Curse: Conclusion

The solution to the mystery in Alan Grant's Smallville: Curse (New York, 2004) is so understated that the reader might miss it and certainly might not realize its full implications. First, it is learned that the man who had laid the curse had previously faked his psychic powers. Therefore, it is deduced that his curse cannot have worked. Non sequitur. It does not follow.

However, Clark deduces an alternative explanation for the apparent fulfillment of the curse. Thus, when, on p. 6, the omniscient narrator informs the reader that a past evil has stirred, this does not mean that any supernatural entity has been reactivated. Instead, because the minister who reads about the curse believes in the power of curses and is influenced by green meteor radiation, his mind has the power to cause events like a death and a fire in apparent fulfillment of the curse! This is a hard saying...

Happy ending: the minister, advised by Clark, buries his green "(un)lucky charm" with the victim of the fire at the church. The minister and his wife begin to rebuild their marriage and the author makes us feel for them as for the other characters, both regular and one-off. There are quite a few of the latter: the minister and his wife; Clark's temporary girlfriend; the wrestling performers; the drowned grave digger; even the bullies who get out of their depth almost literally when a flooding river interrupts their party.

We often see the cemetery where the Langs are buried but I think that this novel is the only source of information about the First Church of Smallville and its staff.

The novel, also understatedly, describes a turning point for Lex Luthor. After reading a revelatory book:

"His mind was sharper, one hundred per cent focused...
"A man who used this power for good could transform the Universe.
"A man who used it for evil could rule the Universe.
"Lex Luthor had a decision to make." (pp. 272-273)

We already know how he will choose and who will oppose him.

Curse IV

Alan Grant's Smallville: Curse (New York, 2004) is enjoyable and also substantial, certainly by any criteria that can reasonably be applied to a novel based on a TV series. If this had been one of the slighter Smallville novels, then its title theme, the Curse on Smallville, would have been stated and resolved, curtain.

However, Curse is bulkier than some other volumes in the series with more going on:

Pete Ross is alienated from Clark after learning about his alien powers;
Lex, staying in a hotel while his mansion is restored (after damage sustained in the previous Alan Grant Smallville novel?), does some historical research and shares some of his findings with Smallville High sophomores;
Chloe causes an urban panic by publicizing the "curse," which seems to be coming true;
a wrestling show comes to town;
one wrestler, a habitual thief, steals the old journal containing the curse but his thievery is stopped by his manager without any input from either Clark or the police;
another wrestler has business with Clark in the ring and with Lex out of it.

The account of the wrestling show is a particularly good read. Clark, choosing between costumes, turns down a red and blue "S"-suit previously worn by SavageMan.

I am puzzled about the minister's lucky charm, described as a green cross and, just once, as a crucifix. Is it a star-shaped meteor rock or a cross carved from meteor rock? (A crucifix would be a cross with an image of Christ carved on it.)

Lex's Talk

In Alan Grant's Smallville: Curse (New York, 2004), pp. 122-127, Lex Luthor addresses Smallville High School sophomores. His performance would need to be longer to be a real talk. It is in two parts.

First, he asks what is the "essence" of business, religion etc. "Essence of..." seems to mean "the single, indispensable feature of..." With some discussion, Lex and the sophomores compile a list:

business - trust (whereas "profit" is the motivation);
religion - faith (= belief without rational proof);
politics - deceit;
law - also deceit (not justice);
IRS (tax collection) - coercion.

Putting together "politics" and "IRS," Lex describes taxation as:

"...a bunch of liars use the threat of force to steal my money..." (p. 125)

- and gets a laugh from his audience.

Secondly, he advises them:

"Think for yourself...The only person you can rely on is yourself." (p. 126)

- and explains why. I fully agree with his second half. Further, thinking for myself leads me to question the source of what Lex describes as "...my money..."!

Curse III

Alan Grant once mentioned in conversation that, if an author who has been commissioned to write a novel about DC Comics characters takes too long to write it, then he does not earn enough to make it worth doing. These works must be written well, which they are, but also fast.

Some are short and light. Greed, discussed earlier, is 166 pages of quite widely spaced text whereas Curse (New York, 2004) by Alan Grant is more substantial with 274 pages of slightly smaller and more closely packed text.

Do the narratives show many sign of hasty writing? No. The writers who are given the job know what they are doing. Maybe this sentence could be reconsidered:

"Pete's face flushed red with embarrassment." (p. 16)

This version of Pete Ross is black. Do black people darken rather than redden?

