Elliot S! Maggin's MIRACLE MONDAY

[David Walton]

I'd been hearing about how great this novel was for years, and it was just re-issued last month so I finally had the opportunity to read it.

Time travel, demons, and a Lex Luthor who holds a press conference from prison to announce his impending breakout.

What's not to love?

I didn't read Superman comics until the 1990s, and since then I've always been fascinated by the pre-Crisis era (given its resemblance to the Donner films, which I still love with a passion). Because it's a novel, Maggin has time to dig in deeper than the comics with his take on the Clark Kent/Superman dichotomy, Clark's friendship with Lex, and Superman's relationship with Lois. It makes for a compelling read. (On another note, I'd be really interested in seeing a novel set in the Rebirth era that digs into the modern take. Sadly, superhero novelizations are few and far between.)

I'd recommend it for anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to read it yet, and I'd love to hear from those who have.

[PyroTwilight]

I always enjoyed it. That one part where Superman narrates to the demon he fought how he'd be more than fine with spending the rest of eternity chasing him down is one of the scenes I consider absolutely a pinnacle of what Superman should be. CM Saturn? Man I forget the name. Wish it was illustrated.

I also ADORED the creation of Kristin Wells whiel not directly a part of this no matter what when someone talks about Superwoman she's who I picture in my head. Not E-3's Lois Lane, not Lana Lang etc... but Kristin. Even if THAT reveal wasn't until she made her comics appearance.

[PyroTwilight]

About the only bit I didn't like was when someone pointed out to me how distanced Superman could seem from humanity. Particularly the point of the book where Superman discusses how he sits down and thinks of small oddities to make his Clark Kent disguise more real.

I suppose it's technically true of the Silver Age iteration of Superman but thinking back it's rather jarring to think of in the modern day where the various bits of him are far more balanced.

[David Walton]

I always enjoyed it. That one part where Superman narrates to the demon he fought how he'd be more than fine with spending the rest of eternity chasing him down is one of the scenes I consider absolutely a pinnacle of what Superman should be. CM Saturn? Man I forget the name. Wish it was illustrated.

Yeah, I really liked that too.

And you're close--it's C.W. Saturn.

I also ADORED the creation of Kristin Wells whiel not directly a part of this no matter what when someone talks about Superwoman she's who I picture in my head. Not E-3's Lois Lane, not Lana Lang etc... but Kristin. Even if THAT reveal wasn't until she made her comics appearance.

I wasn't even aware of Kristin Wells' existence until I read the book, and when I did some research I discovered she'd been introduced in the comics later. DC Comics Present Annual #2 and #4, I think, which have recently been put up on comixology.

About the only bit I didn't like was when someone pointed out to me how distanced Superman could seem from humanity. Particularly the point of the book where Superman discusses how he sits down and thinks of small oddities to make his Clark Kent disguise more real.

I suppose it's technically true of the Silver Age iteration of Superman but thinking back it's rather jarring to think of in the modern day where the various bits of him are far more balanced.

Yeah, the idea that Clark Kent is a 'fiction' struck me as odd, being more acquainted with the post-Crisis version where Clark and Superman are in harmony.

One idea from Maggin's work that seems to be coming back around is Lex having redemptive qualities. Maybe that goes back further than Maggin, I don't know, but it's something he explores in detail in the book.

[Jim Kelly]

Nah, when I read that bit back in the day it was jarring. It was particularly jarring to have that come from Elliot Maggin. Up until then, I didn't think that was how he saw Clark Kent. I thought that he saw that both sides of the character were just as real. Superman may have intended certain character bits to disguise himself as Clark--but taking a page from Kurt Vonnegut--what he pretended to be was who he really was. It seemed like Maggin was stepping back from his more insightful understanding of Clark and saying that it was all an act--some freak of Superman's, nothing more.

[bretmaverick2]

Whoa!! Hadn't thought about that novel for a long time!! This made me check and there it is, still on my book shelf!! Now I may have to re-read it!!

