Finally, the Superman novel

I have been watching WAY too much Community lately. And I'm not even sick of it!! I'm just getting more and more drawn in by this brilliant show!

It's like I'm eating a giant delicious cookie that makes me sick even as I want more of it and continue to eat it! THAT WAS A SEASON 1 COMMUNITY REFFERENCE!!!!

Ugh, okay, step away, cool down.

The Mondo comics site has been non-functional for a few days now, I need to give it another check to see whether it's back and last weeks work can get published. All the while this weeks reviews still need to be written. But that would have been the case anyways.

I've been wanting to at least mention this for some time now: "It's Superman!" written by Tom De Haven in 2005 was read by yours truly, yeesh, a while ago now. It's set during the latter years of the Great Depression, making it a retelling of Superman's origin during the same time he had been first created by old Siegel and Shuster.

There were many characters and character quirks added for the sake of the novel. Lex Luthor had a penchant for humming, Superman had a job as a stunt man out of Hollywood and a short romance with a husky voiced costume creator (so THAT'S where the suit came from!) and an unscrupulous best friend/outlaw, Willie.

The Clark Kent of this novel isn't that great a guy. He's too busy worrying about his powers to really pay attention to anything outside of himself- and when he finally does shift into caring for others it happens all at once. It didn't feel authentic. But it was always going to be hard to illustrate someone growing to be that good. It's the same reason why it's so hard to show Anakin Skywalkers descent into Darth Vader-hood.

One bit I remember I wanted to talk about, there's a section late into the novel where Willie is, I don't know, depressed or something, and Clark decides he'll take the guys mind off his troubles by distracting him with a show of awesome super powers. Clark jokes that they should race (Willie is well aware of the things Clark can do) and so Clark zips around, appearing everywhere; it's half comical, half terrifying.

That perspective on those super powers, I thought was a fresh one. I found it very interesting, and wished more of the novel covered that ground.

I was surprised and disappointed when heat vision eventual showed up in the story- as a snobby purist I was expecting Superman to be stuck with the same abilities he had when his comic first appeared... so pretty much the "faster than a speeding bullet/more powerful than a locomotive/ able to leap tall buildings in a single BOUND/ It's SUPERMAN! (oh, THAT'S where the books title came from, he said, as if he hadn't already known).

But whatever, with heat vision and his travelling MUCH faster than a speeding bullet, and the full on flying, yeah, this is a much later version of the Man of Tomorrow.

Overall, it was a pretty good novel, I dug it.