Meanwhile, the plot thickens. The omniscient narrator has told us that an old evil has stirred. The minister reads an old manuscript that describes a dog badly injured by a wagon wheel, then five dogs die in accidents in Smallville. It is perfectly possible that a curse is at work. Superheroes are a composite genre, combining elements of science fiction, fantasy and action-adventure. Clark's extraterrestrial origin can coexist with supernatural phenomena.

Curse II

In Curse (New York, 2004) by Alan Grant, Lex is twenty-five when Clark is sixteen whereas in Greed, discussed earlier, Lex is twenty-two when Clark is sixteen. (Nerd Central here.) However, the overwhelming impression generated by the Smallville novels is of seamless continuity.

"Clark wasn't a human being. He was an alien from outer space..." (p. 15)

As I said when discussing Greed, I do not think that this sort of language is an appropriate way to introduce a character in a novel. Need it even be said? Does anyone read these novels without already knowing where Clark is from? If so, then they can be allowed to realize Clark's significance more gradually and subtly than with stock phrases like "...an alien from outer space..."

I recently mentioned references in the TV series to two Greek myths, Prometheus and Pandora. Cassandra, the Greek prophetess who was always right but never believed, is also referred to both in a TV episode and in Curse, where Lex reads a book called Cassandra's Secret which argues that ancient civilizations collapsed because all their decisions were based on alleged divine messages in dreams, visions or auditory hallucinations whereas social complexity required internal reflection and rational thought which then duly emerged, banishing the "messages."

Civilization comprises cities supported by agricultural production of an economic surplus. I think that agriculture, architecture and administration require reasoned discussion and cooperation, thus that pre-rational consciousness would not cause civilizations to collapse but prevent them from starting. Richard Dawkins suggests that the Neolithic Revolution was caused either by the birth of language or by a linguistic revolution like the creation of conditional clauses.

TV And Novel Continuities

When prose fiction is based on screen drama, then the prose descriptions of the characters must correspond to the physical appearances of the actors. Thus, Lana Lang was always red-haired in Superman-related comics but not in the Smallville novels because she is played by Kristin Kreuk on TV.

In Alan Grant's Smallville: Curse (New York, 2004), Clark Kent perceives himself as having:

"An honest, intelligent face. Friendly eyes." (p. 7)

- which sounds both like how we would expect a young Superman to look and like Tom Welling.

The authors of the novels fit their narratives in between TV episodes and seasons but do any differences of continuity arise between the stories as presented in the two media?

On TV, Whitney joined the Marines, asking Clark to look after Lana for him. Lana ex'ed Whitney in a video message, then Whitney died in action. (I may have missed something in between because I am way behind with watching the early seasons.) Clark keeps Lana at a distance and she gives up on Clark, except as a friend, because of his persistent evasiveness.

In Curse, Whitney joined the Marines, "...Clark intended to do everything in his power to crowd out Lana's affection for his rival...," then Whitney died. (ibid.) That sounds like a parallel though not identical sequence of events.

Smallville: Curse

In the Smallville TV series, we often see Lana Lang at her parents' grave. In Smallville: Curse (New York, 2004) by Alan Grant, the six page Prologue is narrated in the third person from the point of view of a new character, Cyrus Deen, who has dug graves in Smallville for forty-seven years.

We learn about two important graves:

sweet corn millionaires, the Weighlands, have "...an elaborate tomb topped with a life-size stone angel..." (p. 2);
the Lang's grave has a flower holder with contents replaced every Sunday by Lana who sits on the grass and talks to her parents. (p. 3)

The Langs died when "...a swarm of meteors fell on the town. After a journey through space that had lasted centuries, they arrowed in on Smallville..." (p. 3)

An interstellar journey at a sub-light speed would indeed take centuries or longer but then how does the spaceship that accompanied the meteors contain a three year old child? Maybe it passed through hyperspace, bringing the meteors with it, enclosed in its field? (But Cyrus does not know about the spaceship.)

The Reverend Grindlay says that death is release and peace for the deceased but Cyrus sees that it is misery and pain for the bereaved. Grindlay cares for "...immortal souls..." whereas Cyrus tends to "...mortal remains." (p. 5) Many of us do not believe in souls but can acknowledge the beliefs of church goers and can also accept that souls exist in this fictitious universe. There is plenty of evidence for them.

When Cyrus takes a manuscript found in an old coffin to the minister:

"...an evil from the past stirred in its long, long sleep." (p. 6)

In that concluding sentence of the Prologue, the omniscient narrator steps in, overriding Cyrus' pov. The grave digger does not yet know of any ancient evil.

