I know a guy who knows a guy

The post this last Thursday was about two extremely entertaining Superman novels published concurrently with the first two Christopher Reeve films. In it, I talked about the reason (as I understood it) this original novels were published rather than novelizations of the films.

Well, it turns out that through a comic book/gaming forum I frequent, I know a guy who knows Mr. Maggin. And Mr. Maggin was kind enough to provide the following quote about how his novels ended up being published when they were:

"I think Mario wanted to snag the novelization jobs for his son Gino who, it turns out, was a boyhood friend of my little brother. Then Mario felt overused by the rewrite process on the scripts and was on the outs with the Salkinds after that. I actually wrote Last Son a year before the movie came out (and I was out of print at the tender age of 27) although the original idea was to release my book midway between the release of the first two movies in order to keep the market steeping. The market got hotter than anyone realized it would and I got incredibly lucky when they decided to move my book up to a movie tie-in. I still feel a little scabby about getting pushed into what probably ought to have been Gino's spot, but the thing bought me a house in New Hampshire. Who could argue with that?"

And speaking of Superman, a few weeks back I provided a link to a great "From the Bookshelf" interview with the author of a new history of Superman. I read the book yesterday and it really is superb--a extremely well-researched and well-written tale about the history and cultural impact of the Man of Steel. So if your in a Kryptonian mood any time soon, read Mr. Maggin's two mind-numbingly fun novels (HERE and HERE) and read Mr. Tye's history of the character.