No, not the Russell Crowe “Unleash Hell” , I mean the book by Philip Gordon Wylie. I stumbled across it on wiki and I’m curious if it’s any good?
I read it. It was one of the “Science Fiction Classics” series, republished in the 1970s.It’s OK. Its chief claim to fame is that many hold it to be one of the sources of inspiration for Superman. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have read it. Wylie went on to co-write When Worlds Collide, made into a movie in the early 1950s, The Murderer Invisible, which many say contributed to the Claude Reins movie The Invisible Man (based mostly on Wells’ book, of course). He co-wrote a sequel to When Worlds Collide that wasn’t as good, scored a success with the mainstream Generation of Vipers, and wrote The Disappearance, which George pal was going to film (but he died first).
Gladiator is about a scientist whop injects his young son with a substance that causes him to become extremely strong and tough-skinned as he grows. He excels at sports and can leap prodigious distances, and tries to use his powers for Good. He does not become a costumed hero.
Astonishingly, it also served as the inspiration for a 1938 comedy, Gladiator, starring a young Joe E. Brown. It’s not very faithful to the book (which wasn’t a comedy, but straight science-adventure):
I’ve read it. I liked it but I probably would’ve liked it better coming into it “cold” but I knew most of the plot because it was used by a comic book writer as the back story for one of his characters, Iron Munro (spoilers for Gladiator at the link). I’ve read other SF from the period and Gladiator was pretty much on par.
I’ve read it. I read Man-God (the Marvel Comics adaptation of the first half of the book) first, and was a bit disappointed with the rest of the story.
For good ur-Science Fiction, check out Odd John or Sirius by Olaf Stapledon.
I always liked that character when I found that out-gives him a more interesting backstory than some other heroes IMHO.
I liked the character just fine, it was just the spoilage for Gladiator I didn’t care for.
Roy Thomas, who wrote the above-cited Man-God, wanted to adapt the second half of the novel as well while he was still writing for Marvel. They never got around to scheduling it. The Iron Munro story in Young All-Stars was his opportunity to finish the story he’d started, ten years later.