Remember Your Croce

So I was surfing around the web a couple of days back, and noted over at Comics Must Be Good a rather familiar line of thought.  In this essay, it’s stated that the refrain in Jim Croce‘s You Don’t Mess Around With Jim is, in a word, crap.

Let’s look at it for a moment, shall we:

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape
You don’t spit into the wind
You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger
And you don’t mess around with Jim.

The part these comic fans call into question is the first line.  From the essay, if I may overwork my Quote feature:

“No no no! Think! He’s SUPERMAN! He’s not going to hurt you! He’s just going to say, ‘Excuse me, did you need help?’ And that’s all that would happen. It’s a bulls*** lyric.”

“Wait, though–”

“No, he’s right. Superman would be all ‘Greetings, citizen.’ You don’t tug on Batman’s cape. Then you’re in trouble.”

Now I’ve heard this line of thought before from other sources.  And you might think, at first, that they have the right of it.  That Croce got it wrong.

And then you go back over Superman’s history and realize the whole Boy Scout routine is a myth.  Superman can be damn cruel when he wants to be.

Need proof?  Consider the following images (hovering the mouse over the images will reveal what comic the image is from if I’ve been able to find out):

That's almost metaphysical, is what that is.

Here we have Jimmy Olsen, Superman’s “best” friend, being thrown into pr.. wait, is he being thrown into prison, or is that some sort of Phantom Zone.  Holy lack of details, Batman.

Whatever the case, he’s being railroaded for a crime he didn’t commit.  Superman, apparently, knows Olsen is innocent, but does he lift a finger to help?  Nope.  Into jail Jimmy goes.  That’s stone cold, is what that is.

Almost like denying a dehydrated man some water.

After over five years of doing this blog I finally post an image of Aquaman and it's one he's being punked in. Poor Aquaman.

You would think that after this happened, Jimmy would have stopped being Superman’s friend, but nope!  This cover came out forty issues before the previous one.

There’s something very wrong with Jimmy Olsen.

As the image above proves, not even Super Heroes are safe from Superman’s malign pranks.  Take, for instance, what happened the day Superman visited the Flash’s home city of Central City:

Of course, I've only mentioned the Flash once in passing and he gets the same treatment as Aquaman.

That’s gotta hurt.

You’d think that maybe Lois Lane, Superman’s girlfriend (and these days wife) would be spared from harm.  But no.  No, Superman seems to like killing her.  Over and over again.  In her own title, no less:

Is it just me, or does he look angry about this? "Yes, Lana, I did kill her, WOULD YA STOP ASKING ME ABOUT IT?"

You'd think he'd get bored of doing it after a while.

So why does Superman do these things?  What reasons could he have?  We can only guess, really.  It might be something very simple:

Look, take it from Lois, you'll live longer by NOT marrying him...

Or it might not.  All I know is that no one is safe from the Wrath of Superman.  No one at all:

Yep, he's letting Clark Kent get beat u... Now wait just a minute...

For more proof on this, visit the site Superdickery, where your eyes will be opened to the truth about the big blue “Boy Scout”.

And remember your Croce.  Leave the damn cape alone.

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