Poor Mojo's Newswire

A Washington state man said he came within seconds of having his car broken into, and perhaps stolen, until a real-life "superhero" came to his aid, wearing tights, a mask and a skin-tight super suit. The encounter started in Lynnwood Sunday evening when a man, who asked to be identified only as Dan, was walking back to his car in a parking lot when he saw a man with a metal strip trying to pry open his car, reports CBS affiliate KIRO. "He started sticking it down between the window and the rubber strip," said Dan. Dan began to call 911, but said help arrived before he even finished dialing. "From the right, this guy comes dashing in, wearing this skin-tight rubber, black and gold suit, and starts chasing him away," said Dan. What Dan didn't know is that just about every night, an anonymous Seattle man strolls into a comic store, enters a hidden back room and emerges transformed. ... "My name is Phoenix Jones," said the man.

I think I’ve mentioned this here before, but: what I love most about Jimmy Olsen doesn’t show up in my story, but it’s the signal watch. I couldn’t do that justice in 10 pages. I mean, none of this made it into my comic any, but … the signal watch not making it in smarts the most because I love it so much: Jimmy Olsen survives his adventures not because he’s more powerful or stronger than his adversaries, but because of his ability to form friendships with people who are. He doesn’t need superpowers– his superpower is social skills! Which — I think I consider that a better “lesson” than almost any other lesson in all of superhero comics. And the ultimate symbol for that is the signal watch. Plus, post-Crisis, at least, Jimmy Olsen invented the signal watch– he saw Superman and responded to Superman by inventing a way to get Superman to help him in his life. Jimmy Olsen is a person in a society transitioning from a human society to a post-human society, and the way he responded to that is by putting that post-human society at his disposal. Which– is my favorite heroic type that I grew up with: the computer hacker. The computer hacker, when I was a kid, was a person who saw the effect computers were going to have on society coming, and was going to control that machinery of the world rather than let himself be a cog in it. Matthew Broderick in WAR GAMES isn’t going to be a victim of the military industrial complex; he’s going to use the technology of the military industrial complex to force it to recognize his right to be free of its machinery. Jimmy Olsen is exactly that. Jimmy Olsen is a hacker, not of computers but of a post-human society. This is all stuff I’d thought about on a regular basis, years before anyone from DC ever got in touch with me, so… Oh, god. I’ve wasted my life.