I. The late great Bronze Age
Here I want to use DC superheroes from the Bronze Age to give instances of the 16 types. I want to do this because of all the eras of comics, I like the Bronze Age (which spans the years 1970 to 1990) the best, and this is mainly because the Bronze is the one that I grew up with.
As to when that Age began and ended, opinions differ. My view is that the beginning can be traced back to Neal Adams' debut on Batman and Green Lantern / Green Arrow; the end, to the publication of three first issues from Marvel: Jim Lee's X-Men #1, Rob Liefeld's X-Force #1 and Todd McFarlane's Spiderman #1. Lee, Liefeld and McFarlane ushered in a new style of comic book art, and after they had left Marvel to found Image, comic books officially entered the Chromium Age (or whatever you want to call it). In addition, the first appearance of Wizard magazine, which became the industry bible of the 1990s, also marks the passing of the age from Bronze to Chromium.
Some authorities believe that the Bronze Age ended around the time of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns and Killing Joke. I cannot agree, but I do agree that the DC saw a change in tone after Crisis. DC declined in the late eighties, and the decline can be attributed not only to the damage to continuity wrought by Crisis, but also to the departure of old pros and fan favourites such as Curt Swan and Don Newton.
To me, after 1985 or so, the company no longer felt like my DC any more. DC, to my mind, was better in the first half of the eighties: every DC superhero title published in 1981 I regard as compulsory reading, every title in 1988 not so much. In much the same way, Marvel suffered in the last years of the eighties - in particular, in the years right after Jim Shooter's firing. Bronze Age Marvel and DC in the last few years of the eighties both underwent a Ragnarok, a twilight of the gods.
Objectively, much of Marvel and DC then seems better now, and I am sure that many of my readers can point out some hidden gems in DC's catalogue in that period; but I am here recording my impressions of DC at that time. My youthful evaluation was confirmed when I recently read some of the Celebration of 75 years DC anthologies (Aquaman: A Celebration of 75 years, Wonder Woman: A Celebration of 75 years etc.); the stories in these take a turn for the worse after 1985, and by the nineties and 2000s, are truly woeful. It is true that DC ensured that the stories of its flagship characters Superman and Batman were of a high quality and consistency throughout late 1980s and early 1990s, but in that same time period, it neglected its second-stringers (Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Captain Marvel, the Flash, Green Lantern...).
II. Are DC heroes boring?
Taylor at Zombies Ruin Everything wrote a piece entitled 'DC Heroes are Hard to Type'. Of the 16 heroes here, five of them have been typed by Taylor, and I will be linking back to his profiles of them, but what is of interest here is why he did not type more: why does he find DC heroes so difficult? He implies that this is because DC heroes, in comparison to Marvel, are dull. Are they?
In order to type these heroes, you need to wade through their early appearances, and for Justice League members Green Lantern, the Flash, Hawkman, the Atom, Elongated Man, Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter, their first appearances were published in the fifties and sixties - the Silver Age. And you will find these Silver Age stories hard going. They make dull reading, such that I found slogging through them a real chore. Gardner Fox's and Mike Sekowsky's run on the Justice League offends the most. Denny O'Neil and Mike Friedrich rescued the title, but by that time (1968), the Silver Age was all but over.
In relation to this, after typing the Justice League, I have noticed that most of the characters at the front and center are what Keirsey calls Guardians - stolid and reliable types: that is, ISTJs, ESTJs, ISFJs, ESFJs. The presence of so many Guardians explains why the JLA was such a conservative - but dull - book for so many years. It only became interesting after two Artisan characters (see below) were introduced as series regulars, and this is no coincidence.
III. Why these characters?
Here I have chosen one character for each personality type: I wanted to avoid doubling up on types. But that means I have left out a few important DC superheroes (which I may fit into a future installment).
Why did I choose these particular characters?