Time And Change

Miss Violet Redfern was fourteen in 1945. She lived for decades in a Gothic house, where she had a gift shop, on Durban St above the river in Smallville. When a storm washed her back garden with its well and tree into the river and made her house unsafe, she moved to an apartment in a new building development outside the town.

She had known Lana Lang's parents who died in the meteor strike when Lana was three. Both Lana and Clark Kent visit Miss Redfern's shop where they befriend her and both of them also visit her again later in her new apartment.

By creating this elderly character who appears only in one Smallville novel, Dragon, Alan Grant generates a strong sense of Smallville as a real place enduring through the second half of the twentieth century. Smallville must have begun when Super(man as a)boy commenced publication in 1944. This was the very earliest Earth 1 story, contradicting the original Earth 2 continuity in which Clark Kent had begun his costumed career only in adulthood and after the deaths of his parents, swearing an oath at their graves like his successor, the Batman.

First published in 1944, Superboy comics had to be set ten or more years earlier because Superman always exists in the reader's present, the child's eternal present. This created problems for Superboy's chronology. Over time, he was depicted as living through his teens in different decades. Avoiding such problems, Smallville instead is set in the present, showing the youth of a future Superman.

Lead

When, in Alan Grant's Smallville novel, Dragon, Clark Kent fights a meteor-empowered monster, the monster's enhanced strength is no problem, except when, because of meteoric emanations, Clark temporarily forgets and loses his powers, but the fact that the monster's body is infused with the radiation is a big problem and there is a neat solution.

Clark already knows that lead blocks not only his X ray vision but also the meteoric emanations. The text has already described some of the treasures in the Luthor Castle, including a large Byzantine lead cross. Remembering this, Clark, using super strength, pounds the cross into flat sheets that he can adapt as body armour which he must afterwards discard. Thus, he has stolen and destroyed a work of art but in order to rescue Lana who had been kidnapped by the Dragon.

Some of us are old enough to remember when, to handle Kryptonite, Superman wore lead armor that had to cover his entire body including his eyes. Unable to see out even with X ray vision, he wore a TV camera on the front of the armour and an aerial on his head and had a TV screen in front of his face. It is good to be able to remember those days but there have been better versions of the story since then, most notably John Byrne's Man Of Steel mini-series and the Smallville TV series.

A New Continuing Villain?

Alan Grant creates a conventional villain for his Smallville novel, Dragon. Ray Dansk, the last of the Smallville Dragons biker gang, imprisoned for manslaughter but now released, returns to Smallville and hides in the gang's old cave where the pervasive meteor radiation transforms him into a murderous man-sized lizard that attacks those who were witnesses at his trial.

We last see Dansk back in human form, unconscious and handcuffed and are not told what happens to him after that. He has fulfilled his role in the story: committed murders; kidnapped the heroine; fought the hero; been defeated. Now he is disposable. The conventional treatment of villains in this kind of fiction is to send them back to prison - unless the death penalty is applicable? Maybe the fact that he acted under the influence of the meteor radiation will be taken into account? His metamorphosis is sufficient evidence.

What Alan Grant has also created here is a conventional continuing villain. Dansk succeeded in killing only two of the three witnesses and made new enemies in the process. This could be the starting point of a later story: Dansk comes back, is re-transformed, goes after Clark Kent - The Dragon Returns; The Return Of The Dragon etc. I do not expect either Alan Grant or any other author to pick up this thread but it is undeniably present as one of the many potential stories in the Superman canon.

Whitney Fordman Or Ellsworth

Inconsistencies are difficult to avoid in any fiction series, especially in either a long or a multi-authored one. The science fiction writer, Poul Anderson's, reply to readers who drew attention to discrepancies within any of his various and sometimes elaborate series was that complete consistency is possible only to the Almighty and a close study of scripture shows that even he does not always manage it.

In the Smallville TV series, Lana Lang's boyfriend is Whitney Fordman. In the Smallville novel, Dragon by Alan Grant, Lana's boyfriend is Whitney Ellsworth. And these are one guy, not two successive boyfriends with coincidentally the same first name. It is easy to explain this particular discrepancy. The surname "...Ellsworth..." is spoken by Lex Luthor who might simply be mistaken. Such mistakes or slips of the tongue occur in real life but usually not in fiction unless they turn out to be somehow relevant to the plot.

