James Olsen

James Bartholomew Olsen, more commonly known as Jimmy Olsen, is a photographer and reporter working for the Daily Planet in Metropolis alongside Clark Kent and Lois Lane underneath chief-editor Perry White. He is most well-known as being a close personal friend to Superman, and has a signal watch to call him for help at any time.

History

Origins

James Bartholomew Olsen was born to Jake and Sarah Olsen in Yonkers, NY. His father was in the military and was declared missing in Southeast Asia before Jimmy was born. In the absence of a father figure, Sarah Olsen became extremely protective of her son. His mother ran a newsagents, and he would get up early and collect stories about Metropolis from the paper for a scrapbook.

Jimmy was a very bright child, but sometimes grew bored with his schoolwork. Often, he would cut classes to attend lectures. He got a job as an intern at the Daily Planet while still a junior high school student.

Superman

Jimmy first meets reporter Clark Kent during The Man of Steel while working at the Planet, when Kent is hired after beating Lois Lane to the first interview with Superman. When one of his friend's life was in jeopardy, Jimmy jury-rigged some spare electronic parts to produce a hypersonic sound and attract the attention of Superman. His plan was successful, and Superman arrived to save the day. This led to the invention of his signal watch.

Superman and his supporting cast had their origins rewritten in the Man of Steel series written by John Byrne, following the Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1986. This was part of many sweeping changes made to continuity in the Post-Crisis DC Universe. These stories would be considered the definitive history until his origins were revised again in Superman: Birthright, written by Mark Waid in 2003.

Death of Superman

Jimmy's success grew at the Planet, rising up from a gopher to becoming a photographer and occasional reporter. Shortly before Superman's demise at the hands of Doomsday, Jimmy began freelancing for rival media magnate Collin Thornton of Newstime Magazine. When Superman was killed by Doomsday, it was Jimmy who took the infamous photograph of Superman's ragged cape, fluttering in the wind. This photograph was used as the frontspiece for a special Superman retrospective published by Newstime.

Superman's origins were heavily revised in the Superman: Secret Origin mini-series written by Geoff Johns in 2009; this made the history established by Mark Waid in his 2003 mini-series Superman: Birthright non-canon following Infinite Crisis in 2006. It would remain the definitive origin until 2011 when Flashpoint established the DCnU and Grant Morrison's Action Comics updated the story.

Up, Up and Away

Jimmy ultimately returned to the Daily Planet and took a position as a regular star reporter, replacing the demoted Clark Kent. This caused a strain in the relationship between Clark and Jimmy. In the year following the Infinite Crisis, Clark regained his original role as the Daily Planet's star reporter, and Jimmy returned to being a photographer, winning the Pulitzer Prize for his photographic efforts.

Countdown

Some time after that, Jimmy discovered that he had become a repository for the ambient power of New Gods who had fallen in battle. This caused Jimmy to spontaneously develop super-powers. Each power was drastically different from the other and only manifested at times when Jimmy's life was threatened.

New Krypton

During Superman's prolonged battle against the god-like Atlas, Jimmy witnessed a mysterious individual present at the scene. Investigating further, he discovered that this man was actually Codename: Assassin who had been responsible for murdering Dubbilex and the original Newsboy Legion.

Faking his death with the help of Natasha Irons, he went undercover to find information about the mysterious organization known only as "Project 7734".

Flashpoint

This section of the history takes place during Flashpoint, a massive crossover event set in an alternate timeline to the mainstream DCU. History was completely changed when Professor Zoom finally found a way to erase his nemesis the Flash without harming his own legacy.

After the timeline was altered by Reverse Flash, parts of Jimmy's history were changed dramatically. He and Lois Lane were at the Fashionweek in Paris, France when a huge tidal wave hit the city. Jimmy and Lois tried to escape, but not before Jimmy remained to save a baby and to try to save a man who had fallen. Unfortunately, Jimmy and the man were both killed by the water.

It was later revealed that Jimmy had connections to Cyborg, the National Security Advisor. Jimmy's mission was to open a dialogue with the resistance movement in England.

