"What have I got to lose?" Yeah, there's no potential downfall to drinking some random chemicals. Since Olsen's in a 1957 comic strip, we don't have to worry about him dying on page 3, but that seems to be a weird attitude to take.
To crash your average secret society, you'd need to spend your life cultivating connections. Maybe you'd have to be born the right color or be fortunate in your choice of parents. It's understandable why those could exist for a while without any scrutiny. This one though only requires that you don't shave for a couple of days. Between that and their well labeled headquarters, you'd think someone would have bothered before Olsen.
Fortunately, Jimmy doesn't have the lazy attitude of his fellow reporters. Despite being, "too young," to grow a beard - how old is he supposed to be anyway? - he doesn't give up. When a random person on the street offers to
sell him "beard tonic," of course he drinks it. It's not like he hasn't regularly developed super powers from doing this sort of thing before.
"What have I got to lose?" Yeah, there's no potential downfall to drinking some random chemicals. Since Olsen's in a 1957 comic strip, we don't have to worry about him dying on page 3, but that seems to be a weird attitude to take.
The beard tonic quickly works. Jimmy sneaks in, walks past a room filled with portraits of famous bearded men (including Santa Claus just because), and then hears the sinister plan of the Beard Band.
You mean, these dastardly folks are going to *gasp* try to change the fashion mores? They must be stopped lest the beard be brought back!!!
Jimmy has a scoop alright and goes back to the Planet to fill in his boss. Unfortunately neither Perry nor Clark believe this story - again in a world with time machines, sodas that can make you super stretchy, and a secret society of people who like their facial hair, is a working beard tonic that unlikely - and drink the remainder of the tonic. This gives us a pointless subplot in the already silly story.
What's a 1950s story without a secret identity challenge? As an aside, it's good that they made a point of telling us that Clark Kent is Superman in the caption, seeing how the reader hadn't been told that in almost two pages; it was a plot point in the first story in the comic. Still though, we have a dilemma. Superman, a being with Godlike powers has to figure out a way of getting a fake beard. Will he be able to do it?
Well he could travel at super-speed to a costume store and buy a good fake beard, but where would be the challenge in that? Nope, he has to roll his own.
(Aside: At first, I was going to mock the fact that they conveniently had glue in Clark's office, but it's quite possible he occasionally helped with laying out articles and in 1950s technology, that probably required some glue. That's a bit of a stretch but by the standards of this story, it's hardly so.)
Perry White hates his new look, so he threatens Jimmy into going along with the Beard Band's plan.
I'm just picturing the job interview - say for the rival Metropolis Eagle - that Jimmy would have if he did in fact get fired for this.
ME: Have you ever been fired from a job?
JO: Errrr, once.
ME: What were the circumstances?
JO: OK, you see, I was going for this scoop so I drank this beard tonic. My old boss thought that I was just joking when I said that it was the reason for why I had this beard, so he drank it too. Anyway, the whole thing was a plot for this secret society of beard lovers to bring back the beard. They wanted me to...
ME: Thank you for your time. We'll get back to you if we need any more information.
So anyway, Jimmy is left in a spot where he has to do the Beard Band's bidding before he can get the antidote to the beard tonic and therefore get rid of his beard, White's beard, and Clark's silk glued to his face. Unfortunately, it doesn't go well. He has to perform public actions to give good publicity to beards, but each time he somehow messes up his beard in the middle of it.
My second favorite one is the cooking mishap,
but as hard as that is to imagine occurring accidentally, the magic bullet is even more impressive.
Yes, you read that correctly. Somehow, random bullets managed to somehow get so close to Jimmy that they hit his beard, but they don't manage to cause any damage to him at all. He's not frightened in the slightest by the fact that multiple bullets came within inches of his face; he's just concerned about what that means for his chances of getting the antidote. If there's one thing this panel makes absolutely clear, it's that the writer of the comic has never had a beard.
Since all of Olsen's promotion plans fail, the Beard Band finally prove that they are evil. They bust up the antidote, kidnap Jimmy so he can't warn Superman, and then... well you just have to see their incredible masterplan for yourself.
I know this is the 1950s and conformity was king, but the already strained plot here has lost any connection with any sort of reality. "Bearded zealots?" They're going to force every man in the city to have a beard? Have you considered an advertising campaign instead? I mean, I know that you'd like the fashion rules to change, but pumping some potentially harmful chemicals into the water system does seem a tad bit extreme perhaps.
Notice the lettering mistake in the second panel there. "HAHHH!" is a very weird way to write someone laughing. Maybe his beard blocked a couple of A's.
Well we're already on page 8 here, so it's time for a quick ending to the problem. Jimmy attempts to stop them, but accidentally throws his beard hair into the vat of tonic. It turns out that the only difference between the tonic and the antidote is that the latter has dissolved beard hairs in it. YUM!
What a happy ending. Not only did it turn out that those people who look different than us are actually evil, but their plan was destroyed, and as an extra bonus, they ended up clean shaven themselves. Horray for conformity! Down with the Beard Band! Tune in next week where Superman fights those who don't wear suits and ties. They have a scheme to destroy all jackets!
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