Gladiator (novel)
Author | Philip Wylie |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Speculative fiction |
Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
Publication date | 1930 |
Media type | |
Pages | 332 |
Gladiator is a
The novel is widely assumed to have been an inspiration for Superman due to similarities between Danner and the earliest versions of Superman who debuted in 1938,[1][2] though no confirmation exists that Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were directly influenced by Wylie's work.[3]
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
Story
The story begins at the turn of the 20th century. Professor Abednego Danner lives in a small, rural Colorado town, and has a somewhat unhappy marriage to a conservative religious woman. Obsessed with unlocking genetic potential, Danner experiments with a tadpole (which breaks through the bowl he's keeping it in), and a pregnant cat, whose 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 duplicates his experiment on his unknowing wife.
Their child Hugo 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 fighting in 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.
Next, he attempts to have an influence in politics, but becomes infuriated with the state of affairs and the bureaucracy of
Reception
"Reading the final chapter of Gladiator, you get the feeling that Philip Wylie simply didn't know what to do with his superhuman protagonist. How could he? He was not writing escapist pulp adventure, but literature. He had no guideposts, no fixed star to follow. By the conservative standards of early 20th Century literature, the superman was doomed by virtue of being a superman."
— Will Murray, "Gladiator of Iron"[2]
According to
Adaptations
Films
The novel was made into a
Comics
The story was adapted for Marvel Comics in Marvel Preview #9 (published in winter of 1976) by Roy Thomas and Tony DeZuniga, roughly following the storyline of the first half of the novel. (It is unknown if a continuation was planned.) It is billed "from the blockbusting novel 'Gladiator' by Philip Wylie" on the cover, with the story titled "Man God" inside. Thomas later created a character named Arn "Iron" Munro in the DC comic book Young All-Stars, as an homage to Gladiator. Iron Munroe is the son of Hugo Danner, who had faked his death and later returned to Colorado and became a parent.[6]
The novel was adapted into a four issue prestige style
Television
This section possibly contains original research. (April 2022) |
Season 2 Episode 2 of the television show
In Popular Culture
The book appears in the house of fictional character Hollis Mason (aka Nite Owl) in issue#1, page 9 of the graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
References
- ISSN 0091-7729. Retrieved 2006-12-06.
- ^ a b Will Murray. "Gladiator of Iron". Archived from the original on July 24, 2011. Retrieved May 22, 2022.
- 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."
- ^ Salmon, Andrew. "Unsung Hero". Archived from the original on July 24, 2011. Retrieved April 17, 2022.
- IMDb
- ISBN 978-1605490311.
External links
- Gladiator at Standard Ebooks
- Gladiator at Project Gutenberg. The Complete novel in several ebook formats.
- Gladiator public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- Gladiator by Philip Wylie. A site dedicated to Philip Wylie's novel, Gladiator. Includes cover scans of almost all editions, a scan of a lengthy inscription by Wylie about Gladiator and various essays.