The first of my criteria is that the character must either be a superhero or an associate of a superhero: DC published many non-superhero titles in the Bronze Age - in the horror, Western, romance, fantasy and war genres - and I wanted to avoid these. That means, then, that DC standbys such as Sergeant Rock, the Unknown Soldier, the Warlord, and Jonah Hex will be excluded.
The second criterion is that the character must have had their own series, even if it was a back-up or filler. (All the characters I have typed here, including Black Canary, had either their own title or back-up run). Does the character have his own adventures, sub-plots, supporting cast? Can the character stand on his own? If so, this helps me get a grip on him, whereas characters who appear only in team books present me with a great deal of difficulty. The majority of the heroes in the Legion of Superheroes (which has a big roster) cannot be distinguished from another, and as such, I cannot type them.
I have here grouped the characters into what Socionics calls Quadras, that is, types who share the same four functions in their MBTI stack. The Quadras concept sheds light on values that certain types have in common, and I think it is useful here.
IV. The Alphas - SFJs and NTPs
Superman - ESFJ
Typed by Taylor here. The character needs no introduction.
MBTI explains why Superman is such a down to earth and comfortable character despite having the powers of a god.
Extraverted Feeling gives a character regard for the others around him - the well-being of the collective - whereas Introverted Sensing means that the character makes a character pay attention to the near at hand and small details. In combination, the two functions Fe and Si add up to a credo of 'Love those closest to you', which is what makes ESFJ male characters great parents and family men.
Superman's powers do not work against magic, and not coincidentally, Introverted Intuition - the function most commonly associated with the supernatural - occupies the vulnerable function slot in the ESFJ type (see Socionics).
The Atom / Raymond Palmer - INTP
Ray Palmer, a nuclear physicist, harnesses the power of a dwarf star meteor and uses it to shrink himself - to the atomic and sub-atomic levels. The INTP stock type is the quiet and shy mad scientist - think Bruce Banner, Peter Parker, Hank Pym - who is rather squeamish of violence and force.
The INTP is an Intuitive, and as such, he disregards the sensory. He lives in a world of abstractions and ideas and seeks to go beyond the physical. Hence, he shows a creative flair.
The Flash / Barry Allen - ISFJ
A shy and humble man with a quirky sense of humour, Barry Allen works as a police scientist and one evening, while in his laboratory, he is struck by lightning which gives him the power of super-speed.
The ISFJ character feels contented regarding his station in life - he is happy with his lot - and this complacency can be a source of dissatisfaction in those around him. Barry Allen, being disorganised, is frequently impunctual, and is called by his girlfriend Iris West the 'slowest man alive' (this is ironic, as she does not know he is secretly the Flash). Again, the Socionics concept of the vulnerable function plays a role here: the ISFJ's type is Extraverted Thinking (Te), that is, organisational and business logic, and this helps explains why Barry is so impunctual and disordered.
Iris subtly bullies Barry quite a lot in the Silver Age issues, and this is another trait of ISFJ characters: they are put upon by others (until they explode).
The Elongated Man / Ralph Dibny - ENTP
As a youth, Ralph Dibny aspired to be a contortionist, and as an adult, he discovers a drink called Gingold which gives one stretching power. Like other stretching heroes Plastic Man and Mr Fantastic, the Elongated Man can assume wild and unpredictable shapes. After becoming super-powered, he sets himself up as a detective. His nose starts twitching uncontrollably whenever a mystery is afoot.
Clearly, he is an Intuitive, and an Extravert as well. Dibny wears a mask in his first appearances as the Elongated Man, but discards it and makes his identity public because he desires fame.
NTPs such as the Elongated Man and Sherlock Holmes make good detectives because their Introverted Thinking (Ti) and Extraverted Intuition (Ne) work in combination, allowing them to scent out possibilities and discover the operating principles behind all things.
VI. The Betas - NFJs and STPs
Wonder Woman / Diana Prince - ENFJ
Typed by Taylor here. Another character who needs no introduction. In her first appearances in the Golden Age, her creator William Marston Moulton used her series as a vehicle for propaganda. Marston upheld a rather strange philosophy on how the sexes should behave to one another, and it permeates every single Wonder Woman story he wrote. The philosophy is ubiquitous, and so is bondage - Wonder Woman and other female characters are tied up or bound in chains in every story as well. The unique preoccupations of her creator set Wonder Woman apart from other female superheroes.
