Personal Favorites: "Superboy for A Day"

I'm stealing this idea from John Seavey, who wrote an excellent post about Flash #50 and his persistent love for an issue that he first read in 1991. My affection for "Superboy For A Day," an eight page short story from Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #8, isn't nearly as old.  I first read the story last August, when I spent a weekend laid up with an unseasonal chest cold. I read over 500 pages of Jimmy Olsen stories to get through that illness, but this story's quiet sadness stuck with me: in a title memorable mainly for its unrestrained wackiness, "Superboy For a Day" and its elegiac tone really stand out.  

Written by Otto Binder and penciled by Curt Swan, "Superboy For a Day" isn’t my favorite Superman story – it wouldn’t even make my top ten – nor is it my favorite Jimmy Olsen story – that honor would either go to the loony “Jimmy Olsen, the Bearded Boy,” or the loonier “The Amazing Mirages,” in which Superman builds a pterodactyl out of road-kill and disguises himself as a cactus in order to frighten three young Uranium prospectors. But “Superboy For A Day” is easily my favorite story about Smallville, the town in which Superman and Clark Kent grew up.