Elastic Lad | Jimmy Olsen's Super-Duper RUBBER REPORT

When I met Superman I was a legal adult. I was a teenager, sure, and a little immature but I had my own apartment, supported myself on my measly Cub Reporter’s salary, and found myself engaged to beautiful space ladies on a regular basis. You know, like a grown up. So naturally, when Superman offered to adopt me I was super excited.

Who wouldn’t want to be adopted by their best friend?

It’s a good thing I was on board, too, because Superman had already done the paperwork without asking me if it was all right.

None of this is weird!

You see, I’m an orphan. And I LOVE crashing father/son picnics in my spare time. But it seems weird creeping around without a dad.

This is what I do on my days off.

It’s much less weird and totally socially acceptable for an eighteen year-old and a dude with godlike powers to annihilate a bunch of tiny kids and their pot-bellied dads in the three legged-race!

Suck it, brown-slacks losers!

Superman even went to all the trouble of renting a house in the suburbs for us and moving all of my stuff. Again, without even asking me! This is still not weird, right???

a) I love the “Superman and Son” sign b) Does it say “Superman” on the lease? c) Whee!

He also carried me like a baby to his other house in the Arctic.

I got wind burns on my face real bad that day. So worth it to have a dad though!

He showed me how he kept an innocent creature captive, wasted money, collected ugly sculptures, and kept tools in his garage!

Fortress of Solitude? More like Fortress of Oh, My God, Can We Go Home Yet?

Then he showed me what kind of dad he really was.

Why does Superman need a gun anyway?

Okay, so maybe he was having a rough day. Long flight to the Arctic Circle. Me complaining about all the bugs flying in my mouth. I can see how he could be on edge. But then…

Dude, no one cares about your stupid “secret” identity. Seriously. Also, “It will go hard with you?” WTF?

Of course, I did what any well-adjusted human being would do…spent all my money trying please this rage monster.

How about you put that money in a nice Roth IRA for yourself, nitwit?

How about you put that money in a nice Roth IRA for yourself instead, nitwit? Maybe get some Lexcorp or Wayne Enterprises stock?

So I got him a specially tailored dad robe with the House of El crest on it and everything. This thing was like super comfy high-end terry cloth. Care to guess how that went over?

There as a gift receipt. He could have returned it and gotten something he wanted.

There was a gift receipt. He could have returned it and gotten something he wanted.

That was it for me. I decided that maybe being adopted by my abusive best friend wasn’t the right thing for me at that time in my life.

Also, these documents were never valid in the first place because Superman is an illegal alien and doesn’t have any ID or social security number or anything.

Superman later made up some cock and bull story about his “super-calculator” telling him that he would “destroy his own son” on June 17 so he needed to be a big prick in order to sabotage the adoption instead of, you know, having an honest conversation with me about it? I’m not buying it.

The thing that flashed into my mind was, “Eff this guy.”

In any case, I hope you have a happier Father’s Day than that! And if you don’t have a dad, maybe that’s better than having a terrible one.

It really was a nifty robe.

Hi! My name is James Bartholomew Olsen. I used to be famous for being the “best boy pal” of a certain strange visitor from another planet. Nowadays I’m just a regular ole cub reporter in his mid-thirties wondering where all the years have gone (go to college, kids).

My life hasn’t been boring: I’ve been an Elastic Lad, a Giant Turtle Man, and even a Nazi Field Marshal (there’s a reasonable explanation). I’m here to share some of my stories and hopefully figure out a way to pivot out of the dying medium of print journalism and into the digital age. I should probably take the Nazi thing out of my bio, shouldn’t I?

It’s not what it looks like.

So what can you expect from this blog? A lot of time has passed since I first met Superman and there’s a lot of dirt to dish and things to unpack. Also, probably some “Supergirl” TV show recaps.

WHY “RUBBER REPORT?”

One could say I wasted a LOT of time thinking the domain name for this blog. Don’t believe me? Here’s a sample:

OlsenReport – Because I’m a reporter and my last name is Olsen.
SuperReport – Because, you know, superheroes and stuff.
SuperDuperReport – “Super-duper!” is my catchphrase so…
SuperFiles – Like the X-files but about super stuff.
OlsenFiles – I like files.
CubBeat – I’m a Cub Reporter and this is my beat.
CubFiles – Again with the files.
ElasticTruth – I was Elastic Lad and I’m here to tell the truth!
GiantTurtleNews – Kind of liked this one.
GiantTurtleFiles – Again with the files.
GiantTurtleReport – You get the idea.
GiantTurtle – Did I mention I was a Giant Turtle Man?
OlsenTruth – Do I need to explain this one?
TeenSidekick – Too long, but accurate.
AgingSidekick – Too negative. You’re only as old as you feel.
ElasticReport – This was really word association at this point.
Olsency – I used a blog name generator and got this.
Sidechic – Like a sidekick who is chic.
ActionBeat – Because of “Action Comics.”
ActionReport – I can’t believe I wrote this one down.
RedKryptonite = weird stuff
Olsenite – Get it? I’m like my own Kryptonite?
RedOlsenite – Weird tales + Red hair + Red Kryptonite + Me
SuperTruth – Sounds too conspiracy nut.
jimmy-olsen – JimmyOlsen was already taken.
KidSidekick – Too many k’s.
DeadSidekick – Too dark.
RecklessSidekick – Too long + too many k’s.
RecklessKid – Okay, I googled “sidekick tropes.”
SuperOlsen – I had to have called myself this at some point.
SupergirlsBoy – Crassly trying to piggyback on the new show.
BestBoyPal – The creepy thing Superman calls me.

As you can see, I was super into the words “Report” and “Files.” And to be honest, I was kind of partial to “Giant Turtle News” but my sometime, sort-of, not really girlfriend Lucy Lane hated every single one of them. Except “Rubber Report.”

I know. That still doesn’t answer the question.

Well, in my sometime superhero identity of “Elastic Lad” I was known as “The Boy of Rubber.” Well, maybe “known” is stretching it (pardon the pun). Superman is known as the Man of Steel. Two people called me the Boy of Rubber. One of them was me just now.

The other one was a narrator.

Anyhow, when I was choosing my twitter handle just about every variation of my name and various nicknames and alter egos had already been taken so I landed on @boyofrubber. Wanting to keep a little brand awareness when I started the blog so I chose “The Rubber Report.” Then I realized I’m famous and should probably have my name somewhere in the title and so now it’s “Jimmy Olsen’s Super-Duper Rubber Report.”

Upon reflection, I probably should have just bought JimmyOlsen.com off whoever GoDaddied it.

Tune in next time, when I will have hopefully figured out how to watch “Supergirl” on somewhere other than my laptop!

Jimmy Olsen's Super-Duper RUBBER REPORT

Truth is Elastic

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