Fe-dominant characters can give the impression of being bossy and overbearing, and this is true of Wonder Woman in the Golden Age years. By the time comics entered the Silver Age, she gradually becomes more refined, and at this point, what Keirsey calls the 'Idealist' aspect of the ENFJ type reveals itself. Like the ESFJ, the ENFJ loves those around them, but unlike the ESFJ, the ENFJ loves them in the abstract. The Introverted Intuition in the ENFJ type allows them to perceive beyond the immediate and into the transcendant - the world of ideals and absolutes. Hence Wonder Woman's giving speeches to the UN.
The Huntress / Helena Wayne - ISTP
The Huntress character comes in two iterations: one of them, the post-Crisis version (Helena Bertinelli) is typed by Taylor here. The first Huntress was created by Joe Staton and Paul Levitz in the seventies and was killed off in the eighties as part of the Crisis- event.
Helena Wayne, the daughter of the Earth-Two Batman and Catwoman, takes up the superhero mantle after her mother is framed for a crime she did not commit. After Catwoman dies at the hands of a criminal, Bruce Wayne - now retired as Batman - sinks into a depression while his daughter vows revenge. (In a strange development, the Earth-2 Bruce Wayne replaces Jim Gordon as Gotham's police commissioner, and on coming out of retirement as Batman for one last time, is electrocuted by a super-villain).
A beautiful brunette with long flowing hair and a knack for martial arts and weaponry, the Huntress recalls another ISTP female, Elektra. Like Elektra, Huntress fights male characters and usually endures a beating at their hands - which may make readers of today's sensibilities uncomfortable - but, like the true ISTP 'bad girl' she is, she overcomes whatever is thrown against her.
Madame Xanadu - INFJ
A minor character who headlines in a few horror / supernatural titles in the late seventies and early eighties and later teams up with superheroes such as Wonder Woman and Superman, Madame Xanadu lives in Greenwich Village, New York. I will reproduce here some evocative passages from her entry in DC's Who's Who #14:
A sign on the front door of the Christy Street shop reads 'Enter freely - unafraid'. The door always seems locked to those who are just wandering by, giving it a curious glance, but for those troubled by things beyond the ken of this world, the door is always open, no matter what the time, and Madame Xanadu waits within and greets them by name.
She waits, ready to listen, near a small round table where her Tarot cards lie. The frightened travelers, coming inside, are surrounded by a comforting scent of mint-jasmine, and a curious collection of crystal jars, magical artifacts of all types, and endless rows of books with ancient bindings containing a wealth of esoteric knowledge.
The INFJ stock type performs the function of prophet or counselor: Madame Xanadu, to quote Who's Who, 'Is only allowed to advise, and hope that the subject can see to the core of his dilemma, and can bring his own determination to bear in resisting its influence'. Introverted Intuition Ni allows the INFJ to see the future and Extraverted Feeling compels the INFJ to share those insights with humanity.
Interestingly, Madame Xanadu's Ni perceives bad events happening in the future, not good - like Cassandra. Her task then becomes one of using her powers to avert danger to others. Who's Who again: 'Madame Xanadu's parlor is filled with artifacts that can be used as weapons, and books of knowledge that contain even greater power', but 'She can only collect the evils that are left over afterward, and keep them hidden away until the day when they no longer have any power over this world'.
Lois Lane - ESTP
Typed by Taylor, she needs no introduction.
Lois Lane appeared in her own book Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane, which ran from 1958 to 1974, and then in the anthology series Superman Family, which ran from 1974 to 1982, and of course she turns up in other Superman titles from that period. Like Jimmy Olsen, she is featured a lot in the DC Bronze Age universe, and like Jimmy Olsen, she today gets little credit for her long service as a staple character - too few of her solo stories are reprinted.