In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we must accept that, in the novel, Whitney's surname really is "Ellsworth". A comic book explanation would be that the TV series and the novels based on it are set in alternative universes where perhaps the only discernible difference is in one guy's surname! Before writing this post, I googled "Smallville Whitney Fordman", then "Smallville Whitney Ellsworth", in order to check - there might have been a TV episode in which for some reason Whitney had changed his surname, like his mother had remarried etc.

Instead, according to the Wikipedia article on "Whitney Fordman", the character's name before he was cast was to have been "Whitney Ellsworth" so the explanation is that Alan Grant was working from a "bible" for the show that preceded that particular name change. We are thus being given a small glimpse of a pre-production version of the story. Probably, there are other such changes of which we are unaware.

Later: On pp. 244 and 402, the text, not another character, refers to "Whitney Fordman" so that is this character's name in the novel and "Ellsworth" was a mistake by Luthor.

POV

I am still posting about a prose text on a Comics Appreciation Blog because the text, Dragon, a Smallville novel by Alan Grant, is comics-derived albeit via TV. (This is appropriate because narrative, drama and sequential art are the three story-telling media and each can draw on or refer to either of the others.) Instead of reading the entire novel and writing a comprehensive review, I post on specific points while reading.

Most writers know that they should control point of view. As a rule, each passage of continuous narrative should be presented as from the perspective of a single character, whether the narration is in the first or the third person. I say "Most writers..." because one successful science fiction writer had the point of view switching arbitrarily back and forth between two or three characters within single passages of dialogue.

Like most writers, Alan Grant, whether consciously or unconsciously, observes the rule about a single point of view if not throughout an entire novel, then certainly within each chapter or at least within each of the discrete chapter sections that are separated from each other by wider spaces and sometimes also, as in this edition of Dragon, by a line of asterisks. Readers who are aware of point of view notice if there are any discrepancies. For example, when Clark asks Jonathan:

"...where are we going?" (1)

- we are told what Clark is thinking and, when Jonathan replies, we are told what Jonathan and Martha had agreed the previous evening. Clark does not know what they had agreed so the recollection of the parental agreement can only be from Jonathan's point of view. Thus, the point of view has shifted within a single conversation.

Later, a dialogue between Chloe and Lex is described from Chloe's point of view but, right at the end, we are told that she would have been surprised to know what Lex was thinking. Thus, in the concluding sentence, the omniscient narrator has intervened to comment on the thought processes of both of these characters. Some readers do not notice points of view but heeding how an author handles them adds an extra element to the appreciation of a fictional text.

(1) Alan Grant, Dragon IN Smallville Ominbus 1 (New York, 2006), p. 367.

Analysing A Comics- And TV-Derived Novel

Setting a novel, Dragon (IN Smallville Omnibus 1, New York, 2006), in the framework of the Smallville TV series, Alan Grant needed:

(i) a villain empowered by meteor emanations;
(ii) interactions between the regular characters.

(i) is the title character, Raymond Dansk, a released convict. Leaving Metropolis Peniteniary, he needs a reason to go to Smallville: he is from there. He needs to have three victims to target: the witnesses whose testimony got him imprisoned for manslaughter. The witnesses need to be somehow connected with the regular characters: they are a Smallville High teacher, Lex's chef and Lana's aunt.

The teacher is a disposable character, introduced only to be killed off in this single story. Aunt Nell cannot be killed; she is a regular. I am not yet certain of the chef's status.

(ii) The regulars: Pete, Chloe and Lex are friends of Clark who likes Lana who dates Whitney. For story purposes, their interactions do not have to be meteor-influenced but, in this case, the character-changing properties of meteorically infected tea enhance the drama. Lana can dump Whitney for Clark who can forget, and effectively lose, his powers as long as normality is restored by the end of the novel. When Clark lacks super-strength and -speed, Pete replaces him as hero and is hospitalised in the process.

Thus, a novel-length narrative grows from premises derived from the Smallville scenario. At appropriate moments, the characters reminisce about the defining events of the pilot episode: why Nell brings up Lana; how Lex lost his hair; how the Kents adopted Clark.

Dragon III

In Alan Grant's Smallville novel, Dragon (IN Smallville Omnibus 1, New York, 2006):

"Lex had been in Smallville for almost a year..." (p. 287)

is code for "This novel is set just after Season One of the Smallville TV series..."

- of which so far I have watched only five of the twenty one episodes. This is a massive fictitious universe, comprising:

ten TV seasons;
I don't know how many novels and will scarecely be able to track them all down;
some independent adventures of Chloe Sullivan published on the Internet, I think (?);
maybe three comic-magazines containing not only interviews with cast members but also some comic strips;
a currently on-going monthly comic book called Smallville Season 11.

