The combination of first-class storytelling, scholarship, commitment to character, and the special appeal of the artwork makes Secret Identity more than the sum of its parts. This isn’t just a “literary mystery;” it’s Kavalier and Clay with a body count. And like Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2000 novel set at the dawn of comics’ Golden Age, Secret Identity is a book destined to be admired and enjoyed by a readership that’s never cracked the cover of a comic, and for whom the dark days of the mid-70s might as well be the Middle Ages.