[Adekis]

When I was younger this was one of my top five favorite Superman stories ever, but having recently reread it I've got a few problems with it, not that it still isn't great overall. Some of them are simple, like "Song of the Earth" requiring a version of super-hearing that defies the laws of physics. I mean okay, Superman always defies the laws of physics, but we can hand-wave that with comic book science like "tactile telekinesis". There is literally no way to hear a woman sing in Nairobi Kenya (or what have you) if you're in Greenland, I don't care how good your ears are. He's gotta be limited to Matt Murdoch hearing, no better.

Another example is Lois. She's pretty consistent for the time, but I'm just adapted to a post-Crisis Lois, which means she is tough as nails and does not give a damn. Maggin's Lois seemed less Phyllis Coates and more Noel Neill, which just isn't to my taste.

Other issues are meta. So for example, Superman's decision not to kill Kristin Wells is clearly brilliant. There's something very pure about the fact that in the end his logic comes down to "I just don't see a single reason why I should do it. So what if I have to spend the rest of my life cleaning up after CW Saturn? She didn't do anything to deserve this." It's excellent. It's beautiful. The problem is that people say things like "Superman does not kill. Ever," and use this book as an argument against the ending of Man of Steel or whatever. It doesn't hurt the book in any way except meta-textually, but man, Kal specifically takes into account that she's not murdering people left and right. Anyway...

Other issues are more complex, like the fact that pop-Christianity fairly saturates the novel. It didn't ruin the book for me, but man it sort of stood out in a weird way. Don't get me wrong, there's pluses to it, most notably "Luthor discovered that the afterlife was real and didn't think it was important enough to tell anyone", but jeez louise. I can't help but think that it could ruin the book for atheists, agnostics or polytheists. Maggin subtly trashes polytheism at one point by revealing that CW Saturn influenced King Tut to dismiss Akhenaten's monotheistic religion. Yes, polytheism is explicitly preferred by the Devil. Troublesome.

Others have been mentioned already.

Yeah, the idea that Clark Kent is a 'fiction' struck me as odd, being more acquainted with the post-Crisis version where Clark and Superman are in harmony.

Yeah. I mean okay, I think that sometimes the post-Crisis version can go too far in the other direction where there is no difference between him and Superman in terms of how they do anything, but Maggin kind of goes too far for me too. Ultimately I wonder if maybe the problem is trying to finely articulate the relationship between them at all.

Even in later works with more Bronze Age influence like All-Star or Superman At the End of Days, there's always a sense that Superman isn't pretending to be Clark, he is Clark, even when things like the slouch and the higher voice are clearly affectations. In neither of those works is our hero actually capable of articulating the relationship between Kal-El and Clark Kent. It's like in Tim Burton's Batman where Vicki is like "so, why do you Batman" and Bruce is like "er, uh, well, I guess it's just something I have to do." Mrs. Nxly asks Clark if he's Superman or Superman is him and Clark's just like "let's change the subject". And it totally works, you know?

I think that Maggin's worst moments portraying Clark Kent are when he tries to say "Clark is Superman's uncontrollable passion" or whatever outright with all this detailing on the psychological inner workings. The best ones are when he just lets the connection between them exist, like when Clark goes to Lex and offers to tell him his big secret as collateral for Lex changing his ways, or when Superman thinks about the day he was outted as the day Clark Kent died. Also, minor quibble, but I wish Maggin had called Superman "Kal" occasionally. After all, it's not like "Superman/boy" is really a name, you know?

And then there's the opposite of a problem: Luthor.

One idea from Maggin's work that seems to be coming back around is Lex having redemptive qualities. Maybe that goes back further than Maggin, I don't know, but it's something he explores in detail in the book.

Maggin's my single favorite Luthor writer. His Lex is so in-depth, so internally consistent, so fascinating! The gold standard to which all other Luthor portrayals must be compared and almost inevitably fall short.

So I do kind of like the start of the book where Luthor is the focus more than a lot of the slow-build-up to CW Saturn's stuff in the end. CW Saturn is cool and all, but Luthor is just a more compelling antagonist. I'm pretty pleased that a sympathetic, redeemable Luthor with actual moral strength is more or less coming back in vogue!

Ultimately, Miracle Monday might still be in my top 5 Superman stories ever just on the strength of Luthor alone! Haha!

