Ian Daniel Stewart

Looking back through some old comments reminded me that great scott! Elliot S! Maggin commented on my blog. Definitely one of the highlights of my blogging career so far.

For those that don’t know, Maggin is probably the best Superman writer ever. People tend to defend comics by making them out to be a sort of twentieth century mythology but Maggin — more interestingly in my opinion — wrote Superman as if it were a twentieth century fairy tale. If you’re curious about what the difference is, read some old Superman comics.

Better yet, read his incredibly cool novels, The Last Son of Krypton — also known as the Superman The Movie adaptation (that has nothing to do with the movie) and Miracle Monday. It’s in the latter that Superman battles and defeats Satan. Yes, he battles and defeats Satan. It’s pretty crazy.

I wrote a short review of Miracle Monday a few years ago. It’s totally worth reading if you ever see it. Here are five ridiculously cool things from Miracle Monday I pointed out in my earlier review.

1. The first chapter, Thanksgiving, is a perfect short story about Superman. I wish more people concerned about Superman would read it. You can read it, the whole book actually, at Superman Through the Ages. Oh, and if Plato can be concerned with children reading stories about Achilles or Odysseus you should be concerned with Superman.
2. Superman sees Kirlian auras. He can tell if someone is healthy, sick, innocent or guilty by the color of their aura.
3. The first time Superman gets sick. A young Clark Kent is a passenger on a bus that hits and kills a dog. The idea that he was somehow involved in the death of a living thing puts Superboy into a day long fever.
4. Lex Luthor proves the existence of the Soul and, by inference, the existence of God. What does he do with this information? Why, he uses it to escape from prison, of course.
5. Everyone has a demon, a particular obsession that prevents them from fulfilling their true purposes and potential; alcohol, stamp collecting, whatever. Superman’s demon is Clark Kent, the character he invents because he’s too afraid to relate to the world as he is. He even gives Clark a demon: videotaping funny commercials and showing them to his friends.