TRANSCRIPT:
As the hero that essentially established super-hero comic books and allowed them to soar to heights that helped these characters spill over to other, bigger media, it's a moot point celebrating Superman without looking at at least one of his books.
But single issues are too short and their point far too hurried, while storylines are either too big for their own good or require at least some knowledge of continuity to really get into. Elseworlds stories and standalones, on the other hand, require minimal knowledge of lore and expand on their content and context just enough, without dragging on for too long.
I originally wanted to look back at Red Son, being fresh out of the Injustice storyline, because it's a terrific book that holds true to the essence of the character, while ending on the realization that humanity will keep evolving and reach its peak, then fuck up and do it all over again; a point perfect not just for the reality of our species but also for what Superman represents for his audience and our kind in general.
But the way it delivers its message is too heavy-handed and it strolls through standard super-hero territory far more often than the other book I'd really like to talk about, the excellent 2004 "Secret Identity".
"Secret Identity" was a four-part-miniseries spawned by the creative mind of talented writer Kurt Busiek, featuring the moody, striking and yet brilliantly humble art of Stuart Immonen. The story, according to Busiek himself, came from an idea that's been dangling in his head since the mid-80s about doing an on-going of Superboy Prime, because he saw great potential in the humanity of the character as he was mostly removed from the tropes of the genre.
Superboy Prime was a one-off character that was introduced in '85. He was a regular teenager living in Earth Prime, i.e. our world, where super-heroes don't exist and all of the known heroes are fictional characters in the comics. His parents, surnamed Kent named him Clark, unbeknown to them that the boy was in fact Kal-El teleported from Krypton before it exploded. One Halloween night he discovered he had the powers and met the Earth-1 Superman from the standard continuity, just in time for him to join the Crisis on Infinite Earths event and get stuck at the end of the new Universe, lost forever.
There's also this. But we don't talk about it.
Busiek had trouble pitching the idea over to DC editorial for years considering it'd mess with the big universe-rebooting event, until early in the 21st Century he was asked if he had any good ideas for Superman stories. He made the pitch, focusing on the potential of such a story from the human perspective rather than the super-hero one and what he'd like to do as an on-going, turned into a much more focused mini-series that removed itself from Superboy Prime past the original concept and became its own thing.
What's really great about Secret Identity and why it's required reading for Superman's 75th anniversary is the simple fact that it meticulously analyzes the humanity in Superman, as both myth and character, in a story where the actual Superman isn't even in!
The hero starts off as a regular teenage boy whose parents thought it'd be funny naming him Clark Kent, condemning him to a life of awful reference jokes, bullying and a ton of memorabilia of a fictional character he doesn't even like.
Clark is a quiet person; Busiek is very heavy-handed in his approach to what Superman's dual identity represents and he frames the hero of his story to be the ultimate introvert. He's not a coward, but he is meek. He's not a misanthrope, but he doesn't have friends. People can't see past his name and he doesn't feel the need to bother with them.
He externalizes his loneliness and solitude in his narration and by extension his writing, but he doesn't whine. He knows he has it good and that whatever it is he's feeling is normal in his age and for the type of person he is. He recognises he's not special or unfairly treated. He's just a boy.
That's the point of the story, at least in part. The original Superboy-Prime, while largely disposable within the greater context of the DCU, has always been the stand-in for the comic book fan. In the first chapter of Secret Identity, the question is, what would the teenage reader do if one day they woke up and had Superman's powers.
That's where the similarities with the original Superboy-Prime end as well. Busiek cleverly ditches the Kryptonian lineage of the original story, because it's inconsequential to the subtext. Young Clark has many questions about his new-found powers, but no answers are ever clearly given. For all his parents let on, Clark is their biological son, not a strange visitor from another planet. There is a hint that maybe a meteor strike in Kansas or government experiments on babies to create super-powered agents may have lead to the manifestation of his powers, but they are treated as theories even by the characters themselves.
The potential Busiek saw in Superboy Prime was a cultural one, specifically society's tendency to judge and abuse a label, even if the thing that people mock you for being is secretly true, but it's still so much better than being like them. For Clark the best thing about his powers was how they let him drift even further from the world. Fame & fortune cross his mind and he considers outing himself, until the insane actions of a reporter make him realize that keeping his super-hero existence a secret is the better option. He's not angsty about it, just very -well composed.
For the purposes of the story, the powers are the physical manifestation of the introvert’s alienation and their potential, that's why their origin is of no importance. When he moves to Manhattan that alienation grows and he keeps to himself, but it's no longer a point of conflict. He's content being like that and truly-enough, he finds that his detachment also contributes to his work as a writer, as it gives him a unique perspective on the world.
But this is the point in anyone's life when being yourself runs the danger of detaching you from life entirely. Labels tend to become us and growing older we have less and less strength to fight them.
