Makes me wonder

So I have a stack of books I'm always working on. For some reason, it isn't going down at all, no matter how much I read. Anyway, a few months ago I was browing my comic store and noticed a shelf full of paperbacks. There weren't any prices, so I offered the guy a buck for hardcovers and half that for softcovers. Now I have a stack of Batman and Superman novels and I've read a few of them and I've come to realize something. If it's a comic book character in a book with no pictures, put it down and walk away.

One was a collection of Batman short stories, and that was my favorite so far. I think that's because the badness was pretty short lived. No matter how awful the story was, 15 pages gave me a fresh start and new hope. Even worse was another Batman one about an indian who was actually a werecar. To add to the tention, it turned out to be the only other character who wasn't Batman, really gripping stuff. I think the bottom of the heap was the Lois & Clark tie-in novel. It reads like an episode of the show, but it's obvious why it was never filmed. It'd be really expensive and it's boring. Buildings are collapsing and Lois talks to Lex in prison (like Hannibal Lectur without the personality or interest) while Superman helps a small village in Russia avoid a mudslide. Now, milk that out for another 200 pages and that's what I slogged through.

I'm still not sure exactly what makes these books so bad. I bought them because I like the characters and the descriptions on the back sound interesting, but the actual execution sucks. I think, at least for the most part, it's because the books go even further away from reality and then describe it to you bit by bit. The current Batmobile flies. How do I know? I can see it every month or so. But to read how a man's hands curl into a fist and then grow and turn dark until they turn into tires just accentuates how far fetched the whole premise is. The other problem is the novels have no connection to reality, so I know there will be no major changes and no point of reference in the whole DC Universe. It's just an isolated incident, nothing more. As for the L&C book, sometimes it helps to have something happen in the book. That's my preference anyway.