Powers and abilities

Mutations

Turtle-Boy

Origins of the Turtle-Boy

After an accident involving a sea turtle and a growth ray Jimmy is transformed into a giant turtle monster and is taken control of by an Atlantean supercriminal.

Turtle-Boy's powers

Mutated humanoid turtle form: Jimmy was turned into this form after being hit by a growth-ray that bounced off of a turtle on a beach.

• Super Strength: Jimmy gained great superhuman strength due to being enhanced with the heavy-bodied form of a turtle amplified to giant size; when under the control of an Atlantean supervillain, Jimmy was strong enough to fight SuperMan.
• Geochelone-Aerio DNA: Jimmy's Turtle-Boy form has been enhanced with the DNA of the Geochelone-Aerio species.
  • AeroKinesis: This alien species can open up holes in their chest and can shoot out powerful gusts of wind as a form of offense or defense.
  • Flight: The Aerio's are capable of great speed and maneuverability in the air using their wind-manipulation and by turning their limbs into fan-blades.
  • Mana/Magic immunity: The Aerio species is immune to magic and concentrated mana-panipulation; while it is most functional on magicks from their home universe, it rolls over into a functional protection from nearly any form of directed magical energies.
• Krackalakassian DNA: Jimmy's Turtle-Boy form has been enhanced with the DNA of the Krackalakassian species.
  • Fire-Breath: This alien species is capable of breathing waves of powerful fire capable of burning most normal materials.
  • Two-heads: This species has two head and gives them the advantage of looking a and focusing two different thing at one time, capable of multi-tasking and fighting multiple opponents at one time with great skill.
  • Greatly-enhanced strength: This species demonstrates great physical power and was capable of reasonably challenging the Totally-Awesome Hulk (Amadeus Cho).
• Super-Turtle Exo-Gene:
• Crash Exo-Gene:

Elastic-Lad

Origins of Elastic-Lad

Jimmy gained powers like those of Plastic-Man after spilling a jar of strange liquid that he found in a chest Superman gave him as a gift.

Elastic-Lad's powers

Organic biopolymerized-rubber form: The exotic liquid which induced this mutation altered the molecular composition of Jimmy's body into an organic, malleable, rubber-like substance; the results of this mutation gave him powers basically identical to those of Plastic-Man (Patrick O'Brian).

• Stretching:
• Superhuman strength:
• Invulnerability:
• Size alteration:
• Density control:
• Superhuman agility:
• Regeneration: Just like Plastic-Man, Elastic-Lad can regenerate his biomass from the most devastating injuries and pull the pieces of his body together even when he has been reduced to dust.
• Mr. Fantastic Exo-Gene:
• Plastic-Man Exo-Gene:

Doomsday form

Origins of Jimmy's Doomsday form

In the All-Star Superman alternate-reality, Jimmy injects himself with a serum that transformed him into the monster Doomsday so that he could take down a Black-Kryptonite-infected Superman.

Jimmy's Doomsday form's powers

Doomsday form: In the All-Star SuperMan, SuperMan is temporarily turned evil and insane by exposure to Black-Kryptonite and Jimmy injects himself with a serum which changed him into a copy of the monster Doomsday so that he'd have the strength to subdue him.

• Titanic Strength: In Doomsday's form, Jimmy was granted the near-matchless strength of the fearsome monster that once killed SuperMan. The thing that is most notable about Jimmy's physical power in this form is that he was able to subdue and restrain a Black-Kryptonite-infected SuperMan without killing him or dying in the process himself; this is particularly impressive since in the All-Star SuperMan universe, Kal-El is dying because his powers have been amplified to the point that they are burning out his body and his power levels are well beyond what they were during the original SuperMan/Doomsday clash.
• Eyebeams: Jimmy gained powerful eyebeams which he used in his assault on the crazed SuperMan and these beams were enough to severely hurt SuperMan during their clash.

Kryptonian form

Origins of Jimmy's Kyrptonian form

Jimmy's Kryptonian form's powers

Kryptonian physiology: In the Justice-League: The Nail alternate-universe, Lex Luthor gene-spliced many human test subjects with samples of Kal-El's DNA in an attempt to replicate SuperMan's powers; all of the test subjects died shortly after the experiments, aside from Jimmy Olsen. In this form, Jimmy has all of the powers of SuperMan on an equal level and was able to fully match him in direct combat.

