Superman comics I have owned. Part Three: The Miscellaneous Years.

At last the world can rejoice, as I reach the pulse-pounding climax of my latest feature where I ramble on cluelessly about the Superman comics I had as a child.

We've already had a look at Superman's own mag and Action Comics - but what about all those other comics I had that starred the Big Blue Cheese?

Superman gets his own 100 page spectacular, in possibly the hardest to find comic on the entire Grand Comics Database. Seriously, try to find it. See how long it takes you.

As for the comic, it's one of my faves, as we see Superman help America win The War, not by smashing up the Nazis but by typing fast and fixing an engine. Hitler must have been wetting himself.

Meanwhile, we also meet TNT - who fights crooks by throwing a child at them till he explodes - and The Golden Age Atom who's in the habit of using his observatory to look in through women's windows.

Highlight of the comic is of course the epic tale of Superman Red and Superman Blue.

You can read my review of this magnificently insane comic right here.

Straight after Jimmy Olsen's mag folded, DC launched Superman Family which, logically, started with issue #164.

None of the stories are masterpieces but we do do get to see Jim Mooney's Supergirl fight Brainiac.

You can read my review of this comic right here.

It was the battle that had to happen!

Well, it wasn't really, as it made no sense at all for Marvel and DC's top heroes to meet each other.

Inevitably, Spider-Man got overshadowed by his partner.

More annoyingly, so did Doc Ock who was treated as little more than a dim-witted flunky to Lex Luthor.

You can read my review of this epic right here.

Jimmy Olsen finds himself in a castle full of harpies and sets out to sort them out without Superman's aid.

Needless to say, the self-declared, "Mr Action," ends up needing Superman's aid.

You can read my review of this issue right here.

I don't remember too much about this one. I'm pretty sure Jimmy finds himself in the court of Kublai Khan who thinks Jimmy's Marco Polo or something. There may have been a rhino involved. There might not have been.

This was the last issue of Jimmy Olsen before it transmogrified into the aforementioned Superman Family.

To be honest, I didn't own any issues of Lois Lane.

But my sister did - and that's good enough for me.

Although, the truth is I don't remember too much about them and found the Rose and the Thorn back-up strips far more compelling. This may have been purely because the Thorn wore thigh-length leather boots and Lois Lane didn't.

I think this is the issue where I discovered that Superman shaves by deflecting his super-heat vision off a mirror and back at his own face. I have shaved by using the same method ever since.

I recall nothing of what happens within but who could forget the sight of Superman turning into a tree?

Nice to see Lois on the cover thinking only of herself and not of the actual victim of the catastrophe.

My main memory of this is the tale where a pink monster falls in love with Lois.

Wait till it sees how she reacts when it starts to turn into a tree. Then it'll see the error of its ways. Thigh-length boots! It needs a woman with thigh-length boots!

I seem to remember a  Supergirl story with the same premise as this one. I wonder if it was the same monster?

After all those years, Wonder Woman and Superman finally show some sense and get round to doing some super-canoodling with each other.

Sadly, it all turns out to be a trick to snare some villains.

This is the Tomb of the Unknown Superman.

I'm pretty sure the first Superman comic I ever owned was one I got from a jumble sale at my local community centre. It had no cover and all I can recall of it is that, at one point, Lois Lane hides in a piano. It was also the comic where I first encountered the word, "Invulnerable."

At the same jumble sale, I stuck my hand in a sawdust filled Lucky Dip and came out of it with an Ancient Briton style plastic brooch. I'm sure Tony Robinson's Time Team are green with envy.

But, Reader, if you know what that comic was, please let me know.

Batman and Superman team up to deal with would-be arch-criminal Capricorn, who ultimately escapes them by hiding in the sewers. Because they're made of lead, Superman can't spot him down there.

You'd have thought it might occur to him to think, "I can't see into those sewers, what with them being made of lead. As I can't see Capricorn anywhere else in the city, perhaps I should check inside them."

But it doesn't.

Nor does it occur to Batman either.

Nor the police.

Jimmy Olsen #160. Harpies Bizarre.

To be honest, I don't know that much about Jimmy Olsen. I was never a regular reader of his mag, and the only two issues I ever had were given to me by my dad's then-girlfriend but, on the strength of this issue, Jimmy Olsen seems to be someone you'd happily punch in the mouth.

How much is anyone ever going to warm to a man who keeps telling everyone to call him Mr Action? "Hi, I'm Steve from Steve Does Comics but you can call me Mr Action." It's never going to get you more than funny looks and your head shoved down the nearest toilet.

This issue's first tale starts off like an episode of Scooby Doo, when Olsen shows up at a castle that, like all castles in American comics, has been imported stone-by-stone from England -- only to find it's haunted by harpies. Unlike Scooby Doo, the harpies are real and soon causing all kinds of trouble for Mr Action.

