Review in Brief: Kurt Busiek/Stuart Immonen: Secret Identity

I picked up this trade paper collection on the recommendation of my local comics store guy, and it was a good choice. Busiek has written a sort of "alternate" life for Superman -- who is not really Superman, just a guy named Clark Kent from a small town in Kansas who happens to have superpowers, possibly the result of meteor strikes near his hometown when he was thirteen.

That doesn't really matter. (It's actually a throw-away toward the end of the book.)

What does matter is the story of Clark Kent's life -- enduring the Superman jokes through high-school and into his first job as a writer for The New Yorker (note that's "writer," not "reporter'), meeting Lois Chaudhari (not Lane), and on through a life that turns out to be pretty normal, give or take the superpowers and the side job of rescuing people and averting disasters -- and avoiding the feds, who are very, very interested in this guy, whoever he is. (Lest you think this is purely a feel-good sort of story, be advised that there are a couple of pretty horrific episodes. But we get past them.)

This is a very appealing comic, not least, I think, because it's told mostly in narration, from Clark's journal that he types on an old manual typewriter -- he doesn't want any of this on a computer, because computers can be hacked.

Stuart Immonen's art fits perfectly -- spare, brushy in places, stark in places, sometimes dense but never enough to distract from the visual narrative -- and that narrative is clean and clear throughout.

This one's a winner.

(DC Comics, 2004) Includes Superman: Secret Identity #1-4.