[David Walton]

Nah, when I read that bit back in the day it was jarring. It was particularly jarring to have that come from Elliot Maggin. Up until then, I didn't think that was how he saw Clark Kent. I thought that he saw that both sides of the character were just as real. Superman may have intended certain character bits to disguise himself as Clark--but taking a page from Kurt Vonnegut--what he pretended to be was who he really was. It seemed like Maggin was stepping back from his more insightful understanding of Clark and saying that it was all an act--some freak of Superman's, nothing more.

Maybe. But I think that if you read between the lines, Maggin might essentially be saying the same thing that you are, that Clark is a 'fiction' who is in fact a reality he doesn't fully understand. Lois has trouble coming to grips with Superman's 'lie,' but Perry defends the Clark Kent guise in a roundtable discussion after his identity is exposed, and Lois would come to an understanding of it had they not been interrupted by C.W. Saturn. There's also a dream sequence where Clark imagines Jonathan and Martha Kent having dinner with Jor-El and Lara, so he's clearly working out his identity. It's also implied that Superman never publicly reveals his secret identity (since an archeologist confirms it from evidence in the future) and he marries Lois (never explicitly said, but knowledge of their future relationship is implied by Kristin). And his relationship with Lex, formed when he had literal, living ties to his human heritage in the Kents, is clearly important to him.

You also have to consider Superman's godlike powerset, which would make it harder to see himself as truly being Clark Kent. It's said that he only sleeps an hour a day, and may have developed that habit just to make Pa Kent feel more comfortable. So the 'fiction' begins from an early age, but pretending to sleep to avoid troubling his parents is a Clark Kent kind of thing to do and just goes to show that he's just as much Clark as he is Superman.

Now that I think about it, Mark Waid dedicated Kingdom Come to Elliot S Maggin, and the premise is that when Clark's human ties are severed he becomes distant, alien, and incapable of making the right choices.

[David Walton]

When I was younger this was one of my top five favorite Superman stories ever, but having recently reread it I've got a few problems with it, not that it still isn't great overall. Some of them are simple, like "Song of the Earth" requiring a version of super-hearing that defies the laws of physics. I mean okay, Superman always defies the laws of physics, but we can hand-wave that with comic book science like "tactile telekinesis". There is literally no way to hear a woman sing in Nairobi Kenya (or what have you) if you're in Greenland, I don't care how good your ears are. He's gotta be limited to Matt Murdoch hearing, no better.

I love "Song of the Earth," scientifically accurate or not! One of the best moments in the novel.

Another example is Lois. She's pretty consistent for the time, but I'm just adapted to a post-Crisis Lois, which means she is tough as nails and does not give a damn. Maggin's Lois seemed less Phyllis Coates and more Noel Neill, which just isn't to my taste.

You know, there's surprisingly little Lois in the book, and I didn't really see anything that deliberately contradicted a more modern take. It's not like she's jumping into Niagra Falls waiting to be rescued.

Other issues are meta. So for example, Superman's decision not to kill Kristin Wells is clearly brilliant. There's something very pure about the fact that in the end his logic comes down to "I just don't see a single reason why I should do it. So what if I have to spend the rest of my life cleaning up after CW Saturn? She didn't do anything to deserve this." It's excellent. It's beautiful. The problem is that people say things like "Superman does not kill. Ever," and use this book as an argument against the ending of Man of Steel or whatever. It doesn't hurt the book in any way except meta-textually, but man, Kal specifically takes into account that she's not murdering people left and right. Anyway...

Well, in general I think the argument against Superman killing comes down to the simple fact that the writers create and can thus solve whatever problems Superman encounters without having him resort to murder. It's not, "Superman would never kill if it came to that" but rather "this is fiction so it need never actually come to that."

Even Maggin dodges the question of what Superman would do if C.W. Saturn actually killed anyone!

Other issues are more complex, like the fact that pop-Christianity fairly saturates the novel. It didn't ruin the book for me, but man it sort of stood out in a weird way. Don't get me wrong, there's pluses to it, most notably "Luthor discovered that the afterlife was real and didn't think it was important enough to tell anyone", but jeez louise. I can't help but think that it could ruin the book for atheists, agnostics or polytheists. Maggin subtly trashes polytheism at one point by revealing that CW Saturn influenced King Tut to dismiss Akhenaten's monotheistic religion. Yes, polytheism is explicitly preferred by the Devil. Troublesome.

