Friday, July 9, 2010

Superman Secret Identiy

Superman Secret Identity originally came out in 2004 from DC Comics as a four issue prestige format mini-series written by Kurt Busiek and illustrated by Stuart Immonen. A trade paperback version of Superman Secret Identity also came out in 2004, but somehow despite excellent reviews and a great reception to this book when it first came out, it is no longer in print. Because it is out of print, people who want to buy it are having to pay in the neighborhood of $55.00 - $65.00 for their own copy, but recently, Alternate Reality Comics bent the fabric of time and procured some copies which I'm selling at the cover price of $19.99, just because I want these books to find great homes!

Kurt Busiek is most known as one of the finest craftsmen of superhero comics that he's done for years at Marvel and DC (most notably The Avengers for Marvel) and Stuart Immonen has is also mostly associated with great DC superhero comics (Superman) and Ultimate Spider-Man and The New Avengers for Marvel.

For my dollar, Superman Secret Identity is the best comic book Busiek and Immonen have done to date (yes, even better than Busiek's rock solid Astro City). Superman Secret Identity isn't really a Superman story set in the regular DC continuity, rather it is a story set in our "real" world about a normal, non-powered boy whose parents named him Clark Kent, so every year on his birthday and at Christmas everyone gets him Superman items. Well one day he wakes up and...

Yup, this is another one of those comics / graphic novels that the less you know about what's it's all about going into reading it, the better off your reading experience will be. Superman Secret Identity is the graphic novel that plays well with people who like superhero comics and those who don't usually gravitate towards the cape subsection of this medium.

4 comments:

Tom Galloway said...

Not to take away from the stash, but I've hopes it might come back into print. Kurt's written that he's working on a similar, but not in the same universe, Batman project, and I figure when that gets collected it'd be a good time to re-release Superman Secret Identity.

Ralph Mathieu said...

I hope your right, Tom, and I figure when he's done with that Batman project, I'll be out of my Secret Identity trades and will need more.

Have a great San Diego time!

Rick Tucker said...

I missed this one. I think I would have liked it too. I'm not a big fan of Busiek's writing when it's not in the superhero genre, but when he's in that genre he really shines.

Pj Perez said...

HMM! Got any copies left? And did ya procure them at a certain auction ...? :)