Jimmy Olsen's Blues/The Spin Doctors

This week Classics Rock! is featuring songs based on comic books in honor of Comic-Con 2009, taking place in San Diego July 23-26.

A line from The Spin Doctors song Jimmy Olsen's Blues provides the name for the 1991 album it appears on, Pocket Full of Kryptonite. The song refers to characters from the Superman mythos, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and published by DC Comics. The narrator is the hapless Jimmy Olsen, photographer for the Daily Planet. The lyrics have poor Jimmy hankering for his colleague, reporter Lois Lane (I think I'm going out of my brain/I got it so bad for little miss Lois Lane) and jealous over her relationship with Superman (I can't believe my dilemma is real/I'm competing with the man of steel). He fantasizes that he can win Lois and neutralize Superman (Lois Lane please put me in your plan/Yeah, Lois you don't need no Super Man/Come on downtown and stay with me tonight/I got a pocket full of kryptonite). Might Jimmy's "pocketful of kryptonite" have another meaning, besides referring to a substance known to be harmful to Superman? We'll leave that up to the listener to decide. The song also mentions an object often associated with Superman, a telephone booth (It drives me up the wall and through the roof/Lois and Clark in a telephone booth), and the album's cover art features an empty phone booth.