The stock ESTP character is more often than not a bruiser and a brawler: see Thor, Lobo, Conan the Barbarian... When you, as a writer, need to portray an ESTP woman, and moreover, an ESTP woman without super powers or great fighting ability (but Lois is adept in the Kryptonian martial art of Klurkor), you are faced with a challenge: how do you do it? The answer is that you give that character tenacity and vivacity as well as a certain slyness and cunning. You add force, wilfulness, territoriality (Extraverted Sensing Se) to systems analysis (Introverted Thinking Ti).
Lois Lane has been romantically involved with Superman almost since her first appearance, but Socionics tells us that Lois' type ESTP does not make a good match with Superman's ESFJ. Socionics calls that relationship one of Request, which you can read more about here. Lois, from the point of view of Socionics, would have been better off with an INFJ, but INFJs are in short supply in the DC Bronze Age universe, and so, in order to find one, she would be best advised to cross over into the Marvel universe: there she could meet Professor X or the Silver Surfer or the Vision.
VII. The Gammas - NTJs and SFPs
Batman - INTJ
Typed by Taylor here.
The vast majority of INTJs in Bronze Age Marvel and DC are villains; INTJ heroes do exist, but are rare.
Something that all INTJ heroes (or anti-heroes) have in common is this: they prefer to use as a base of operations dark and enclosed environments which are cluttered. That is true of Batman, Walter White, Doctor Strange, Jason Blood (of DC's The Demon)... The strangeness of the INTJ's milieu - often the cluttered environments are filled with curious objects - reflects the strangeness of the INTJ's inner world.
The dark and cluttered Batcave presents a contrast with the bright and spacious Fortress of Solitude. Interestingly, Socionics says that the relationship between an INTJ (Batman) and an ESFJ (Superman) is one of Conflict.
Green Arrow / Oliver Queen - ESFP
Green Arrow first appeared in the 1940s as a Batman clone who had his own Arrow Car, etc., and this version of Arrow - who lasted through the Golden Age and Silver - I would probably type as an ESTJ. But, by the late sixties, Denny O'Neill changed the character's look and personality type: Oliver Queen became 'Ollie'. Extraverted, friendly, and given to emotional outbursts - much like his Marvel counterpart Hawkeye - Green Arrow was transformed into an ESFP. A street-level character, he became obsessed with social issues, and this obsession made him a good fit with the times. Some classify his politics as ultra-liberal, but I do not think he subscribes to any particular ideology. Ollie acts like Ollie because of his personality type. Gulenko writes that '[The ESFP's] strong point lies in his ability to rally a large group of people against something', and this is something that Ollie does a lot. Some find this trait of Ollie's overbearing and they regard him as sanctimonious. But the debut of Ollie signified a real change - a sixties change - from the run of the mill DC hero.
As an ESFP, Green Arrow belongs in what Keirsey calls the 'Artisan' category. Many Artisan heroes tend to be skilled with melee weapons such as bows, crossbows, staves, swords, daggers.
Black Canary / Dinah Laurel Lance - ISFP
The original Black Canary appeared as a companion to Johnny Thunder in the 1940s. A thief and an anti-heroine, I would type this iteration of the Canary as an ESTP - like Catwoman, who she much resembled. After reforming, she became a conventional heroine. By the 1960s, she had been shuffled off to Earth-2 - like all of DC's Golden Age characters - but towards the late sixties she made the unusual step of crossing over from Earth-2 to Earth-1.
At least, that is what we thought. In an elaborate and bizarre retcon, DC made the Earth-2 Canary the daughter of the Earth-1; she had been brainwashed into thinking that she was her own mother (the original Canary was kept, along with her husband Larry Lance, in suspended animation in another dimension).
Unlike the original Canary, the successor had a super-power - a sonic scream (like Banshee's from the X-Men) - which she gained after travelling to Earth-1 and joining the Justice League. Denny O'Neill was responsible for this change, as well as the change from Oliver Queen to Ollie.
