The “Homeless Olympics” reference bothered me too…not because of the concept (I’ll bet you anything such an event will happen in my home town within the next few years) but because Jimmy winning bronze means he was competing under false pretenses, and that wasn’t very ethical of him. Who does he think he is, Eric Cartman?

I loved this story and thought it was right up there with the first issue. (The other two were good, but not as good in my opinion.) I don’t quite understand the comment about Morrison being self-indulgent or self-congratulatory here. I’m not sure how that’s supposed to be evidenced in the story. (Now if Superman was defeated by Wile E. Coyote then maybe.)

Also, we don’t know what kinds of mental blocks have been put into Makkari to make him forget his life as an eternal, which may make him more resistant to the ideas.

But even Galactus is basically just a big alien. He doesn’t have anything to do with the origin of intelligent life on earth. The Celestials are more than just big heavies from outer space: they’re the Marvel Universe’s explanation for the development of intelligent life on earth, and they’re an explanation which is directly contradicted by every relevant piece of empirical data we have.

“Yeah, disbelief in aliens seems a little weird”

Makkari never expresses a disbelief in aliens; he expresses a disbelief in the Celestials and their creation of humanity. And given that the only piece of evidence he’s offered for such a creation myth is an apparent crazy man telling him a story that’s contradicted by his own memories – Ikaris claims that Makkari is half a million years old, and Makkari doesn’t remember anything before the seventies – it’s easy to see how any sensible person in his place would do the same. (That Ikaris demonstrates super-powers doesn’t necessarily help his story; the Marvel universe is filled with super-powered crazy people.)

And Gaiman surprised me by apparently getting some mythology wrong – it was generally Thoth, not Osiris, who was depicted as giving writing to mankind, and who would be the equivalent of Hermes/Mercury/Makkari. Not like him to miss something like that.

Having Galactus land on Earth and try to consume it? I think that might make it easier to swallow.

How would the existence of Spider-Man make it easier to believe that giant mile-high space gods created humanity a million years ago? The former represents an odd genetic outlier whose existence is supported by hundreds of photographs published regularly in the Daily Bugle; the latter defies everything we know about biology, evolution, palaentology and history. There are degrees here, my friend.

And actually, on that Free Fall cover, my mind is drawn to that TV in the corner, which throws off the entire composition. Darn! And I was hoping I could be pervy.

Thank you, Dave. That’s kind of dumb, because Jimmy could certainly write about the rest of his day and maybe change the facts a bit – sure, it wouldn’t be journalism, but he’s a feature writer, after all. And the hypnotic trigger makes sense.

I don’t completely disagree with you, T., but I don’t mind, because with any good writer, his (or her) personality is going to come through in the work. As long as Morrison keeps his ego in check a bit and doesn’t fundamentally change Superman, I think he’ll do a good job. It’s when he starts writing Superman as King Mob or something that it will get annoying.

Before Jimmy injects himself, he’s warned that he needs a “hypnotic trigger” to become human again. He responds, “I thought of everything, Agatha.” Just prior to Jimmy regaining human form, his signal watch goes off. My assumption is that the watch was his “hypnotic trigger,” though I could be wrong on this.

What I *am* sure of is the reason he can’t write about the “for a day” events. The public thinks that the Superman/Doomsday fight was Supes beating up an evil monster. We see this in the producers’ offer of tickets and in Lucy’s comment at the comic’s end. If Jimmy writes about his day, the public will realize that A) the “monster” was in fact Jimmy Olsen and B) the *real* monster in the situation was in fact Superman. Neither of which is a desirable revelation.