Well, I'm hardly unbiased since I'm a Christian, but I don't think that should be any more problematic than religious people reading sci-fi works with an agnostic/atheist viewpoint. You're essentially talking about trying to change Maggin's voice without changing the novel, which isn't really possible. It's like saying, "I really like Poe but his work is problematic for people who don't like morbidity."

And ultimately I think an agnostic/atheist could just make the argument that C.W. Saturn and Luthor's God are alien entities not yet fully understood. No one reading the book has to buy into Luthor's conclusions, they just have to understand the logic behind him making the duplicate of Superman's hair.

Yeah. I mean okay, I think that sometimes the post-Crisis version can go too far in the other direction where there is no difference between him and Superman in terms of how they do anything, but Maggin kind of goes too far for me too. Ultimately I wonder if maybe the problem is trying to finely articulate the relationship between them at all.

You know, it's funny, I often read interviews with comic authors where they articulate how they see the Clark/Superman or Bruce/Batman dynamic, and I find it deliberately contradicts my interpretation of their work.

Even in later works with more Bronze Age influence like All-Star or Superman At the End of Days, there's always a sense that Superman isn't pretending to be Clark, he is Clark, even when things like the slouch and the higher voice are clearly affectations. In neither of those works is our hero actually capable of articulating the relationship between Kal-El and Clark Kent. It's like in Tim Burton's Batman where Vicki is like "so, why do you Batman" and Bruce is like "er, uh, well, I guess it's just something I have to do." Mrs. Nxly asks Clark if he's Superman or Superman is him and Clark's just like "let's change the subject". And it totally works, you know?

I think that Maggin's worst moments portraying Clark Kent are when he tries to say "Clark is Superman's uncontrollable passion" or whatever outright with all this detailing on the psychological inner workings. The best ones are when he just lets the connection between them exist, like when Clark goes to Lex and offers to tell him his big secret as collateral for Lex changing his ways, or when Superman thinks about the day he was outted as the day Clark Kent died. Also, minor quibble, but I wish Maggin had called Superman "Kal" occasionally. After all, it's not like "Superman/boy" is really a name, you know?

Well, All-Star Superman has that sequence where Superman looks in the mirror and sees his 'true' form:



But otherwise, point taken. There is something to the idea that these things can never be articulated, and no answer can ever fully speak to the mystery of who we really are and where that lines up with how we see ourselves.

And then there's the opposite of a problem: Luthor.

Maggin's my single favorite Luthor writer. His Lex is so in-depth, so internally consistent, so fascinating! The gold standard to which all other Luthor portrayals must be compared and almost inevitably fall short.

So I do kind of like the start of the book where Luthor is the focus more than a lot of the slow-build-up to CW Saturn's stuff in the end. CW Saturn is cool and all, but Luthor is just a more compelling antagonist. I'm pretty pleased that a sympathetic, redeemable Luthor with actual moral strength is more or less coming back in vogue!

Ultimately, Miracle Monday might still be in my top 5 Superman stories ever just on the strength of Luthor alone! Haha!

I said this in another thread, but I think DC could (perhaps) bring SMALLVILLE's Lionel Luthor in to play the Byrne Luthor role, and completely free Lex Luthor up to be something along the lines of Maggin's take.

Not that they need Lionel to do that, but it could give readers the best of both worlds.

[Great O.G.U.F.O.O.L.]

One idea from Maggin's work that seems to be coming back around is Lex having redemptive qualities. Maybe that goes back further than Maggin, I don't know, but it's something he explores in detail in the book.

The oldest story I can remember where Luthor displays redemptive qualities is "The Showdown Between Luthor and Superman" from Superman v1 #164, with the introduction of Lexor, the planet where Luthor is hailed as a hero (after what he does in that story).

As for the Clark Kent-Superman dichotomy, I like Maggin's take in a short back-up story from Superman #270 ("I can't go home again") where Pete Ross is thinking in the end: "Who in Smallville would have thought that Superboy would grow up as sentimental as the next guy and that his "cover", Clark Kent, would become as genuine a human being as Superman? A wise man once said, "we must be very carefull about what we pretend to be because someday we may wake up to find that's what we are!""