Thus, not just a prequel but a complete self-contained version of the Superman story. In later TV seasons, Clark moves to Metropolis where he interacts with (versions of) other DC Universe characters. It sounds to me as if too much happens before Clark dons the costume and starts to fly but I have not yet seen any of the later seasons.

Meanwhile, I am reading Dragon while Lex drives his silver Porsche past cornstalks and reminisces, giving the author an opportunity to recapitulate yet another scene from the pilot episode - how Lex lost his hair.

Dragon II

In Alan Grant's Smallville novel, Dragon (IN Smallville Omnibus 1, New York, 2006):

"Hailing from the Big Met, Chloe was a relative newcomer to Smallville." (p. 284)

Of course she is! She did not exist in any previous version of the story. (Metafiction: a fictitious text acknowledging its fictitious status.)

In Superboy comics, the question, "Who is Superboy?", asked by Lana Lang, could have led to Clark Kent. In the Smallville TV series, the question, "Why do weird things go down in Smallville?", asked by Chloe, could lead to Clark Kent. Thus, we have recognisably the same story structure but in a vastly improved and updated format.

Many locals blame strange growths on contaminants from the Luthorcorp fertilizer plant so the main villain of the Superman series is already on-stage but, again, more plausibly.

Alan Grant, writing this novel set in Smallville, seamlessly fits his story into the established scenario. Thus, the police investigating whether a mutilated man was killed by an escaped tiger naturally ask:

" '...about private zoos. Like, does Lex Luthor have one out at that place of his?' " (p. 283)

Unfortunately, the horrific death results from meteoric radiation and thus is another possible clue to Clark's extraterrestrial origin. 

Dragon By Alan Grant

Although this is a Comics Appreciation Blog, I am now appreciating a novel based on a TV series based on a comic book series. But all is one.

Even a novel about Clark Kent can reflect our common experience of life. Lana Lang thinks:

"Funny how the past has a habit of slipping through your fingers. And the harder you try to hold onto it, the faster it slips away." (1)

That connects this book with any other novel whose characters reflect on their experience.

Seventy year old Miss Mayfern tells Lana that the man she loved was killed in Germany in 1945 when she was fourteen. We remember that an earlier version of Superman was alive then but, appropriately, the story of Superman is continually updated. Clark's and Lana's philosophy teacher fought in Vietnam nearly three decades ago.

We are in a different age but Clark is still growing up, as ever.

(1) Smallville Omnibus 1 (New York, 2006), p. 260.

Smallville Novels

Gladiator, a novel by Philip Wylie;
Superman comic strips, set in Metropolis;
Superboy comic strips, set in Smallville;
the Smallville TV series;
Smallville novels.

I assume here that Gladiator was a source for, or at least a precursor of, Superman although, of course, the latter character originated in a comic strip - one that was originally intended for a newspaper, not for a comic book.

Thus, the above sequence comprises:

original prose fiction;
graphic fiction;
screen drama;
unoriginal but expertly written and enjoyable prose fiction.

The Smallville TV series was free to contradict the (not consistent over time) Superman comics and even, like the later comics, to deny the Superboy period of Clark Kent's career whereas the Smallville novels are obliged not to contradict the TV series. It must even be made clear during which season of the TV series any given novel is set, eg, who was the Principal of Smallville High School at the time?

The novels written by, among others, Roger Stern and Alan Grant, perfectly reproduce the setting and characters of the TV series and are like a more leisurely way to experience that fictitious scenario. The Prologue of Dragon by Alan Grant even recapitulates the opening sequence of the pilot episode with a swarm of meteors passing Pluto, Jupiter and the Moon and approaching Earth while the Luthors and Kents go about their business in Smallville, Kansas. (Grant writes "...meteorites..." but I think that that term applies to meteors only after they have hit the Earth?(1))

I have acquired Omnibus 1, containing:

Strange Visitors by Roger Stern;
Dragon by Alan Grant;
Hauntings by Nancy Holder.

- also, Omnibus 2, containing:

Whodunnit by Dean Wesley Smith;
Silence by Nancy Holder;
Shadows by Diana G Gallagher.

- and, as separate volumes:

Runaway by Suzan Colon;
Greed by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld;
Curse by Alan Grant.

- and maybe one or two others shelved elsewhere.

Having read each book perhaps once when bought, it will be good to reread them while watching Season One on DVD's. It would also be good to have all the novels but books of this sort are more like magazines, printed and published once, then soon out of print.

(1) Smallville Omnibus 1 (London, 2006), p. 231.