Happily, he soon sorts them out but then decides he's not worthy of being called Mr Action unless he helps them, and so has Superman fly their castle, intact, back to England where they can haunt it forever in peace. Clearly it's the rule in Jimmy Olsen tales that Superman has to show up at some point in order to justify the comic's title of Superman's Pal.

In our second tale, Mr Action - who we're told every hot chick on the planet digs - is being stalked by an old woman called Lena Lawrence who turns out to Lucy Lane after a particularly bothersome bout of native medicine. Lucy's delighted to be reunited with the man she adores but can Jimmy possibly love her now she's not fit any more? Highlight of the tale has to be a bizarre rally in which competitors die with alarming regularity, including one poor biker who somewhat hilariously rides his bike straight off the side of a cliff.

Both tales are appealingly drawn by the mighty Kurt Schaffenberger but you can't ignore the fact they're a bit bubblegum, the first in particular feeling like it could've been published a good ten years earlier. The second tale's stronger, having a mystery and a bit of internal emotional conflict at the heart of it but neither story can get round the unsympathetic nature of its star. In the second tale, Olsen even tries to rough up an old woman who's just saved his life. He might be Mr Action but no way would you ever label him Mr Social Skills.

Superman Family #164.

 The Els, what a dysfunctional family they were, making the Borgias look like the Waltons. In 1974, they finally got their own joint mag - and what a mag it was, featuring a hundred pages of stories, action and special features.

This is the first ever issue. And so, with the kind of logic that exists only in the world of comic book publishing, it's labelled #164. The idea was that each issue would focus on one particular member of the Superman family and, with the sort of logic that got the first issue labelled #164, this debut centres on Jimmy Olsen who isn't in any way shape or form a member of the Superman family. Still, up until this point, the mag had actually been Jimmy Olsen and so clearly some sop to fans of that comic had been felt necessary.

This means that the only new tales in the mag feature Superman's pal, with the rest being reprints. It has to be said the reprints are more interesting than the new stuff, mostly because they're not centred around Olsen. No disrespect to him but he's never going to be as interesting as a bunch of super-beings.

In the first tale, Jimmy investigates when someone starts blowing up his father's orphanage type place. I'm a bit vague as to what the complex in question actually is but, this being the early 1970s, it's full of angry teens who're suspected of being behind the attacks. Needless to say they're not and, with the aid of a psychic, Jimmy captures the real culprit who turns out to be the character who practically had the word "culprit" written all over him from the very first page onwards.

Next up, Supergirl takes on Brainiac in a story that, rarely from the era in question, involves neither weird boyfriends nor our heroine worrying about being unpopular. Clearly, she's unpopular with Brainiac though because he tries to kill her. Even better, from the point of view of dramatic tension, he nearly succeeds. Still, the maid of might's nothing if not resilient and sees off the villain in double-quick time. When she's won, Superman turns up and declares he's been watching her fight from a distance but couldn't get there in time to help her. Given his track record of treating the poor girl like dirt at every opportunity, you half expect him to say he could've got back in time but decided to let her die to teach her a valuable lesson.

Next, Krypto the Superdog becomes a Hollywood star and, his nose put out of joint and acting mainly out of spite, Superboy completely wrecks Krypto's life. Upon being told Superboy was responsible for this, Krypto's delighted and loves him all the more for it, when the correct response would've been for Krypto to go mad and savage Superboy to death.

After this, Jimmy Olsen has an adventure involving a house brick.

Meanwhile, in The Death March, Daily Planet boss Perry White basically sets out to kill his staff in the desert, to prove to a rival publisher that they're willing to die for him. At the tale's denouement, his staff, previously furious with him, are delighted to discover that, although he nearly killed them, he was at least trying to kill them for a good reason - winning a bet.

Finally we get an imaginary tale in which Superman marries the three loves of his life (not all at once) Lois Lane, Lana Lang and Lori Lemaris. Drawing a veil over the fact that Lori Lemaris is a fish and such a marriage would be illegal, it says it all that Superman's directly responsible for the death of each of them - and, for once, he didn't do it to teach them a valuable lesson.

So there you have it, Superboy wrecks Krypto's life, Perry White tries to kill his staff, and Superman marries a fish and gets Lois lane, Lana Lang and Lori Lemaris killed.

So, is the comic any good? Actually it is. There's nothing substantial about it but, featuring plenty of art by the likes of Kurt Schaffenberger and Jim Mooney, it's visually more appealing than a lot of DC's reprint-packed 100 pagers, and all the tales, although reason-defying on a grand scale, are a fun read.

I still wouldn't want any of those people round for dinner though.