Superman Through the Ages! Forum

This thread is a continuation of the discussion in this thread (http://superman.nu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1710) about the recently published novel by Tom De Haven, It's Superman (http://superman.nu/a/Novels/its.php).

Be warned that I'm posting my observations and thoughts about the book as I read it - so there are going to be LOTS OF SPOILERS.


You should hit your back button right now if you don't want to know all sorts of details about the book.







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I'll start off with an excerpt from the excerpt that's on the back cover of the book.  This paragraph describes how Clark is in a canyon, experimenting and playing with his newfound ability to leap.  The leaps get longer and longer until:



This one section has some fantastic imagery with brilliant writing, and I think De Haven has also made some great additions to what it's like to fly (perhaps the electrical charge thing is from Smallville, I don't know, not having seen much of the show), and the left fist leading Clark's direction is right out of the first Chris Reeve movie.


So far I've only just started chapter two and I may post more as I read more.  I've already mentioned how strange it was at first to find a lot of contemporary elements (Police Chief Parker, etc) of the Superman mythology transposed back to the 1930s - to a realistic 1930s - and I'm continually surprised by it, then I'm surprised by how well it works and how natural it feels, and then I'm surprised by what a great job the author has done in merging modern elements with the past and extrapolating.

The Pete Ross character (here named "Alger Lee", "Alger" presumably being a nod to author Horatio Alger - who wrote great boys' books and was mentioned by Maggin as being one of teenage Clark's favorite authors) seems to have been influenced by Smallville - ie, Alger is a black kid who discovers Clark's secret powers, and he's probably the only black kid that Clark knows.  And Alger lives in the poor black shanty section on the outskirts of the town - a realistic element of our history.  He's not a close friend with Clark either, probably because of the unbelievable class and race barriers that existed at the time.

Lois is introduced in chapter two, and here she immediately reminded me of Margot Kidder's Lois and of Maggin's hyper-competent and driven Lois (that we saw in Luthor's Gift) with her eyes on the prize.  She's still a young girl of 17, but has skipped four grades of school, graduated college, and taken graduate courses in journalism.

:s:

Lex Luthor.

Very interesting.  It's a tough call, but I don't think I like De Haven's take on Luthor.  It's basically the Byrne/Wolfman/Lois & Clark Luthor - an ingenious, ruthless, and power-hungry leader of organzied crime who is running for mayor.  Curruption, murder, cover-ups, etc.  All hands off, Lex just bosses his flunkys around.  Not my cuppa tea.  There is a dash of Maggin's Luthor tossed in - Lex has had many different identities, his family life growing up was very unstable, he has a bunch of assistants, and he has many different operations going on - but not much of it.

There is no hands-on Lex-the-scientific-genius (or any kind of genius) and no corporate front for his operations.  There is no personal history between Luthor and Superman, either: Lex never knew Clark when they were growing up, and Lex never even lived in Smallville.  At least, none of this is mentioned yet in the 2nd chapter - it could still be revealed later as backstory, but it doesn't look likely.  I'll find out when Superman arrives in the Big City.

Luthor is basically just an irredeemable mob-boss with political aspirations, climbing over bodies that get in his way.

This is a character that could have existed in the 1940s Superman comics, but not one going by the name of Luthor.  Seeing some of Siegel and Shuster's "mad scientist" Lex, or some of the Kirk Alyn serial Luthor would have made this character much more interesting.  I know that the author is striving for 1930's realism, and in most places he's done a fantastic job of it.  I think that if he had just added a 1930's technological cutting edge and vision to the character, it would have been a vast improvement.  I'm not talking "giant robots" or anything, but real cutting edge of the time:  Have Lex use radio, airplanes, etc., in ingenious and clever ways and maybe have a few secret inventions under his belt.

:s:

Well, couldn't there still be room for giant robots?  :D

What I liked about sci fi of that era was the conceptions of the "heights" of science...a strange imagination...

I'd be all for robots, but maybe that's the Japanese entertainment fan in me talking. Still, for any of you who saw Sky Captain you know how cool those retro style robots are. The ones in Sky Captain are almost verbatum the ones that appeared in the Fleisher Superman toons.

