Jimmy Olsen, Boy Pest

I’m planning to go through all my Jimmy Olsen comics tonight, to decide once and for all if I am keeping any of them. Otherwise, these tales of an immature lad, which probably equate to Naruto in the mangas–always screwing up, always needing a rescue–may go the way of other collected things. I never really liked Jimmy Olsen comics, anyway. That’s why I never had a letter published in their lettercols: I only had negative things to say. I guess this comes from being a responsible, middle-child type, but I couldn’t relate well to Jimmy. Although I tried, and I have found his television and movie incarnations endearing. Still, the comics are about to undergo triage.

It’s a sad truth I recently learned: Do not keep your collectibles so long that the cohort of people interested in them dies off completely. Not if you hope to reap any resale value. Or merely aspire to getting them to someone who cares. As a baby boomer, I am in a huge cohort, 76 million or so. But comic books have been mostly of interest to boys and men in the last 50 years. And men are fragile; they die off in their sixties or soon thereafter, leaving us women to be widows for decade upon decade. If I want my Jimmy Olsen comics to go to a good home, I’d better move them on soon, or there will be nobody left alive to care.