Jack Kirby, Superman Unfiltered! (Jimmy Olsen #147)

Every so often in Jack Kirby's offbeat Jimmy Olsen run, you run across something extra special.

In this case, it's a '70s Kirby Superman, refined by Mike Royer, rather than jarringly redrawn by Al Plastino or Murphy Anderson.

And a rare combination at that. This was Royer's only inking assignment on Jimmy Olsen, coming in Kirby's second-to-last issue on the title.

DC's editors famously insisted that Superman conform to the company's house style. Looking back, it seems short-sighted and cautious. If you're hiring Jack Kirby, shouldn't part of the appeal be seeing what his Superman looked like?

Fortunately, Royer's refinements didn't cross the line (no pun intended) into a wholesale redraw, leaving us with perhaps the closest thing to Kirby's unfiltered Superman published during his original DC run.

And what a book Jimmy Olsen was.

Kirby used a struggling Superman spinoff to launch the Fourth World.

Darkseid. New Genesis. Apokolips...

Then there's the Newsboy Legion. The Guardian...

And somehow, Don Rickles.

Only Jack could make that seem perfectly logical.