Canary, by the time of O'Neill and Adams' groundbreaking Green Arrow / Green Lantern run, formed a relationship with the easygoing and cheerful Green Arrow. But she remained - like many an Introverted Feeling-dominant (Fi) female character - an aloof individualist bent on pursuing a path of self-discovery, and this made her relationship with Arrow stormy. As in the case with Green Arrow, her attitudes come less from politics than personality type. In many of her appearances, Black Canary often is shown riding a motorcycle into the sunset, an act that symbolises her type's appetite for freedom.
Fi-dominant characters can give the impression of being cold, icy, withdrawn, and prone to making categorical value judgments. Black Canary is no exception.
An Artisan character is usually skilled with melee weaponry, but the Bronze Age Canary does not wield any weapons; but she is a skilled martial artist.
Batgirl / Barbara Gordon - ENTJ
Typed by Taylor here.
Barbara Gordon is created by Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino and makes her first appearance in the Batman title; she goes on to appear in her own solo stories in the late sixties. A number of these were penciled by the great artist Gil Kane. By the seventies and eighties, the artists Don Heck and Jose Delbo become most commonly associated with Batgirl, and it is their stories which helped make Batgirl a distinctive character.
The ENTJ personality type, like the INTJ, more frequently plays the villain than the hero in Bronze Age comics. I can only think of one major hero character other than Batgirl who is an ENTJ: Namor, the Sub-Mariner.
Why are ENTJ heroes rare? In comics, the Extraverted-Thinking dominant type more often than not wants to rule the world, or at least his portion of it, and if that Te-dominant has Introverted Intuition as a secondary function (which the ENTJ has), then he has the gift of forward-planning, assessing probabilities. This makes him a mastermind stock type, and the standard superhero is not suited to that role. Why? The ENTJ type is by nature a politician, a ruler of men, who has far-sighted vision, and most superheroes are not politicians; Barbara Gordon, who served as a Congresswoman, is the exception to the rule.
Like all the members of the Batman family, Batgirl possesses great martial arts ability; but the real focus of her talents lies in her intuition - like Batman and Nightwing, she is an Intuitive, and an Introverted Intuitive at that. To my mind, one area in which her Introverted Intuition (Ni) manifests itself is in her photographic memory, which is one of her unique skills.
VIII. The Deltas - STJs and NFPs
Green Lantern / Hal Jordan - ESTJ
Writer John Broome and artist Gil Kane created Hal Jordan in 1959 and constructed for him an extremely well-thought and detailed world, which the Green Lantern series has traded off for sixty years.
As we know, Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams revamped the character and took him from the Silver Age into the Bronze. After Adams' departure, Mike Grell and Joe Staton were the artists associated with Bronze Age Hal, and British artist Dave Gibbons did a memorable run in the 1980s.
Hal Jordan left the series and handed over his power ring to John Stewart after Crisis. Appropriately, the title concluded in 1988 - right towards the end of the Bronze Age - after thirty years.
The ESTJ type is a Sensor, not an Intuitive. I wrote before that usually the Intuitive character is associated with strange, usually mystical, powers. Given that the power ring gives its wearers these odd powers, cannot the case be made that Hal Jordan is an Intuitive, not a Sensor?
The answer is no. Jordan uses the ring to make force objects: clubs, hammers, buzzsaws, eggbeaters, propellers... The energy blasts the ring emits are concussive in nature, much like Cyclops' or Starfires' (both Sensors). If you read the adventures of Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern, you will see that the power ring's effects were much more ethereal for Scott, who was not a Sensor.
Taylor writes that the ESTJ male character is a college jock. That designation fits Hal Jordan, who is handsome, athletic, two-fisted, occasionally hot-tempered but always likeable and even charismatic.
Zatanna - INFP
A sorceress character who first appeared in the Silver Age, Zatanna is the daughter of Zatara, a Mandrake the Magician clone. In the early sixties, she teams up with a number of Silver Age heroes in order to find her father, who has gone missing. As it turns out, he is being held captive by an old enemy in another dimension. After rescuing him - with the help of Green Lantern - Zatanna goes on to join the Justice League, and change her costume several times - with controversial results.
