Gabby! Big Words! Scrapper! Tommy! These are the names of the original Newsboy Legion, a gang of orphans on the streets of Suicide Slum who tumbled in and out of trouble until Jim Harper, the local beat cop became their guardian. He also became a superhero, The Guardian and the boys tried endlessly to prove the two were the same. In his epic return to DC, Jack Kirby took the reins of Jimmy Olsen and in those pages revived the Newsboy Legion, the sons of the original team. He added Flippa-Dippa, a black kid with a yen for scuba diving gear. These five and Jimmy teamed up to ride the Whiz Wagon into the depths of The Project and discover more secrets than you can shake a stick at. It was a grand adventure and a furious romp.
One of the greatest reveals in all the Fourth World was when the "Golden Guardian" burst forth from the confines of The Project, the vast genetics lab which had birthed him. Reviving the Newsboy Legion was a request of the DC editors when Jack Kirby showed up at the joint and he complied and it's clear that there was no way they could be brought back without their mentor. But Jim Harper was dead and we have this new cloned version of The Guardian, a hero looking for direction and purpose. His helmet would never look this way again as when he finishes this leap in the very next issue a more simple head piece will be evident. I prefer the simpler look and am glad that Kirby had second thoughts about the adornments, or perhaps just forgot them all together.
The Newsboy Legion and the Guardian were the first "original" stars to appear when the Simon and Kirby team first went to DC Comics hot off their stupendous success with Timely's Captain America. They'd already revised The Manhunter and the Sandman in the pages of Adventure Comics, but in the pages of Star-Spangled Comics it was something new but reliably exciting. Gabby, Tommy, Scrapper and Big Words walk forward proudly with their guardian, the reliable beat cop Jim Harper. Over them looms The Guardian, the superhero who saves the downtrodden of Suicide Slum. Heady stuff indeed.
And here's an homage of sorts to the Simon and Kirby original by modern master Jerry Ordway.
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Although I had heard of the Newsboy Legion before the 1970s (via reprint material) it wasn't until Kirbys excellent Jimmy Olsen comics that I really read their strips. I found the character like Flippa Dippa, Big Words etc weird and wonderful but strangely relatable to this Glasgow boy. At this time Glasgow , like many UK cities was in the process of being rebuilt ( the war and years of neglect) and the landscape of the Suicide Slum was reminiscent of large areas of the East end of the city that was being pulled down etc. I still remember the first time I saw the Guardian (an issue featuring to me an unknown US comedian called Don Rickles) I loved it. Jimmy Olsen was had some of Kirbys best DC work especially art.
ReplyDeleteI was a bit cool to the Kirby Olsen books for the utter strangeness they exhibited, but that very trait is what has made them utterly readable over and over again. The way Kirby kept the trope of Jimmy transforming was nifty.
DeleteIt's interesting that the 'Now' Newsboy Legion were described as the sons of the originals, instead of being clones as they later retroactively became under other hands. No one can say for certain, but it seems that this idea never occurred to Kirby, which is strange since the guardian was a clone and the whole concept of the series was about DNA and cloning. Or perhaps he considered it too obvious a revelation and just decided to give it a miss. Will we ever know? To me, Jimmy Olsen was the best thing that Jack ever did at DC during the '70s.
DeleteThis is probably just my assumption, but I always thought they were clones and the "sons" bit was just a way to explain it.
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