When Richard Donner's SUPERMAN hit the screens, one would have expected a novelization of the movie. My understanding is that Warner Books couldn't publish such a book owing to the unique contract Warner had with Mario Puzo--the writer of the original story for the movie.
Instead they published a new novel by Elliot S! Maggin--SUPERMAN, THE LAST SON OF KRYPTON. Towbee had his encore in this novel.
Appearing on Fifth Avenue--
Pulled by a herd of seven Indian elephants each in a different color of the rainbow was a 90-foot-long transparent fishtank. The tank was filled with water which in turn was filled with a great blue whale floating calmly on the surface. On the whale's back was Towbee rocking in an easy chair with his feet up on the edge of a tub in which a large baboon was bathing. With one pair of hands Towbee played a melody on his instrument as he sang "Annie Laurie," and with the other pair he held a copy of the previous day's Daily Planet and read. And curled up under his legs was a Siberian tiger, sleeping like a fallen redwood.
Police cordoned the entrances to Fifth Avenue from traffic. Thousands of people followed the procession past Governor's Plaza toward the park. Towbee and his bizarre litter passed within sight of the offices of all the city's television stations and by the time he had rolled a block the swarm of newsmen and police who were following him were in danger of being trampled by the calm elephants as they mechanically pulled their load.
The alien wailed "Annie Laurie" gradually louder and louder. When he was finally loud enough so that his voice drowned even the din of midtown, the elephants and the aquarium ceased their progress up the street, and the grand marshal rose from his seat to address the world from the back of his whale.
Towbee's instrument fashioned other-worldly sounds into a haunting, buoyant melody, and he and his pets and the faces and minds of everyone who saw him were clouded with remarkable shapes and colors in an ineffable random pattern as he sang:
A clown has come
A splash of rum
I'll make you grin
Halibut's fin
And send your tears
Out of your day
Apples and pears
Hurrah and hooray
With shape and sound
Cashews by the pound
And colors flying
Laundry drying
Dreams and streams
A clock you wind
Gleams from themes
An organ grind
You'll surely leave your mind behind
--Towbee has actually come to Earth to secure secret papers written by Albert Einstein that contain a new theory; however, Lex Luthor had already stolen these papers. Yet when Superman has arrested Luthor, the secret documents are gone. Superman must take Luthor along with him on a space odyssey to other alien worlds, in search of the Einstein papers and an intergalactic Genghis Khan called the Master.
The Man of Steel ultimately tracks down his quarry and the Master turns out to be Towbee. The Last Son of Krypton abandons the Minstrel of Space on the far side of the galaxy and returns with Luthor back to Earth.