• Solar-radiation absorption: Like all Kryptonians, Jimmy has the power to absorb solar-radiation and use it to fuel an array of advanced super-powers. Jimmy's abilities can vary depending on the form of solar-energy: Red stars, like Krypton's sun Rao, does not provide intense enough energy to empower a Kryptonian; yellow stars, like Terra's sun Sol, provides powerful enough energy to power a Kryptonian to an "average" level; and much higher-leveled stars, such as blue stars, greatly enhance the base-level of Kryptonians and can even provide additional super-powers.
• Superhuman strength: Kryptonians have demonstrated vast superhuman strength and are capable of moving and manipulating planet-sized quantites of matter. Feats: SuperMan has matched and defeated beings as strong as Darkseid and Doomsday in physical combat, lifted and flown a colossal pyramid from Terra to Mars, pushed Terra away from Sol with the aid of the Green-Lantern while resisting the StarBreaker at the same time, shattered planets with singular strikes, compressed lumps of coal into diamonds and ground diamonds into dust in his grasp, and pulled a dozen planets through space with a titanic chain.
  • Thunderclap:
  • Super-leaping: By using their powerful leg muscles, Kryptonians can jump to tremendous heights and cover incredible distances by using their sheer strength.
  • Super-Breath: By drawing in vast quantities of air and breathing it back out, Kryptonians can create immensely powerful hurricane-force winds.
    • Freeze-Breath: Kryptonians can super-chill their breath using Joule-Thomson expansion to produce sub-zero temperatures and create ice by freezing atmospheric moisture.
    • Vacuum-Breath: Kryptonians can draw in huge amounts of air in order to suck things into their lungs. Example: They can breathe in large clouds of gas or neutralize a tornado by inhaling it.
• Invulnerability: Due to his dense cellular structure and the Kryptonian bio-electrical aura, Jimmy is under most circumstances immune to most forms of damage. Feats: such as piercing and cutting damage, energy attacks, blunt-force trauma, the vacuum of space, explosions of many types, falls from great heights, and virtually all known toxins and diseases on Terra. SuperMan has shown feats of durability like flying through the interior of Sol, being unharmed by nuclear explosions, battling beings of titanic strength with little damage, and surviving an explosions equal to 50 supernovas after being weakened by red-sunlight exposure.
  • Enhanced bio-aura: Kryptonians can willfully strengthen their bio-electric aura for short periods of time to protect themselves from even stronger attacks than normal, but they can endanger themselves if they push their bio-aura too far.
• Superhuman speed:
  • Superhuman agility:
  • Superhuman reflexes:
  • Dimensional-travel:
    • Time-travel:
• Self-sustenance: As long as he is continuously refueled by solar-energy, Jimmy has no need to eat, drink, breathe, sleep, rest, or excrete. His cells replenish and rejuvenate themselves so he does not need to intake proteins, water, or other forms of food in order to survive. He does not need to breathe and can survive in the vacuum of space and underwater for near-indefinite periods of time.
  • Regeneration: Jimmy's Kryptonian biology can heal from nearly any injury as long as he has sufficient solar-energy to sustain him.
  • Superhuman stamina: He can perform physical actions at peak-level for days or weeks at a time without sleep, rest or exhaustion. Kryptonians have even gone toe-to-toe with monsters such as Doomsday for hours at a time in a complete physical stalemate.
  • Agelessness: His cells are constantly replenishing and renewing themselves without limit, maintaining themselves in prime condition for near-indefinite periods. In many universes, Kryptonians have lived for tens of thousands of years with no sign of aging past their physical prime.
• Super-intelligence:
  • Photographic-memory:
• Energy generation/manipulation:
  • Flight:
  • Heat-Vision:
  • Super-Flare: Kryptonians can expel all of the solar-energy currently stored in their cells as a massive, powerful, omnidirectional explosive-blast. This is usually a weapon-of-last-resort and disables their superpowers for a 24-hour period until they can replenish their energy reserves.
  • Super-empowerment:
• Super-Senses:
  • Super-Vision
    • ElectroMagnetic-Spectrum Vision:
    • Telescopic-Vision:
    • Microscopic-Vision:
    • X-Ray Vision:
    • Thermal-Vision:
  • Super-Hearing:
  • Super-Smell:

Accountable

Origins of Accountable

In the Earth 2 alternate-reality, Jimmy was mutated by merging with two Mother-Boxes and gained various powers, such as hyper-intelligence, technopathy, flight, and the other powers of a Mother-Box.

