This is hardly the first time I’ve said this, but this show really should be called Adventures of Jimmy Olsen, because he gets far more screen time than Superman this, and really every, week.
1. Hoodoo Voodoo
So, let’s just get this out of the way: “Drums of Death” takes place in Haiti, and is every bit as problematic as you think it would be from that sentence alone. We meet some white folks who seem to be normal folk, and then we meet, you guessed it, voodoo practitioners! These stereotypes are as racist as you’d expect, and are needlessly so. The plot has almost nothing to do with voodoo, but rather just treating black people as different. I honestly didn’t think the show could get any more offensive, and then…
2. Black face!
Yarp, the entire scenario is set up by a white man in black face. The entire episode revolves around Perry White’s sister, a photographer, being kidnapped by the supposed voodoo priest. Well, it turns out that the black-face’d kidnapper just got scared that she found the treasure he was searching for, because he saw her with a camera. You follow that? I surely do not!
3. Why does everyone take Jimmy with them?
Both of these episodes hinge on Jimmy Olsen being taken places that he really has no interest in going to. First Haiti, which makes a little more sense, if Perry is looking for someone to watch after his sister (which, of course, is sexist as fuck, as Jimmy is useless). But the second episode, “The Evil Three,” is predicated on Perry White taking a fishing trip, and bringing Jimmy with him. The same Jimmy who hates fishing and whines like a child about mosquitoes biting him. Of all the people in Perry’s life, is Jimmy really the top choice for a fishing trip?
4. The world’s worst feud
So, the question as to why Jimmy was there isn’t even the weirdest part of this episode. In fact, it might be the most normal thing that happened in it. So, after a long (read: shitty) day of fishing, Jimmy and Perry go to an old haunt of Perry’s to spend the night. The hotel is in shambles and, before they get there, we see an old man attempt to kill a man by slicing him in half with a sword.
There is apparently a beef between these two men over the money that was supposedly buried in the hotel. They killed the owner – the uncle of the attempted murderee – and now keep his wife locked up to get her to tell them where the treasure is buried. Except that she doesn’t ever do that, and just rolls around in a wheelchair brandishing a gun or screams like a banshee in her bed. Also, she’s not evil, so the title is misleading and unnecessary. So, these two knuckleheads try to kill each other to take sole possession of the treasure that they don’t yet have.
Also, spoiler alert: the money is in the first place I’d have looked in the house. There’s a dungeon with an ostentatiously large boulder in it. The money is literally right behind that.
5. Why isn’t Clark’s first instinct to just be Superman?
In “The Evil Three,” Perry calls Clark from a car phone…hold the phone, a fucking car phone in 1953? Was that a thing? (quickly scours Wikipedia) It looks like that may have been a thing? Wow. Ok.
Anyway, Perry calls Clark to have him check out morgue records for the former owner/treasure hider/uncle of the mook who now runs the place. Instead of just Supermanning over there, it appears that Clark made a bunch of phone calls, and did some normal paced research. This is so at odds with every characteristic of Superman. In the recent “Superman” #1 by Brian Bendis and Ivan Reis, Superman stops a conversation with Martian Manhunter three times to help people. Here, he gladly does some legwork that would take 2 seconds for Superman to do by just flying to the office and looking at files really quickly.
Superman also threatens to break “every bone in your body” to the nephew. That’s not the Superman I, or anyone, knows.
What is this show?
