terribly, especially if there is a good deal of water. The blisters started to form on Jimmy’s chest and arms, and he screamed in anguish as the water rested on what was once smooth cool skin. He leaped from the floor and looked at his forearms. Just as the blisters seemed to magically sprout from his burned skin, they started to recede, like puddles shrinking in the sun. Slowly they faded, as did the pain and it was only a moment before Jimmy was standing unharmed in his kitchen, a puddle of steaming water on the floor.
Jimmy sat on the floor and stared at the water as it simmered away. He soberly reached for a roll of paper towels and began mopping up the spilled water and filling up a new pot for his pasta. As he sat eating his dinner, he looked toward the kitchen and the floor, then at his smooth unharmed arms. He set down his fork and walked to the counter, pulling a long kitchen knife from the drawer and heading into his bathroom to look in the mirror.
You can do this. You know something is going on, and you are going to find out.
He took the knife and pulled it along his arm, opening a dark red wound.
Oh damn. Oh damn. I’m gonna die. This was stupid.
The wound started to knit up, and closed at the top of his forearm.
What the...Oh geez. What is wrong with me?
He looked at the sparse drops of blood in the sink and wiped them up with some toilet paper. The red stained the tissue, a few little spots. He shuddered at the sight of his own blood, then threw the paper away so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. He spied, from his spot in front of the mirror, a watch with a little red ‘S’ inscribed on a gold surface. He reached for it and pressed a little rectangular button on the side. It supposedly made a sound, but he could never hear it. There was one person who could, and he was probably the only person who could help him.
It was easier to meet him on the roof, and Jimmy sat for only a few minutes when a purplish blur, a melange of blue and red moving faster than a speeding bullet, sublimed into the form of a man in a cape. However, he wasn’t really a man, he was better.
“Superman. I need your help,” Jimmy said, reaching to shake his hand. The imposing and tall figure stood solemnly with his hands on his hips. He frowned at Jimmy.
“I gave you that signal device for emergencies, Jimmy. Do you know how many dire situations happen all over Metropolis at any given moment? I can’t just answer to spend time with you,” he said in a fatherly voice.
“What? No...I know I don’t look like I’m in trouble but I am. I almost died four times today, anyway. Where were you to help me then? You’re supposed to be my pal.”
“I can’t be everywhere at once. Or play favorites. I was busy today. What’s the trouble, Jimmy? I have to meet up with the Justice League, and-”
“I can’t be harmed.”
Superman paused. He cocked an eyebrow and put a hand to his square, chiseled chin.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean I can’t be hurt. Today I got hit by a bus. Nothing. Shot. Nothing. I spilled a full pot of boiling water on myself and watched the blisters disappear from my skin. I think something is wrong with me.” Jimmy sighed, and rubbed the back of his head. It was nice to have somebody to confide in, and Superman was a good person to talk to about things you couldn’t talk about with other people. Lois and Clark? They would never believe him, although they had seen him take the number eight bus the hard way earlier that day.
“Are you sure you’re feeling OK, otherwise I mean? Maybe you have some type of fever, or you’re hallucinating?”
“No way. This is too easy to remember, too vivid. I think it might have had something to do with my last photo report. I got right up close and personal with those aliens. Maybe there was a mineral, or radiation of some type coming from one of their weapons that gave me super-powers. Your powers are based on radiation, aren’t they?” Jimmy tried to show some initiative. He knew that if he seemed hysterical, the Man of Steel would say what he always said.
“How about you sleep on this? See how you feel in the morning?”
“Unless I’m dead in the morning, I don’t think anything will have changed.”
“Well, I could take some time to look into it. But I still think it might just be your imagination.”
Jimmy sighed. He looked at the signal watch, which he had used for years in dire situations like this one. How could Superman not think of this as a problem? He clasped his fingers around the watch and held it out.
“Here then. I don’t need this,” he said. Superman looked quite taken aback.
“Jimmy, what if you need me? You’d better hang on to it.”
“I don’t think I do anymore. I’m going to get to the bottom of this whether you help me or not. And for the time being, I don’t have to worry about my getting hurt, so neither should you.” He dropped the watch into Superman’s hand, and made the slow walk back to the fire escape and into his apartment window. He sat on his couch pondering his decision. He was happy to be solving his own problem, but at the same time he had reservations. He had always had help from Superman. Where did he begin?
He popped open his laptop and opened Google on his web browser. He typed “invulnerable”. Most of the returns related to superheroes, and dictionary definitions. He tried “why do I have superpowers”. There were less returns, but the third one down the page caught his eye. He clicked on the link and read the headline of the page.
“SuperPowered Anonymous: We Can Be Your Hero”
Jimmy signed up for the next meeting, and folded his hands over his lap. It was a start.
To Be Continued!
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