2006 Reading List - It's Superman!
Book Fourteen
It's Superman! by Tom DeHaven
Why does everyone feel compelled to start Superman somewhere in the 1930s? Oh sure, that's when the original comic came out, but still....
That was just one of the nagging little thoughts that kept going through my mind as I read this book. Overall, it's a good read - we begin with the Kents in 1935, raising a strange and unusual son that they found in a cornfield. Meanwhile, young Lois Lane is trying to make her way as a feisty reporter in New York City - an interesting change. There was no pretense of living in a New York-esque city called "Metropolis," and DeHaven did a very nice job of making New York of the 1930s very real and ready for the Superman mythos. Lex Luthor, an ambitious alderman, has grand schemes for power and money.
In short, nothing new.
As much as I enjoyed the book - it's well written, the characters are mostly well defined (except for Clark, but we'll get to that) and there's a lot of good dialogue - there's nothing new to be said. Clark is conflicted about being Superman? Done it. Lois is only interested in the one man she can never have? Seen it. Lex Luthor is an evil genius who will do anything for power? Bought the T-shirt, and it was made by a LexCorp subsidiary in Southeast Asia. The book was good, but not new, at least not to me. Maybe to a new fan of the character it'll be a refreshing retelling of Superman's early years, but it all seemed pretty familiar on this end.
About Clark. I said that most of the characters were well fleshed-out and knowable, with Clark as an asterisk. To my mind, we didn't really get to know him as well as even most of the minor characters. I felt I knew Soda Wauters (it's her jazz-club name) better, and she didn't show up until the last quarter of the book. Perhaps intentionally, Clark was very difficult to know. The theme of his story, of course, was "Who am I?" a natural question any young person might be asking himself after the first time a bullet ricochets off his forehead. But I have very little patience for soul-searching superheroes. A little is okay, but to grind on and on about it, to deny the reality of who you are and what you can do gets under my skin after a while. That's why I didn't enjoy Ang Lee's version of The Hulk - too much Banner teeth-gnashing and not enough Hulk SMASH.
But that just probably says something terrible about my own psychological issues, so we'll let that go. In any case, it's a fine piece of work and a good read. Just not something that I will go back to if I really want to know more about who Superman is. For that, I recommend reading Kingdom Come, either the original comic or the novelization by Eliot S. Maggin. Good book. It might show up here later....
It's Superman! by Tom DeHaven
Why does everyone feel compelled to start Superman somewhere in the 1930s? Oh sure, that's when the original comic came out, but still....
That was just one of the nagging little thoughts that kept going through my mind as I read this book. Overall, it's a good read - we begin with the Kents in 1935, raising a strange and unusual son that they found in a cornfield. Meanwhile, young Lois Lane is trying to make her way as a feisty reporter in New York City - an interesting change. There was no pretense of living in a New York-esque city called "Metropolis," and DeHaven did a very nice job of making New York of the 1930s very real and ready for the Superman mythos. Lex Luthor, an ambitious alderman, has grand schemes for power and money.
In short, nothing new.
As much as I enjoyed the book - it's well written, the characters are mostly well defined (except for Clark, but we'll get to that) and there's a lot of good dialogue - there's nothing new to be said. Clark is conflicted about being Superman? Done it. Lois is only interested in the one man she can never have? Seen it. Lex Luthor is an evil genius who will do anything for power? Bought the T-shirt, and it was made by a LexCorp subsidiary in Southeast Asia. The book was good, but not new, at least not to me. Maybe to a new fan of the character it'll be a refreshing retelling of Superman's early years, but it all seemed pretty familiar on this end.
About Clark. I said that most of the characters were well fleshed-out and knowable, with Clark as an asterisk. To my mind, we didn't really get to know him as well as even most of the minor characters. I felt I knew Soda Wauters (it's her jazz-club name) better, and she didn't show up until the last quarter of the book. Perhaps intentionally, Clark was very difficult to know. The theme of his story, of course, was "Who am I?" a natural question any young person might be asking himself after the first time a bullet ricochets off his forehead. But I have very little patience for soul-searching superheroes. A little is okay, but to grind on and on about it, to deny the reality of who you are and what you can do gets under my skin after a while. That's why I didn't enjoy Ang Lee's version of The Hulk - too much Banner teeth-gnashing and not enough Hulk SMASH.
But that just probably says something terrible about my own psychological issues, so we'll let that go. In any case, it's a fine piece of work and a good read. Just not something that I will go back to if I really want to know more about who Superman is. For that, I recommend reading Kingdom Come, either the original comic or the novelization by Eliot S. Maggin. Good book. It might show up here later....