Comics Bulletin logo
Search
  • Columns
    Random
    • All The Rage: Live, From The Isotope

      Jason Sacks
      January 23, 2005
      All the Rage
    Recent
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 2

      Daniel Gehen
      December 4, 2020
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 1

      Daniel Gehen
      October 30, 2020
    • Comictober 2020: DRACULA MOTHERF**KER

      Daniel Gehen
      October 27, 2020
    • What Looks Good
    • Comics Bulletin Soapbox
    • The Full Run
    • Leading Question
    • Top 10
    • The Long-Form
    • Jumping On
    • Comics in Color
    • Slouches Towards Comics
  • Big Two
    Random
    • 4.5

      Review: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #37 Offers Slice-of-Life Enjoyment

      Jason Sacks
      January 9, 2020
      Big Two, Big Two Reviews, Marvel Comics, Reviews
    Recent
    • Retro Review: Detective Comics #826 Remains a Holiday Classic

      Daniel Gehen
      December 3, 2020
    • Stan Lee

      nguyen ly
      November 7, 2020
    • Collecting Profile: Jack O’ Lantern

      nguyen ly
      October 31, 2020
    • DC Comics
    • Big Two Reviews
    • Marvel Comics
  • Indie
    Random
    • Video: Strip Panel Naked—Romulus with Nelson Blake II, pt 2

      Jason Sacks
      October 15, 2016
      Image, Interviews, Miscellaneous Comic Book Content, Strip Panel Naked, Video Interview
    Recent
    • Review: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist

      Daniel Gehen
      December 14, 2020
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 2

      Daniel Gehen
      December 4, 2020
    • 4.5

      TMNT: The Last Ronin #1 Lives Up to the Hype (Review)

      Daniel Gehen
      October 29, 2020
    • Reviews
    • Archie Comics
    • Boom! Studios
    • Dark Horse
    • IDW
    • Image
    • Oni Press
    • Valiant
  • Reviews
    Random
    • 4.5

      Review: I'll Give It My All... Tomorrow Vol. 4

      Jason Sacks
      June 6, 2012
      Reviews
    Recent
    • Review: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist

      Daniel Gehen
      December 14, 2020
    • Retro Review: Detective Comics #826 Remains a Holiday Classic

      Daniel Gehen
      December 3, 2020
    • 4.5

      TMNT: The Last Ronin #1 Lives Up to the Hype (Review)

      Daniel Gehen
      October 29, 2020
    • Singles Going Steady
    • Slugfest
    • Manga
      • Reviews
    • Small Press
      • Reviews
      • ICYMI
      • Tiny Pages Made of Ashes
  • Interviews
    Random
    • Wendy and Richard Pini Part Two: Red Sonja goes to academia

      Jason Sacks
      April 30, 2014
      Interviews
    Recent
    • Interview: Jon Davis-Hunt Talks SHADOWMAN

      Daniel Gehen
      June 8, 2020
    • Interview: Becky Cloonan talks DARK AGNES and Her Personal Influences

      Mike Nickells
      March 4, 2020
    • Simon Roy

      Interview: Simon Roy on His Inspirations and Collaborations on PROTECTOR

      Mike Nickells
      January 29, 2020
    • Audio Interview
    • Video Interview
  • Classic Comics
    Random
    • Classic Comics Cavalcade: 'Grave Business' by Graham Ingels

      Jason Sacks
      September 25, 2015
      Books, Classic Comics, Classic Comics Cavalcade, Columns
    Recent
    • Countdown to the King: Marvel’s Godzilla

      Daniel Gehen
      May 29, 2019
    • Honoring A Legend: Fantagraphics To Resurrect Tomi Ungerer Classics

      Daniel Gehen
      February 15, 2019
    • Reliving the Craziest Decade in Comics History: An interview with Jason Sacks

      Mark Stack
      January 2, 2019
    • Classic Comics Cavalcade
    • Classic Interviews
  • News
    Random
    • Graphic Novel THE HEART HUNTER From Legendary Comics Releases Late 2020

      Jason Sacks
      September 12, 2019
      Indie, News, Press Release
    Recent
    • 2020 Ringo Awards Winners Announced

      Daniel Gehen
      October 26, 2020
    • BAD IDEA Announces 2021 Publishing Slate

      Daniel Gehen
      September 29, 2020
    • A Full Replay of NCSFest 2020 is now Available

      Daniel Gehen
      September 15, 2020
    • Press Release
    • Kickstarter Spotlight
  • Books
    Random
    • Review: 'Mangasia' is a Fascinating Journey Through Asian Comic Art

      Jason Sacks
      November 27, 2017
      Books, Reviews
    Recent
    • Collecting Profile: Disney Frozen

      CB Staff
      November 22, 2019
    • Collecting Profile: NFL Superpro

      CB Staff
      August 31, 2019
    • “THE BEST OF WITZEND” is a Wonderful Celebration of Artistic Freedom

      Daniel Gehen
      September 15, 2018
    • Review: ‘Machete Squad’ is a Disappointing Afghan Memoir

      Jason Sacks
      July 31, 2018
    • Review: ‘Out of Nothing’ is the Antidote to Our Sick Times

      Jason Sacks
      July 23, 2018
    • Review: ‘Bizarre Romance’ Shows Rough Edges in the Early Days of a New Marriage

      Jason Sacks
      July 10, 2018
What's New
  • Collecting Profile: Batwoman
  • Collecting Profile: Daredevil
  • Collecting Profile: Floronic Man
  • Review of Cheetah in Wonder Woman 1984
  • Review: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist
  • Collecting Profile: Transformers
  • RSS Feed
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Contact Us
  • Write for us!
  • Visit Video Game Break!
Home
Reviews

Superman Returns (novelization)

Jason Sacks
July 5, 2006
Reviews
Superman Returns (novelization)
3.5Overall Score
Reader Rating: (0 Votes)

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE

If there’s anything harder than adapting a super-hero to the movies, it might be adapting one to a prose book. Much like how writing about music is like dancing about architecture, writing prose about super-heroes just feels bizarre and awkward. And if you’re writing a novelization of a movie based on a screenplay that is not the final draft, well, you’d better be a pretty skilled writer. Thankfully, the adaptation of Superman Returns was done by longtime comics writer Marv Wolfman, who had a run of writing Superman in the 1980s, and whose comic writing credentials are impeccable.