Accountable's powers

Mother-Box bonding:

Genie form

Origins of Jimmy's genie form

After being taken to the Arabian desert by Superman and uncovering an ancient tomb, Jimmy find a magic lamp and ends up switching place with the genie, the adventure resulted in Jimmy gaining the powers and restrictions of a genie for a short time.

Jimmy's genie form's powers

Genie physiology: After switching places with the Genie of the Lamp, Jimmy gained the genie's magical powers but was also subject to the lamp's control.

• Wish granting: Jimmy had to obey the bidding of the holder of the genie lamp and could use his magic to achieve a vast variety of effects.
• Kryptonite transformation: While being controlled by the genie, Jimmy used his new genie powers to turn into Kryptonite to destroy the SuperMan robot when the genie wished for Jimmy to destroy SuperMan.
• Money manifestation: When the genie wished for Jimmy to make him rich, Jimmy interpreted the wish to create a rain of silver coins to hurt the genie.

Super-Brain

Origins of the Super-Brain

Professor Potter put Jimmy in a machine that sped up his evolution by a million years, the results of the experiment gave Jimmy hyper-intelligence and it was later demonstrated that he had Kryptonite-vision.

Super-Brain's powers

Hyper-evolved human physiology: Jimmy's exposure to the evolution ray gave him the body, mind, and powers of a human a million years in the future.

• Hyper-intelligence: Jimmy has gained the mind of a human enhanced by a million years of evolution. Jimmy was able to calculate instabilities in the Earth and have SuperMan fix them in order to prevent the world from exploding.
• Kryptonite-Vision: Jimmy was able to threaten SuperMan into compliance with his orders with his power to generate beams of Kryptonite radiation from his eyes.
• Anti-gravity rays: Jimmy gained the power to generate streams of anti-gravitons from his hands and he used his power to intimidate some people who did not listen to him after he gained his hyper-evolved powers.

Human-Porcupine

Origins of the Human-Porcupine

After spurning the affections of a 5D imp, Jimmy was stricken with quills growing from all over his body as retribution.

The Human-Porcupine's powers

Spike-covered form:

Speed-Demon

Origins of the Speed-Demon

Jimmy consumed a potion made by Professor Claude and gained Speed-Force powers for a while.

Speed-Demon's powers

Speed-Force conduit: Professor Claude's potion mutated Jimmy's cells to be able to conduct and channel energy from the Speed-Force, giving him a variety of powers based on speed and motion; this mutation gave him powers very similar to those of the Flashes, such as Barry Allen and Wally West.

• Limitless speed:
  • Infinite-Mass Punch:
• Superhuman strength: Originally used by Jai West, Jimmy could channel the Speed-Force through his body and cause rapid-growth in his muscle, temporarily giving him super-strength but reducing his stamina and endurance.
• Phasing: Speed-Force users can move through solid objects by vibrating their body on a molecular-level.
• Helicopter flight:
• Vortex creation:
• Speed-Force aura:
• Speed-Force shield: Originally used by Savitar, Speed-Force users can reflect objects away from themselves by redirecting their motion.
• Speed-Force healing: Speedsters can regenerate themselves from grievous wounds by using the power of the Speed-Force to accelerate the natural healing of their bodies and sustain their lifeforce without rapidly aging them. This can be used to heal others by speeding up their own healing powers without speeding up their aging process.
• Speed distribution:
• Speed absorption:
  • Speed-draining blasts: Copied from the Lady Flash of Earth-33, Jimmy can cast blasts of electrokinetic-energy which drain the motion from the things they strike.

