Gladiator (novel)

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Gladiator
Author Philip Wylie
Publisher Knopf
Publication date 1930
Media type Print

Gladiator is an American science fiction novel first published in 1930 and written by Philip Wylie. The story concerns a scientist who invents a serum to 'improve' humankind by granting the proportionate strength of an ant and the leaping ability of the grasshopper. He injects his pregnant wife with the serum and his son, Hugo Danner, is born with superhuman strength, speed, and bulletproof skin. Hugo spends much of the novel hiding his powers, rarely getting a chance to openly use them. The novel is widely assumed an inspiration for the character Superman,[1] though no confirmation exists that Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel was influenced by it.[2]

Contents

[edit] Story

The story begins at the turn of the century with one Professor Abednego Danner. Danner lives in a small, rural Colorado town, and has a somewhat unhappy marriage to a conservative religious woman named Matilda. Obsessed with unlocking genetic potential, Danner begins experimenting on a tadpole. After a few days, it breaks through the bowl. Then he tries his experiments on an impregnated cat. When the cat’s litter is born, the kitten charged with power accidentally kills the mother cat. His experiment is a success, as the kitten displays incredible strength and speed, managing to maul larger animals. Fearing the cat may be uncontrollable, Danner poisons it. When his wife becomes pregnant with their first child, Danner sees another opportunity, and duplicates his experiment on his unknowing wife. When their child is born, he is named Hugo.

The boy almost immediately displays incredible strength, and Danner’s wife realizes what her husband has done. Though she hates him, she does not leave him, and they instead raise their son to be respectful of his incredible gift and sternly instruct him never to fight, or otherwise reveal his gifts, lest he be the target of a witch hunt. Hugo grows up being bullied at school, unwilling to fight back. However, he finds release when he discovers the freedom the wilderness around his hometown provides, unleashing his great strength on trees as a manner of playing.

Hugo finds success in his teenage years, becoming a star football player, and receives a college scholarship. He spends summers and free time trying to find uses for his strength, becoming a professional fighter and strongman at a boardwalk. After killing another player during a football game, Hugo quits school.

Danner then journeys to France and joins the French Foreign Legion for World War I, where his bulletproof skin comes in handy. Upon returning home, he gets a job at a bank, and when a person gets locked inside the vault, Hugo volunteers to get him out if everyone will leave the room. Alone, Hugo rips open the vault door, freeing the man. The banker's response is not gratitude but suspicion. Hugo is deemed an inventive safecracker who was otherwise waiting for an opportunity to rob the vault. Not only is he fired and threatened with arrest for the destruction of the vault, but he is taken away and (ineffectually) tortured. He withstands all attempts at getting him to tell how he opened the vault, escapes, and lifts a car into the air. A very similar feat is depicted on the cover of Action Comics #1 as being accomplished by Superman.

Next, he attempts to have an influence in politics, but becomes infuriated with the state of affairs and the bureaucracy of Washington. Still seeking a goal for his life and a purpose for his powers, he joins an archeological expedition headed for Mayan ruins. Finally finding a friend in the scientist heading the expedition, Hugo reveals his gifts and origin to him. The wise archeologist sympathizes with Hugo and suggests some courses of action for him to take. That night, during a thunderstorm, Hugo wanders to the top of a mountain, debating what to do. He asks God for advice, and is struck dead by a bolt of lightning.

[edit] Philosophy

The book takes place in an age of incredible pulp heroes, such as Doc Savage, the predecessors to the superheroes who would create a genre unto themselves only a few years later. While the initial premise of Gladiator would typically be fertile ground for a superhero story, at no point does Hugo Danner put on a costume or seek to be a vigilante, or much of a hero of any kind, realizing the futility of such a move. Instead, it is the story of someone with incredible gifts unable to find his place in the world.

There is wide speculation about how much of what is happening in the story is indicative of feelings held personally by author Philip Wylie. The death of the protagonist by lightning while he asked questions of God likely echoes some of the feelings Wylie was known to have about religion.

[edit] Adaptations

[edit] Films

The novel was made into a movie in 1938 (and released only two months after Superman first appeared on newsstands), although the story was drastically altered into a comedy starring Joe E. Brown. The film's IMDb entry can be found here.

[edit] Graphic Novels

The story was adapted for Marvel Comics in Marvel Preview #9 (published in winter of 1976) by Roy Thomas and Tony DeZuniga. The issue makes certain liberties, but for the most part follows the essential story. While the blurb “from the blockbusting novel “Gladiator” by Philip Wylie” appears on the issues cover, the title heading (under “Marvel Previews Presents”) is “Man God.” Oddly, only the first half of the story from the novel is adapted. It is unknown if a continuation was planned. Writer Roy Thomas later created a character named Arn "Iron" Munro in the DC comic book Young All-Stars, who was the son of Hugo. The in-universe story regarding Arn's birth states Hugo faked his death in Yucatan Peninsula and later returned to Colorado to father his son.

The novel has most recently been adapted into a four issue prestige style comic book by acclaimed writer Howard Chaykin with art by Russ Heath. The series was published by Wildstorm, a division of DC Comics in 2005. The story was retitled “Legend” (presumably because of the overuse of the title “Gladiator” in various media over the past 75 years), although the covers of the first two issues include a large blurb saying “Inspired by Philip Wylie’s Gladiator.” The time line for the story was moved forward to the second half of the century, and Vietnam replaced World War I, but the story remained, for the most part, intact.

[edit] Publication history

The hardcover novel was first published by New York City, New York's Alfred A. Knopf in 1930, with book club editions that same year from Book League Monthly.

Gladiator has remained in print through several decades, with editions including hardcovers from Shakespeare House (1951), and Hyperion Press (1974, ISBN 0-88355-124-1, with an introduction by Sam Moskowitz), and paperback editions from Avon Books (1949 and 1957), Lancer Books (1958, 1965, 1967, 1973, and 1985), Manor Books (1976), the University of Nebraska Press imprint Bison Books (2004, with an introduction by Janny Wurts, ISBN 0-8032-9840-4), Disruptive Press (2004), and Blackmask (2004, ISBN-10 1596540133, ISBN-13 978-1596540132).

[edit] References

  1. ^ Feeley, Gregory (March 2005). "When World-views Collide: Philip Wylie in the Twenty-first Century". Science Fiction Studies 32 (95). ISSN 0091-7729. 
  2. ^ Jones, Gerard. Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book. New York: Basic Books, 2004 (ISBN 0465036562), pg. 346: Wylie threatened to sue Siegel for plagiarism in 1940, but there is no evidence he carried through with the litigation. Historian Jones writes that, "Siegel flatly denied that Wylie's novel had influenced him in any way," although Jones added his own conjecture that "the timing and striking similarities ... would seem to leave no doubt of Gladiator's role".

[edit] External links

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