[David Walton]

The oldest story I can remember where Luthor displays redemptive qualities is "The Showdown Between Luthor and Superman" from Superman v1 #164, with the introduction of Lexor, the planet where Luthor is hailed as a hero (after what he does in that story).

As for the Clark Kent-Superman dichotomy, I like Maggin's take in a short back-up story from Superman #270 ("I can't go home again") where Pete Ross is thinking in the end: "Who in Smallville would have thought that Superboy would grow up as sentimental as the next guy and that his "cover", Clark Kent, would become as genuine a human being as Superman? A wise man once said, "we must be very carefull about what we pretend to be because someday we may wake up to find that's what we are!""

Ah, thanks for the quote! That adds some important context to what Maggin is saying in Miracle Monday.

[Jim Kelly]

I think it’s best to read Maggin’s novels as one would read any author. The novels do involve a trademark character and they tie into an already established continuity, but Elliot enjoys more autonomy in his novels to create independent works of art.

In the comic books, he was always satisfying the expectations of an editor and collaborating with other artists. But Maggin’s novels are his own literary accomplishment--just like AN UNLIKELY PROPHET is first and foremost a novel by Alvin Schwartz that just happens to involve a particular iteration of Superman.

So that’s why, while I might quibble about how Elliot’s novels match with previous continuity in the comic books or my own understanding of Earth-One Superman, I defer to the author’s right to create his own artistic statement about the universe. Just as I do for Fyodor Dostoyevsky or Thomas Hardy

[Adekis]

I love "Song of the Earth," scientifically accurate or not! One of the best moments in the novel.

To me if Superman can hear everything, it just brings to mind The Metropolitan Man by Alexander Wales, where Superman's super-hearing is played up for Orwellian horror. Good intentions on Superman's part or not, nobody should be able to overhear everything. I think Superman would agree.

You know, there's surprisingly little Lois in the book, and I didn't really see anything that deliberately contradicted a more modern take. It's not like she's jumping into Niagra Falls waiting to be rescued.

It's true that there's not much Lois, and where she is, she's really only defined in terms of her relationship with Superman, which I think is my problem. As much as I love, for example, Grant Morrison's Superman, I think Mark Waid has a better handle on Lois specifically because with him she's a really compelling character on her own, and being a love interest is secondary. For Morrison and Maggin, the fact that she's Superman's love interest precedes everything else. Even Jimmy gets a good section of an early chapter to be in the spotlight, but Lois' spotlit moments are both shared with Superman: their date in the mountain spring and the conversation they don't have.

Well, in general I think the argument against Superman killing comes down to the simple fact that the writers create and can thus solve whatever problems Superman encounters without having him resort to murder. It's not, "Superman would never kill if it came to that" but rather "this is fiction so it need never actually come to that."

Even Maggin dodges the question of what Superman would do if C.W. Saturn actually killed anyone!

First point: killing and murder aren't equivalent. Personal pet peeve.

Second point: I question whether the argument is about story-crafting, though of course you're absolutely correct about the nature of stories. A lot of the time, to me the argument seems more about moralistic circle-jerking. In any case, I think it's important in a positive way that Maggin does dodge the question of what Superman would do if she started killing people. It would put him in a situation more like Marvelman with Johnny Bates. The host is totally innocent, the powered entity is too dangerous to be allowed to exist. What do we do? Well obviously if you're writing Superman, you don't put him in that situation. But Maggin also didn't put Superman in the position of being able to kill CW Saturn independently of Kristin, so he doesn't even need to answer the "Zod question", which is of course fine. I think that the exact nature of his conflict is kind of masterful on Maggin's part, as it allows people like me who say "well of course Superman should kill General Zod" to read Miracle Monday in that light and people like say Mark Waid who say "Superman should never kill anyone in any circumstances" to read it in that light. And sure I'm projecting Man of Steel backwards in time thirty-two years, but that's not the point.

On the other hand, I think one of the reasons I kind of felt that the book got kind of anti-climactic during the period between Kristin's possession and Kal telling CW Saturn he's not going to kill her, is that maybe after Man of Steel or even Superman II a villain who flies around trying to corrupt the incorruptible Superman by flying him around running him ragged rather than actually putting people in danger seems almost kind of silly. The fact that Maggin has Perry White compare Saturn to Mxyzptlk doesn't do that side of the character many favors either, especially since I'm writing this in a post-Vyndktvx world where Mxyzptlk's Satanic Foil will kill people...

