Background
After the release of his 1985 book, Funny Papers, Tom De Haven began working on the novella Sunborn Lake. From the work done in creating it, De Haven ended up falling in love with the 1930s; the period the first of his novellas was set in. After the release of Derby Dugan Depression Funnies, the sequel to Funny Papers, in 1996, De Haven got a call from DC, asking if he would be interested in doing a Superman novel set in the same period as Depression Funnies, the 1930s. De Haven was honored at first, because of the iconic nature of the character, but on the other hand felt unsure as he would not own the copyright as he had done for his previous works. Nevertheless, he accepted the job. However, he was already committed in writing Dugan Under Ground, and wanted to finish that first. DC agreed, even though that novel was finally published in September 2001, four years later. During that time, DC gave De Haven copies of Superman's early stories found in the pages of DC Archive Editions, for the writer to study.
For De Haven, he wanted It's Superman! to be a straight adult novel, with little irony, and very real world (New York instead of the more famous Metropolis), as much as he wanted the Clark Kent/Superman who was an average Joe like Jerry Siegel's and Joe Shuster's version. A coming of age story where everything that made up the 1930s, religion, politics, or the world, influenced the mind of our main character. It was De Haven's idea to end the story with Clark ready to experience his life experiences as Superman, different from similar stories of the norm where everything is all set in the end. This was done for readers to easily have confidence in Clark because of the story's main events as the book closes.
After De Haven's pitch proposal, Chronicle Books made the offer to publish the novel. Even with the contract to finish the manuscript within one year, it ended up taking up to two-and-a-half years to complete. The finished manuscript ran up to 1000 pages long, obviously too long for a published book, and De Haven was allowed more time to cut down the book to a reasonable page length in early 2005. What was removed were: the backstory on Lex Luthor, a subplot involving a Russian spy after Luthor's "Lexbot" plans, more about Diana Dewey, Clark's girlfriend from Hollywood, more on Martha Kent, and more. Losing the material was not missed on De Haven's part, as it made the book shorter, or as he put it, "faster than a speeding bullet."
Read more about this topic: It's Superman!
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