Jack Havig, time traveler, to Robert Anderson:
"'Uncle Jack was the ideal guide and mentor. I'd no reason to disobey his commands about secrecy, aside from some disguised bragging to my friend Pete.' (p. 39)
Clark Kent's friend, Pete Ross, accidentally discovers his secret.
"'...the necessity of keeping our secret...'" (p. 40) is a strong parallel between the biographies of those two great Americans, Clark Kent and Jack Havig. Kent inspires the Legion of Super-Heroes in the thirtieth century. Havig builds the Star Masters civilization in later centuries.
Despite their powers, Kent and Havig keep the secret because its
necessity is impressed on them by their mentors, Jonathan Kent and Uncle
Jack, respectively. The Smallville TV series emphasizes the
deceit and duplicity involved in the secrecy which leads to a permanent
conflict between Clark Kent and his former friend, Lex Luthor. Clark
could have had a small team of friends, including Pete and Lex, working
with him - a much better arrangement.
Is this a new genre: a partly autobiographical, partly historical, documentary prose text, interspersed with illustrations, written and drawn by an author, illustrator and political cartoonist, partly covering the period when he was creating a graphic novel? Usually, I would be reading the graphic novel. This time, I am reading a prose account of its creation. Next, the book could be filmed, showing the author drawing pages of the graphic novel.
A story can be narrated, enacted or depicted. Thus, the three story-telling media are narrative, drama and sequential art, which can be creatively combined. Once, in a school where I worked, a drama group showed and discussed an animated film and, on a later visit, enacted a sequel, playing the parts of the screen characters. We need
more multi-media creativity to which Nick Hayes could contribute.
Before and during the Crisis on Infinite Earths in the mid- to late 80s, Superman and Superman in Action Comics were solo Superman titles and DC Comics Presents was a regular Superman team-up title whereas, after the Crisis, Superman (first series), now called Adventures Of Superman, and Superman (second series), simply called Superman, were solo Superman titles whereas Superman in Action Comics had become the regular team-up title and, a few years later, became a thick weekly anthology for nearly a year.
For a while, when Action was monthly and neither a team-up book nor an anthology, a fourth monthly title and a quarterly were added to transform four monthlies and one quarterly into one weekly with continuous narrative although by different creative teams and the quality went into the Phantom Zone. Things have changed and changed again and I have no idea what is happening now. Alienate old readers as long as you can attract new younger readers if you can.