Human-Octopus

Origins of the Human-Octopus

After eating a alien fruit, Jimmy grew two additional pairs of arms.

The Human-Octopus's powers

Mutated multi-armed form:

Human-FlameThrower

Origins of the Human-FlameThrower

Jimmy gained the ability to breath extremely intense fire after accidentally destroying a jar filled with mutated heat-generating fireflies and is exposed to a mutagenic gas.

The Human-FlameThrower's powers

Flame-breathing:

Super-Nose

Origins of the Super-Nose

Jimmy gains a superpowered nose after being sprayed with an altered nasal spray that gives him a highly-advanced sense of smell and cause his nose to grow in reaction to a lie.

Super-Nose's powers

Jovian form

Origins of Jimmy's Jovian form

Scientists transformed Jimmy into a member of their species to test whether they could survive on Earth, he was given their natural powers of telepathy which he used to secure great news stories and the transformation last for on Jovian week.

Jimmy's Jovian form's power

Jovian physiology: Jimmy was transformed into a member of the Jovian species, a race of reptilian humanoids from the planet Jupiter.

• Telepathy: Jimmy gained the Jovian's natural telepathic powers as a result of his transformation, Jimmy used with powers for the next several days to get the scoops of several high-profile news stories.
• Marvel-universe Jovian DNA: Jimmy's Jovian form has been enhanced with the DNA of the Jovian species from the Marvel universe.
  • Enhanced Telepathy: The combination of the Marvel and DC universe Jovian DNA's has combined their inherent telepathic powers, creating a far more powerful telepath than either individual species is capable of alone.
  • Shape-shifting: The Jovian species has highly-capable shape-shifting abilities, best demonstrated when the Jovian of the Great-Society turned himself into a large monstrous creature during his team's battle with the Illuminati.
  • Superhuman strength: This alien species has great super-strength, best demonstrated by the Jovian during the clash between the Great-Society and the Illuminati of Earth-616.

Radioactive-Boy

Origins of the Radioactive-Boy

Jimmy started generating radiation after being knocked into a pile of radioactive materials at the opening of a nuclear plant.

Radioactive-Boy's powers

Irradiated form:

• Superhuman strength:
• Force-fields:
• Invulnerability:
• Invisibility:
• Bio-fission:
• Size addition:
• Radiation manipulation:
  • Radiation absorption:
  • Atomic-energy blasts:
  • Matter disintegration:
  • Nuclear-explosions:
  • Electromagnetic-pulse generation:
  • Flesh melting:

Gorilla form/Congorilla form

Origins of Jimmy's Gorilla form

Jimmy's Gorilla form's powers

Gorilla physiology:

Origins of Jimmy's Congorilla form

Using the Ring of Congo Bill, Jimmy switches minds with the Congorilla and uses his powers to apprehend a gang.

Jimmy's Congorilla form's powers

Congorilla form:

WereWolf form

Origins of Jimmy's werewolf form

After drinking a weird potion he found Jimmy is transformed into a werewolf every night until he can get a pretty girl to kiss him.

Jimmy's werewolf form's powers

WereWolf physiology:

Picture-animation

Origins of Jimmy's picture-animation

Jimmy was given the power to animate pictures by a Indian medicine-man named Great-Cloud.

Jimmy's picture-animation powers

Image materialization:

Beard-growing

Origins of Jimmy's beard-growth

A group of beard enthusiasts give Jimmy a serum that induces hyper-accelerated beard-growth and they planned on using him so that they could make beards more socially acceptable.

Jimmy's beard-growth powers

Accelerated beard-growth:

Equipment

• Snap:
  • The Amazing Camera: One of Jimmy's cameras that was altered by exposure to exotic energies from a failed experiment attempted by Professor Potter. The energies gave the camera the ability to draw in objects that it has photographed. It was originally destroyed during a fight between Jimmy and a criminal who tried to steal the camera to use it to help him in his thieving exploits, the remains of the camera were incorporated into Jimmy's new hyper-advanced camera.
  • SCP-978:
• Invisibility-Belt
• Mind-Jewel