THE 'SUPERMAN IV' COMIC THAT'S BETTER THAN THE MOVIE

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace seems to have been generally regarded as the worst superhero movie ever, until 1997 when Warner Bros. and DC had a double whammy with Batman & Robin and Steel.  (Though, perhaps those two even lost their positions at the top of the stink pile to 2004’s Catwoman.)

The Quest For Peace certainly merits it’s unwanted membership in this group of movies that DC would rather forget.

It is pretty poor- a hodgepodge of well-meaning but ultimately ill-fitting anti-nuke rhetoric and the worst bits of camp humour from the school of Richard Lester, churned out on a fraction of the budget of any of the previous entries in the series. The movie throws away any semblance of verisimilitude in the Superman mythology and bestows upon the Man of Steel abilities that make the audience laugh and roll their eyes in equal measure.

So, say you’re a Superman completist, annoyed at the missed opportunity represented by Quest For Peace, but still intrigued by exploring this misguided entry in the series a little more.  Well, there’s a comic book I’d recommend.

The official DC adaptation of the movie sees legendary Superman artist Curt Swan illustrate a comic written by Bob Rozakis.  I recommend this comic to any Superman fan in general, though not for the usual reasons. If you’re expecting a post-John Byrne or Grant Morrison style Supes, then I wouldn’t hold my breath as this comic absolutely follows the plot of a bad movie.  However, there’s 2 things it does which make it a lovely little novelty and well worth a look.

Firstly, Swan sticks with his own style of pencilling our old friend in the red cape, ignoring any likenesses of Christopher Reeve, Mariel Hemingway and indeed, eh-hem, Jon Cryer(this differentiates this work from the Denny O’Neil-penned Batman adaptations of the 90s, which featured art that faithfully captured the look of the films, nipples and all).  Only the requisite costume design for Nuclear Man survives from the imagery of the movie and if one were to quickly flick through this comic’s pages, it could easily be mistaken for just another 70s or 80s edition to the Superman comic book canon(or perhaps even earlier, as Swan’s style was already looking slightly dated).
Secondly, as with many novelisations, computer games or comics adapted from a movie script, the original screenplay is tweaked here for the purposes of entering a different medium, meaning Rozakis was able to make a lot more sense of the film’s more ridiculous moments.

It’s a short comic, owing to it's basically existing as a tool to get kids to see the live-action version, and therefore a little more accessible than the movie.  Things that don’t work when enacted with low-budget 80s optical effects or when uttered from the mouths of otherwise respectable actors, tend to work much better here on the brightly-coloured pages of a comic book.

We don’t blink an eyelid at the dumbed-down escape of Lex Luther from a prison quarry here because, well, it feels like an old-school comic from a more innocent time- which is probably why it helps to forget that this comic is from the not-so-innocent 1987.

A Lex Luthor, clearly written for Gene Hackman’s unique take on the character, can be interpreted differently because, we don’t hear Hackman’s raspy comedic delivery and so the voice coming from this man’s mouth could easily be Clancy Brown’s or Kevin Spacey’s.  And as for his appearance, we have a compromise of a Luthor that doesn’t look like Hackman, but also isn’t depicted as totally bald, as he features the red hair that’s occasionally been bestowed to him by artists intermittently through the decades.

Bob Rozakis and Curt Swan sort of put the filmmakers to shame with their comic adaptation for, whilst some of the film’s snappier and even playfully risque dialogue is missing in Rozakis’s version, he does rewrite much of it into a clearer, more logical narrative, which in turn is illustrated by Swan in a manner that leaves few questions asked.

Much of this is aided by the re-incorporation of deleted scenes, whose omission from the film contribute to it’s occasionally confusing plot.  So, amongst other things, we get to see the sort of proto-Bizarro character who was played in the excised footage by Casualty and Game of Thrones actor Clive Mantle.

So many of the movie’s more foolish moments are either improved, explained away or just flat-out removed here to honestly create something that’s much easier to take seriously.

The nonsense of Mariel Hemingway flying through space, without suffocating or having the blood vessels in her lovely face just rupture all over Nuclear Man, is gladly gone.

In fact, when a human does get brought out into space, it’s young Jeremy, the kid whose letter to Superman got the plot rolling and yet, in

the film, falls into a narrative black hole, his character being completely forgotten about.  And yes, in the comic, Jeremy is in a space suit.

Remember one of the film’s most insane moments, when Superman rebuilds the Great Wall of China with…um…well, by looking at it?  Yeah, well here he uses his super speed to rebuild it brick-by-brick.  Far less crazy an idea and it’s in keeping with Supes’ established powers.

And then there’s Nuclear Man’s powers, amongst which is his ability to be born wearing an ultra-80s super suit.  The film briefly touches on a ludicrous explanation for this.  The tiny little container that Lex’s Superman-clone-jelly-shit is kept in for it’s voyage into space apparently has a costume-weaving computer in it.  I must admit that this idea tickles me, but it’s just dumb.

Swan depicts Nuclear Man coming into existence, rather more believably, naked.  After which, he is presented with a costume by Lex Luthor and Lenny.

In this same scene, it’s noted that Nuclear Man knew to come to Lex’s lair due to genetic memory inherited from the Bizarro-like creature that was created earlier, thereby explaining away another plot-hole of the movie, albeit stretching our suspension of disbelief to the limits.

This comic demonstrates how a fresh set of eyes can help improve, if only slightly, a work that has previously lost it’s way.  Examples of similar improvements go back as far as Fantastic Voyage, which had it’s novelisation penned by none other than the great Isaac Asimov.  In hiring a giant of high-end science fiction to write a version of a sci-fi flick that plays pretty fast and loose with the realms of scientific plausibility, they should have expected considerable changes to the story.  Coz they got them.

The Fantastic Voyage novel delves into detail about the possibilites of ‘shrinking’ that had naturally been overlooked by the movie, pain-stakingly examining the reaction of shrunken matter to both light and even the perception of time.  Asimov also completely changed the ending to one he found more plausible.

I wonder what other adaptations are out there.  What other cinematic offerings have gotten re-interpreted in other media with results that shine a light on the failings of the source material?

All this said, I don’t personally believe Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, is utterly devoid of positive factors.  It’s great seeing Hackman back as Lex Luthor, and indeed almost worth the admission price to see his fun, villainous rapport with Reeve one last time.
And, whilst perhaps belonging in another movie, the messages about nuclear warfare and the transformation of noble newspapers into corporate entities certainly have their heart in the right place.

Also, how many other movies show us Superman flying around Milton Keynes?