They're way cool...I was always intrigued by why so many people thought robots should be bipeds, when designing that sense of balance is so obviously difficult...

It's a human chauvinism.

Notice how our religions have gods that are basically human in form.  In a sense, god was made in the image of man.

Asimov predicted the coming of Computer Assisted Design or CAD.  But his SF stories had a full-blown robotic man at a drafting board instead of the purely software version that actually developed.  He pointed this out himself in one of his after-the-fact writings on what actually developed.

The tendency to imprint our own image on our creations is historically very strong.

On another hypothetical world where another intelligent species was dominant, I can see their gods and robots mimicking their alien forms not our human ones.

Yep, its just fun to see it play out...

Loving the book so far. I agree, Re: Luthor, though.

Still, this is a fantastic work of historical fiction.

Finished reading this week. Interesting, for sure, but not fantastic.

The inicial description of Clark and Lois was brilliant. Loved Clark as a young journalist, interesting in science fiction, writing his own stories and feeleing alone. I missed Lana e Pete, tought. Lex Luthor not being the scientific genius - and De Haven creating a new character fot the role - was a big mistake.

The political and crimes scenes, with that useless characters berod me to tears. Willian Berg was a cool character, and his interaction with Clark well done. The reinvention of the uniform origin and the name, did't care, but didn't hate it, either. The final confrontation relationship with Luthor were OK. But honestly, the journey of Clark Kent becoming Superman was done much better in a lot of other media, the movie, Maggin books, Birthright, Superman for All Season, Action 800, even Smallville, so this novel brought nothing really new.

I recently read the story and enjoyed it very much. In fact, I did a joint review of the novel for the Superman Homepage (which should be up soon).

DC should release more original novels of Superman--maybe the next one could feature a Superman in the sixties?

I liked the historical fiction aspect of it. Superman has never really been approached that way before, except in that 60th anniversary comic in 1998 when he battled the Nazis.

The author did a good job of making you hate Luthor...which was a bit of a problem for me, since I don't want to hate Luthor. Superman has that sort of rogues gallery that is the fictional kind of evil, and you hate to see them being really evil.  I could also see Lois as a flapper, but Clark was dumbed down too much for my tastes.

Overall, I thought the whole thing was very original, though.

I'm divided on the evil issue. On the one hand, the best villains are the ones that make you see things from their point of view. But on the other hand, the fact that they are villains--and not just misguided-- shouldn't be lost.

I've always thought that Dr. Doom was a good mix of both.

I think what I meant is that Superman's villians ARE villainous...they're greedy, or cocky, or thieves, or warriors, or just plain insane.

But they're not evil in the real-world sense of it. It's ok for the Toyman to ruin Christmas, but not for him to be a child murderer. It's ok for Luthor to try to usurp governments and take over the world (with cool inventions) but not for him to take a pistol and murder people in cold blood, as we'd expect the Joker to do.  These villains have flaws, and they are criminals, but they are not murderers.  Except in the nineties.

I don't know about that. Villains like Luthor were extremely ruthless in the Golden Age and had few redeeming qualities. It's not really a recent trend to have Superman villains being really evil. Darkseid and Mongul were known to regularly kill people and even destroy whole civilizations. Even the Toyman had his darker moments--I believe he even killed the skinny Toyman. Heck, Metallo stole the hearts from people while they were still alive. All of these things happened before the Iron Age, too.

But I think there's a big difference between evil and exploitation. Just look at horror movies and you'll see that. We obviously don't look at Psycho as being the same as Last House on the Left--one is horror, the other is exploitation. It's the same with the past ages and the Iron Age. You brought up the example of the Toyman killing children, which is a good example of having a character become "dark" instead of writing a good story about him that shows why he's a threat to Superman. I think a better approach would've been to have the Toyman hate everyone EXCEPT children, who he would never hurt or abuse. It would've shown that even villains have good sides.

That being said, I do think there are certain kinds of things that we shouldn't see often in Superman. Stories that are too dark destroy the mood and theme of the stories.

Basically, I don't really have a problem with Superman villains killing, just as long as it isn't exploitation. Which means no killing for the "shock factor," too. No women in refridgerators.