Part of me wonders if the finale would have been more satisfying to me if Superman had had the exact same response after being run ragged saving lives instead of stopping mischief, you know? I mean I guess Saturn's mischief was potentially harmful to civilians and that was the point of Saturn wanting Superman to deliberately let someone die out of despair, but I didn't feel like that side of CW Saturn was very well articulated.

As a side note, does anyone know why Maggin made an anagram for Curt Swan into the Devil's name?

Well, I'm hardly unbiased since I'm a Christian, but I don't think that should be any more problematic than religious people reading sci-fi works with an agnostic/atheist viewpoint. You're essentially talking about trying to change Maggin's voice without changing the novel, which isn't really possible. It's like saying, "I really like Poe but his work is problematic for people who don't like morbidity."

And ultimately I think an agnostic/atheist could just make the argument that C.W. Saturn and Luthor's God are alien entities not yet fully understood. No one reading the book has to buy into Luthor's conclusions, they just have to understand the logic behind him making the duplicate of Superman's hair.

Oh, I'm well aware that Miracle Monday completely hinges on pop-Christian mythology. I know you couldn't actually change it and have the same book, it's just that fact that bugs me. Most science fiction avoids the question of religion by being very secular. DC avoids it most of the time by including tons of different pantheons, though its versions of Christian myth tend to be pretty studiously disguised from the Spectre to Zauriel (which I suppose I don't like that much either). In that respect, including Christian myth doesn't bug me too much, but I'm still really really annoyed about the Akhenaten and polytheism thing, wherein Maggin did in fact actually kind of flip off belief systems practiced in the world today!

More to the point though, the novel makes no attempt at all to define CW Saturn or God as alien entities that we don't fully understand, and every effort to have us read them as actual pop-Christian God and Satan. Actually, that might be fine on its own- after all, the normal DCU has Blaze and Satanus and Neron and all those Devils. The most personally confusing thing about Miracle Monday's approach to God and Satan, and the only single part of the book that conflicts with my own idealized Luthor, is that I'd expect Lex "I know how I climbed the mountain" Luthor to say "CW Saturn is a hopped-up elemental with delusions of grandeur playing by the rules of the mythological Christian Devil" or "out there somewhere in the ectoplasmic spectrum of gas-waves and the infinite universes it implies, there's a compassionate intelligence which the mystics I've surpassed foolishly worship," or something like that, but he doesn't. I see Lex pretty much as a gnostic atheist who admits to the existence of the supernatural but would never deem it worthy of worship, so the fact that he pretty much turns around and says "God is real. Huh," without ever attempting to falsify that notion aside from in thought experiments... it's just not scientific. Everything else he does is so perfect, right up to tricking "Saturn" with the fake lock of hair.

Well, and of course the whole "order vs. chaos" thing doesn't sit well with me. Later stories point out how much chaos is part of the beauty of Earth; Superman uses that knowledge to defeat Brainiac, for example. Darkseid is for order. Brainiac is for order. But that is of course a very minor point.

Well, All-Star Superman has that sequence where Superman looks in the mirror and sees his 'true' form:



But otherwise, point taken. There is something to the idea that these things can never be articulated, and no answer can ever fully speak to the mystery of who we really are and where that lines up with how we see ourselves.

Yeah exactly. Ha. I was actually thinking of that exact panel when I said that parts of "Clark" were clearly affectations!

I said this in another thread, but I think DC could (perhaps) bring SMALLVILLE's Lionel Luthor in to play the Byrne Luthor role, and completely free Lex Luthor up to be something along the lines of Maggin's take.

Not that they need Lionel to do that, but it could give readers the best of both worlds.

I like the basic idea, I just don't like Lionel. Jules Luthor interests me more, perhaps because he's less interesting and thus less of a big deal to Lex himself. I tend to think that the only people who really shape Lex's life are Lex himself and Superman. Morgan Edge or Big Bill Bowers or Glen Glenmorgan can fill the "Kingpin Lex" hole pretty well though!