There's also Greg Rucka's No Man's Land. I haven't read it, but Rucka's own novels are so good I can't imagine it's not worth reading. (Plus, Roger Stern has a new Superman book coming in June, The Never-Ending Battle.)
Pete | Email | Homepage | 04.27.05 - 9:36 pm | #

Not strictly a comics novelization, but Maggin's Superman: Last Son of Krypton was always a favorite of mine growing up.

And I recently discovered Superfolks, which I realized as soon as I read the first chapter was the story I'd been obsessing over since I was seven years old and read the tiniest of excerpts. For some reason, when I was a teenager and trying to remember where the hell I'd seen that thing, I always thought it was a Philip Jose Farmer story...which made sense, but was dead wrong. Anyway, it's been reissued, and it doesn't hold up perfectly, and it's SOOOOO '70s, but you can totally see how it influenced Astro City, amogn others.
Ron | Email | Homepage | 04.27.05 - 9:50 pm | #

When are we getting our infinity crisis novelization?
dirk a. keaton | Homepage | 04.27.05 - 10:48 pm | #

Pete - ooh, yeah, I forgot about the No Man's Land one. Never read it, though, unfortunately. And Roger Stern has a new Supes book on the way? Cool.

Ron - Maggin's two Superman paperbacks were among my favorites as a kid...and I still like 'em now. No one writes Luthor quite like Maggin.

Dirk - a novelization of a comic written by a novelist? I think part of my brain just fell off.
Mikester | Homepage | 04.27.05 - 11:37 pm | #

The novelization of *No Man's Land* is surprisingly non-sucky. I mean, it's still beach reading at best--if you go for the apocalyptic in your beach reading--but at no point did the prose make my eyes bleed, and he actually does a pretty good job with Two-Face.
Sarah | Email | 04.28.05 - 2:59 am | #

According to Bookscan, the Nielsen book sales reporting system, the CRISIS novelization has sold the following number of copies out of its reporting chain and indie bookstores across the country (these stores account for about 75-80% of total trade bookstore sales):

607 copies.
John DiBello | Email | 04.28.05 - 6:16 am | #

I always read these wondering how people who don't read comics would react to them.

I can answer that one. My wife read Stern's The Life and Death of Superman earlier in the year and really enjoyed it. She has read some comics, for some reason she really likes Rogue. Anyway, she was very impressed with how Stern was able to drop in details a non-comic reader may not know (background on the characters in JLA, the CK/LL marriage), how well he was able to write the story from the comic and overall, just how good the book was. She keeps telling me I need to read it.
RobB | Email | Homepage | 04.28.05 - 6:26 am | #

I loved Maggin's two Superman novels back in the seventies. But I honestly havbe to agree with the reviewer, I thought the 'Kingdom Come' novelization was tripe.
ktbaxter | Email | Homepage | 04.28.05 - 7:29 am | #

Those Maggin Superman novels are the shinizzle. Great stuff. 'Kingdom Come' was OK, I think, but I haven't read it in a long time.
Nik | Email | Homepage | 04.28.05 - 9:27 am | #

Ann Nocenti's novel Prisoner X was a rather cracking X-Men Vs. Mojo tale. She also did some swell short stories in the Byron Priess books.
Dan Coyle | Email | 04.28.05 - 10:31 am | #

KT - don't get me wrong; I don't have a problem with people not liking the book! I just thought that reviewer's crack about comic book readers was a little on the snarky side.
Mikester | Homepage | 04.28.05 - 10:45 am | #

My God man, how could you forget the Gen 13 novels?
Ian Brill | Email | Homepage | 04.28.05 - 12:29 pm | #