Tuesday 2 July 2013

Superman: Secret Identity by Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen

A book that restored my faith in reading in general and comics in particular

Clark Kent (not that one) is an ordinary midwest teenager living in small town Kansas in a world just like ours.  Superman exists as a comic character and cultural myth but humans are just that, there are no superpowers.  Clark's parents thought it would be cute to call him Clark, so for every birthday he gets Superman paraphanelia and every day is tormented at school.  His crush on girl next door Cassie is unrequited and high school is torturous. 

So to find peace of mind Clark takes himself off hiking in the hills at weekends.  Until the night he wakes up sleeping several feet off the ground and realises he can fly. The public wants to know who he is, the governement want to literally take him to pieces and people need him to save them, but he still just wants a quiet life. 

The pacing and artwork of this story is just beautiful, narration bubbles are in the style of scraps of manual typewriting, Clark needs to use something tangible and not hackable to record his story but it also speaks of an attachment to the visceral and traditional.  There are intermittent old style Superman comic panels with their high bright Warholesque colours and thick black lines which contrast with the subdued colour palatte and watercolour style renderings of Clark's story. 

It is just a beautifully put together story arc, an absolute pleasure, artistically and narratively satisfying, a rare thing.

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