Zatanna reminds me of another sorceress character, Marvel's Scarlet Witch, who is another INFP. One of the distinguishing traits of so many INFP characters is that many of them have a mysterious parentage: they and other characters do not know their true parents are. Usually they are orphaned or adopted, or the person they think is their real father or mother is not. This is the case with Marvel's Nightcrawler, the X Files' Fox Mulder, Star Wars' Luke Skywalker, DC's Mister Miracle... In the late seventies, Zatanna and the Justice League, in a multi-story arc, go on a quest to find her real mother, who supposedly died in an accident when Zatanna was a child, only to discover that her mother is a member of a mutant species (called the 'Magi') and still alive in another dimension.
Another trait of the INFP is that they are always searching for freedom and self-actualisation: as Mister Miracle declares, 'Let me be Scott Free - and find myself'. The INFP character's introversion makes this a solitary pursuit, and the INFP's being an Intuitive and a Feeler forces the character to ignore the present reality and focus on the bright horizons - much like Luke Skywalker in the first half of Star Wars (1977).
Hawkman / Katar Hol - ISTJ
Like Green Lantern and the Flash, the Hawkman of the Silver Age is modeled after a Golden Age character, the first Hawkman, Carter Hall. But whereas the creators of the Golden Age Hawkman took inspiration from the occult for his origin story - he is the reincarnation of an Egyptian prince - the creators of the Silver Age Hawkman took it from science-fiction: Katar Hol, a lawman from the planet Thanager, travels to Earth along with his wife Shayera to study Earth law-enforcement methods. For some reason, he uses medieval Earth weapons such as the mace and the crossbow, and gladiator weapons of ancient Rome such as the cestus (spiked boxing gloves) and the net. All this combines to make Katar (in the words of artist George Perez) a 'great visual' and a joy to draw, but as a character, Katar is one of the dullest in the DC universe. The great Joe Kubert gives the first Hawkman stories some real atmosphere, but after Kubert, the pedestrian Murphy Anderson takes over the reins and makes Hawkman workmanlike and dull - and a perfect fit for Silver Age DC. In the Bronze Age, Hawkman appears as a regular in the Justice League series and as a guest in team-up books such Brave and the Bold; he also appears as the lead in back-up features and his own solo titles (which never caught on).
The question is why this was so. Part of the reason is that DC never lavished the same attention on world-building for Hawkman as they did on, say, Green Lantern; in the same way, Marvel neglected the X-Men after the first few issues by Lee and Kirby, such that the series was in danger of being canceled by the mid-seventies.
But I think the answer lies in Hawkman's being an ISTJ, a personality type which, in comics, usually is the dull background character who is officious but makes things work. Such a character can succeed in drawing the attention of readers only if the world live in is a crazy and off-kilter one - like Judge Dredd's (Dredd is an ISTJ) - and such a setting only highlights the virtues of the stolid and reliable ISTJ type. As it is, the strait-laced Kater is used as a comic foil to the more unconventional and gregarious members of the Justice League (Green Arrow, then Blue Beetle).
The creators of the Golden Age Hawkman more or less stole his look from the Flash Gordon characters the Hawkmen of Mongo (who first appeared in the Flash Gordon comic strip in the early 1930s); and they swiped art from another 1930s strip, Prince Valiant. The consequence is that by the seventies the Hawkman character looked and felt old-fashioned, an impression heightened by the fact that his Thanagarian rocket ship looked like a space craft left over from the 1950s. Hawkman, unlike nearly every other DC hero, was never given a makeover to make him more suitable for the 1970s and 1980s.
