It's Superman! - Response

Response

Reviews of It's Superman! were overall generally positive. Readers applauded the 1930s details, from movies to even the brands of cigarettes, as well as the book's nature to "suck them into" the story. The New York Times described the novel as "Delightful with energy and imagination", and Entertainment Weekly stated that the book is "textured with authentic faces, places, and attitudes." Various websites went as far as to put the novel side by side with non-superhero novels such as The Grapes of Wrath and The Outsiders. Comic Geek Speak, a fan podcast dealing with comics and other media, did an episode about the novel, where De Haven was also a guest. The novel was praised by the podcast, where the hosts stated that they liked the novel's story being original, and the depiction of Clark, where he was seen as "..a much more 'human' Clark than we are used to seeing in comics and other media." It was also brought up that this novel alone had gotten every one of the hosts interested in other novels based on comic books and superheroes, noting Batman: The Ultimate Evil as one example.

Some reviewers though felt the opposite, to which De Haven described in his entry on the Thunder Child website that he felt those readers "didn't get it". One example was from Superman Homepage.com; while one reviewer gave the novel a positive review, the other reviewer gave a negative one, feeling that, regardless of how intelligent the novel was, it should have been a superhero novel, and thus felt ripped off. Almost a fanboy complaint, the reviewer hated that there was only one battle in the book, and the actions Clark/Superman does in the novel were not "Superman-like", and went as far as to say the character was stupid. Those alone were defended by De Haven himself from the Thunder Child website, where he described that he was in "disgust" over the negative comments, and he explained that: "he is a young man who grew up in his time and his place and was educated according to the theories and with the tools of that context. (He went to Smallville High, not Phillips Exeter Academy, for crying out loud.) He worries that he's not smart enough to do the things that he wants to do, feels he should do, but he manages to put aside, if never completely overcome, those feelings of inadequacy, and to me that's heroic. Why would anyone think a 17-20 year old kid from a tiny farming town in eastern Kansas would move out into the greater world and immediately, instinctively believe he could compete with a big-city politician like Lex Luthor or engage in an easygoing man-to-man conversation with the President of the United States?" Comic Geek Speak joined De Haven in his comments, with co-host Bryan Deemer saying that he liked It's Superman!'s Clark because he himself was tired of seeing Clark as the "perfect angel" all the time; adding that Clark's actions made sense for him to do because he was a kid, and it will still lead him into the boy scout he will soon evolve into. Also, co-host Peter Rios pointed out that he saw the scenes where the doubtful Clark did not "get it", as scenes where Clark came across as "alien...which is exactly what he is."