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Hey, Monkey See readers. It's me, your old pal Glen. Look, I know you haven't seen me around these parts very much over the last year or so, but ...

Mm? What's that?

Why, yes, I have "put on a few," as you say. How nice of you to notice. And just ... blurt out. Free as you please. Like that. Gosh I've missed us.

Anyway, the reason I haven't been blogging about comics in this space every week is that I was, you know, writing a book. A cultural history of Superman, in point of fact, in time for the character's 75th birthday. A book that, if you'll pardon a bit of unseemly auto-horn-tootlage, has just been published, and has been getting reviewed well, if not widely.

I have gotten to do some interviews and writing about the book, here and there, and in those I give the book's prcis, and talk about why I think the character has endured, and how though he's widely regarded as inherently boring/staid/too powerful/not relatable/out-of-step, he's actually changed a great deal over his 75 years of existence. I talk about how the changes he's undergone directly reflect the cultural shifts that have taken place over the past eight decades of American life. And how he's not the hero we relate to, he's the hero we believe in. And ... lots of other stuff about the ideal he represents, the optimistic future he embodies, all of which I fervently believe.

But you and me, we know each other. We go back. We get each other. So here, I can put aside the chin-rubbing a bit, and get to some Real Talk.

Okay, real talk? Just between us? My favorite Superman story of all time isn't a Superman story. Guy doesn't even show up until the last page or so. But it belongs to an era of Superman stories that I love earnestly, openly and without irony. A time that historians dryly denote the Silver Age, but which you and I – real talk! — shall refer to as The Crazypants Years.

Superman: The Crazypants Years

While the George Reeves television show The Adventures of Superman was on the air (1952-1958), the folks in charge decreed that his comics adventures must be seen as extensions of his televised exploits. That meant they had to conform to the show's comparatively narrow scope and effects budget. Thus the comic book Superman, the most powerful being in the known universe, ended up hanging around Metropolis most of the time and nabbing the odd jewel thief like a beat cop in blue L'eggs.

Once the show ended, however, all bets were off, and writers and artists were free to get weird. Crazypants-level weird. And under the firm editorial hand of Mort Weisinger, who encouraged his writers to surround the Man of Steel with a vast and quirky network of friends and relations (Girl cousin! Super dog! Mermaid ex! Super-powered teen pals from the future! Super monkey! Super horse who is a centaur who is also a guy never mind why! Super cat! Dead Kryptonian fiance he met when he went back in time! Tiny bottled Kryptonian municipality!) Superman became the harried, bemused patriarch of a garishly colored clan that routinely traversed the galaxy and the timestream as if they were just running out to the Piggly-Wiggly.

Here's why I love this era of comics, specifically Superman comics, so much: It was a time when writers and artists embraced what they were doing with an unself-conscious and profoundly imaginative glee. Characters were big, and their stories were even bigger, bolder, brighter – they engaged the primal emotions of early childhood, and employed the kind of blunt, implacable kid-logic that evaporates upon reflection.

Which is to say: These stories succeed at doing what superhero comics were created to do. They are fun.

And of all the characters of The Crazypants Years, the one who had the most fun, who got the weirdest on the regular, was Jimmy Olsen.

In any given issue of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen, you could count on Jimmy to get transformed into a giant-headed mutant or werewolf or Turtle-Man. Or, in the case of my favorite story ever, get stranded in Ancient Judea, become a sheep-shearer, pal around with a Biblical character or two, and, in his spare time, start a Beatles craze. You know: THAT old plot.

I love this story – written by Leo Dorfman and illustrated by George Papp for the September 1964 issue of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #79 – because it is dutifully crazy, embodying the go-for-broke tenor of this era's comics. But I also love it because it marks a shift in how Superman's writers and editors thought of their audience, and of themselves.

For years, they'd written for kids. That, they knew how to do. But now, suddenly, the newsmagazines were talking about something called "youth culture."

What in God's name was that? And what were they to do about it?

In the story, "The Red-Headed Beatle of 1,000 B.C.!" we see what they decided to do about it.

Meet Jimmy Olsen, typical American teen. Lost in ginger ecstasy. Wearing a custom-made red-haired Beatle wig. And shaking what his momma gave him.