To their credit, DC did try. In the 1980s, they re-launched Hawkman in a pair of limited series which ran from 1985 to 1987; Tony Isabella and Richard Howell did most of the writing and pencilling respectively. Many Hawkman fans regard this arc as Hawkman's finest, but it did make a change to the Hawkman mythos in a major way (and not for the better): the Thanagarians became a race of evil manipulators and schemers - much like the Romulans in Star Trek - and Hawkman's antagonists, and this was not what Katar Hol's creators intended. The theme of the outsider superhero locked in struggle against his own evil, world-conquering race could have been a compelling one had it been there from Hawkman's beginning, but it wasn't - in Hawkman's origin story, the Thanarians were as benevolent as the Kryptonians. And once you as a writer have a hero or a heroic race commit evil acts for which there is no redemption, then you have left them with no going back - which is what the writers of Green Lantern in the 1990s discovered.
I think the Hawkman stories of the first half of the 1980s were much more true to the character. (Some of these admittedly were quite jarring. For instance, in one arc, Katar's wife Shayera (Hawkgirl) becomes bad-tempered and standoffish to Katar, and then leaves him to 'find herself'; Katar sinks into a depression, forgets to shave, starts drinking, neglects to clean up his apartment... As a young reader, I found this to be too much like real life, and now I can only surmise that the writer Bob Rozakis was going through his own trauma - perhaps he had become separated or divorced). The best of the Bronze Age Hawkman stories were pencilled by the eccentric underground artist Ken Landgraf.
Jimmy Olsen - ENFP
'Boy reporter', 'Superman's Pal' and 'Reporter of a 1000 Faces' Jimmy Olsen first appeared in the Superman comics in 1940, and had his own series, Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen which ran from 1954 to 1974 for an astonishing 163 issues before it changed its name to Superman Family; the series came to an end in 1982. You would expect - given the length of the character's tenure - DC to publish all the stories in deluxe Omnibus editions, but alas, they have not, and I suspect that this is partly because DC regards Jimmy as an embarrassment, as do most Superman fans. Why? The answer lies in Jimmy's personality type, the ENFP. Characters of that type tend to be bizarre, whimsical, corny - and annoying. Many ENFP characters such as Mr Mxyzptlk in Superman, Bat-Mite in Batman, and Impossible Man in Fantastic Four exist to get on peoples' nerves: they are pests. On top of that, they are stupid as well; EJ Arendee, who used to do MBTI videos on YouTube, once said that ENFPs were the stupidest of all the personality types. That was mean of him, but all the same, stupid is the right adjective for comic book ENFPs. All this explains Jimmy's peculiar status in the DC canon. During the Silver and Bronze Ages, fans found Jimmy's unique personality traits endearing, but now, in the 21st century, they do not. Indeed, Jimmy fell out of favour long ago: can you imagine a Jimmy in the 1990s revamped to be 'grim and gritty', 'dark' (maybe by Rob Liefeld or Jim Lee)? You cannot, of course, because Jimmy belongs to a more innocent time.
Superman's Pal enters the Bronze Age with a story published (appropriately enough) in January 1970, in which Jimmy confronts a slum lord; it was about this time that DC tackled subjects of social relevance - you could say that, in the 1970s, comic books entered a 'grim and gritty' phase. As to who brought Jimmy into the Bronze Age, it is Jack Kirby who takes the credit with his famous 16-issue run, but to my mind, it is Kurt Schaffenberger, who drew most of Jimmy's stories in the 1970s, who is more responsible; Schaffenberger ditched Jimmy's trademark bow tie, green blazer and plaid pants, and outfitted him with canvas bell-bottoms and a safari jacket. Jimmy makes the transition from Boy Reporter to Mr Action.
The late 1970s saw Jimmy's best arc: an ambitious four-parter (!) (well, that was ambitious for the seventies) which crossed over with Lois Lane's title and featured characters from the Teen Titans. In it we saw the return, from Kirby's trailblazing run, of the Golden Guardian clone, the DNA Project, Dubbilex, and the Newsboy Legion. I loved it as a boy, and re-reading it now, it still fascinates; my only regret is that Kurt Schaffenberger did not pencil the final story.
Mark Hootsen signing off.
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