Falling in love with Lois gives him the chance to attach himself to the more pedestrian, human stuff a bit more. When the government captures him, it's the moment when people face adversities in their lives and realize that "shit just got real". The government represents the ugly side of life catching up with you and wanting to take advantage of who you are, something real and inevitable in all our lives. If one wants to be successful to any degree, the establishment will catch up to them, social or otherwise.
That he escapes -briefly- and uses the event as a catalyst to share his secret with Lois and find solace in another person means one thing: he's starting to find his way.
Growing up is a common theme throughout the story and when Lois reveals she's pregnant, Clark has to deal with the questions he put off. Why is he different? What effect will this have on his children? What effect will his secret identity have on his children, both literally and figuratively. It's the point when he realizes things have to change, because there are people he has to protect and care for. If you're an introvert, a family requires you to open up to the dangers of the world that you've so far easily ignored.
As such, within the story Clark makes a deal with the establishment -the government- to help them out. And sometimes his job is intrusive to his life (it takes him away from his kids' birth), but that's how things are sometimes. You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you get what you need.
As his life passes and his daughters grow up, he sees the change. Change in himself, in his powers and the world around him. He's successful -as is his wife- and that's the point in the end; be yourself and try your best. Find people to connect to and trust with that inner self and spread your wings. You'll need to compromise sometimes with situations and people, but you won't need to pander to anyone.
Part of himself has been passed on to his girls (represented by the super-powers) and they have embraced both their dad for it (by teasing him about the label mercilessly) and carrying on his legacy as super-heroes.
Clark sees life pass him by toward the end; the establishment doesn't need him as much until it eventually retires him, he has made an unlikely friend through the years by revealing a part of himself, a different part than that his family or his colleagues know, technology has taken flight and his secret identity is irrelevant, as super-heroes operate openly; in a better world, a world more progressed, people can be who they are without being challenged for it.
And like sunsets, life ends and then starts again all the time. And humanity moves and evolves.
The story of Secret Identity is one of growing up and facing life without compromising the core of yourself. It's a story about labels and how they ultimately don't matter. Whether you are the nerd, the introvert, gay; you don't owe it to anyone to approach them if they won't see past that label and you can find people to share it with. And in sharing, you help the world change. Even if you're essentially Superman, by the time you check out, it's the little stuff you've done that make the difference.
This story's Clark is not the Superman of the books. He's not inherently good, he doesn't view the world through the prism of the benevolent demi-god that seeks to inspire. He doesn't out himself to make his job easier and he doesn't patrol like comic book heroes usually do. That he helps people is a byproduct of his powers; they are his first and foremost and exist to serve him. When he spots trouble he intervenes and he enjoys doing it, but this isn't someone that sets out to be a guardian, protector or saviour.
It's the secret identity in the end and not the powers that make the difference. It's not the lives that he's saved, but rather the choices he has made, his books, the type of person he is that change the world for the better.
It's also a story about the realities of the comic book industry, where introverted creators discover that they have the talent, the established big companies try to abuse it and own it and in the end a compromise is needed by both sides for the world to truly benefit from them. In the end the work will pass on to fresh talent and for every book that ends a new one will start being written.
But most of all what stands out is that there is one constant despite the deviations from the popular myth; the "S". This is a Superman story without Superman in it. That Busiek sought to express those themes via Superman iconography, that the representation of Clark Kent's true self is in the set of powers that everyone knows from the comics is a testament to the importance of super-heroes in our pop-culture, Superman in particular.
For the last couple of decades the fact that super-heroes fill in a very basic, Freudian need for power-fantasies and projection of our wishful thinking has been considered a bad thing. But truth is this type of myth and legend is necessary for humanity to connect with its inner-self, its true character, its limitation and its potential. They're a necessary medium exactly because of their simplicity and their ability to soak in the most primitive and basic of our intellectual desires. Sometimes it's so that we can be free of them in real life, but most of the time it's because they help us define ourselves by looking at them as outsiders.
Superman is the ultimate archetype in pop-mythology and we need to project our fears and hopes onto him, to rationalize our conflict as something as basic as a pair of glasses or leaping a tall building in a single bound, because then we can look at what it is we lack and desire and work towards striving in our goals. The confusion of mind even for something simple is far greater than the projection of our ideas onto popular iconography that has been and can be passed on to other people and future generations.
"Secret Identity" is a lot of things and all of them make it one of the finest Superman books that have ever existed, but most of all it's the realization that however juvenile our fantasies and however fictional our heroes, we need them both in order to function and progress. Clark Kent realizes it when he finds himself floating in the middle of the night. The real Superman realizes it when he puts on his silly glasses. We know it each and every time we recognise the symbols of these characters when we see them on anything at all.
And as someone once said, knowing is half the battle.
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