Wolfman does a terrific job in this book of extending and filling out certain scenes in the movie, giving them more depth and emotional complexity than they seem to have on the screen. There is at least one critical piece of the movie that’s left out in Wolfman’s adaptation, which stands out as a very sore thumb, but on the other hand he fleshes out other aspects of the story so much that the omissions and deletions are pretty much a tradeoff.

The additions make the story feel like a director’s cut in many ways. The biggest addition to the book is an extended sequence showing Superman’s trip to Krypton. This sequence is exciting and interesting in Wolfman’s hands, showing both the history of Krypton and Kal-El’s extended family. We get a recap of Superman’s origin in there, but we also get the extra pathos of the circular storyline in the story. In the movie, since viewers don’t see much about the trip to Krypton, we don’t see Superman’s reflections about the story essentially going full circle. In the book, he flies to Krypton and sees that the planet is a dead husk; thus, when he sees the Kryptonian crystal mountains that Luthor creates on Earth, it forces Superman to consider what his real home is. That gives the character more depth and character.

Similarly, the scene on the Kent family farm gives Clark extra depth that he doesn’t have in the movie. In the book, great pains are made to talk about how Martha Kent has moved on with her life after the death of her husband. She has a new paramour, with whom she plays Scrabble, and has plans to move to Montana. We see how the life of Superman’s loved ones has changed since he’s been gone, which gives his story arc extra pathos. It’s nice to see inside Clark’s head to see the emotional pain he feels about his mother’s growth. Clark Kent may be Superman, but he still has a lot of immature boy in him.

The big exclusion in Wolfman’s novelization is that the relationship between Superman and his apparent son Jason isn’t explicitly revealed in the book. In fact, the biggest difference between the book and the movie is that Jason doesn’t shove the piano at Luthor’s henchman. Jason never actually shows any super-powers in the book, and the scene at the very end where Superman visits the boy is changed to a visit to Lois instead. It’s an interesting change, and one wonders if it’s because the novelization was based on early draft of the screenplay or if Wolfman was asked to keep the revelation out of the book.

I found myself really enjoying this book as sort of a supplemental director’s cut of Superman Returns. We get lots of “bonus scenes” that do things like give greater depth to Luthor’s henchmen, give the back story of the space shuttle launch, and spend more time in the Fortress of Solitude. The Superman Returns novelization is a quick and easy read, perfect for beach or airplane reading.

 

Jason Sacks

Share On:
Tweet
Kingman’s Comics Corner, Week 5
Negative Burn #2

About The Author

Jason Sacks
Jason Sacks
Publisher Emeritus
Google+

Jason Sacks has been obsessed with pop culture for longer than he'd like to remember. Jason has been writing for Comics Bulletin for nearly a decade, producing over a million words of content about comics, films and other media. He has also been published in a number of publications, including the late, lamented Amazing Heroes, The Flash Companion and The American Comic Book Chronicles: the 1970s,1980s and 1990s. Find him on Facebook and Twitter. Jason is the Publisher Emeritus of Comics Bulletin.

Related Posts

  • Reliving the Craziest Decade in Comics History: An interview with Jason Sacks

    Mark Stack
    January 2, 2019
  • Top 10 Thoughts About Jack Kirby

    Jason Sacks
    August 28, 2017

Latest Reviews

  • Review: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist

    Daniel Gehen
    December 14, 2020
  • Retro Review: Detective Comics #826 Remains a Holiday Classic

    Daniel Gehen
    December 3, 2020
  • 4.5

    TMNT: The Last Ronin #1 Lives Up to the Hype (Review)

    Daniel Gehen
    October 29, 2020
  • 4.5

    Micro Review: Commanders in Crisis #1

    Jason Jeffords Jr.
    October 12, 2020
  • 3.0

    Review: GHOST WRITER Fights the Spectre of Unevenness

    Daniel Gehen
    September 3, 2020
  • 3.5

    Review: Strange Skies Over East Berlin

    Yavi Mohan
    August 11, 2020
  • DRAWING BLOOD: A Hyper-Stylized, Fictional Autobiography

    Ben Bishop, Brittany Peer, David Avallone, Drawing Blood, Kevin Eastman, Tomi Varga
    August 9, 2020
  • 3.0

    Alien: The Original Script #1 – This One’s For The Fans

    Jason Jeffords Jr.
    August 7, 2020
  • Singles Going Steady: Why? Lettering!

    Daniel Gehen
    July 28, 2020
  • 4.5

    X-MEN/FANTASTIC FOUR #4 is a Finale of Moral Questions

    Daniel Gehen
    July 22, 2020
RSSTwitterFacebookgoogleplusinstagramtumblr

Comics Bulletin is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for website owners to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com, audible.com, and any other website that may be affiliated with Amazon Service LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, Comics Bulletin earns from qualifying purchases.

All content on this site (c) 2018 The Respective Copyright Holders