Secret Identity is the brand new novel by Alex Segura — a homicide mystery set amid the comics industry of New York within the Nineteen Seventies — and it’s an unqualified hit.
Published earlier this 12 months, Segura’s ebook made the Editor’s Choice part of the New York Times Book Review in March. That similar month, a very prestigious comics weblog gave it an equally glowing write-up, and now in latest weeks, the novel has landed on many year-end Best Of lists, together with NPR’s Books We Love.
Writing for the New York Times, Sarah Lyall known as Secret Identity witty and wholly unique, with the paper going on to describe it as a “clever homage to classic noir — partly a love letter to New York City in the seamy 1970s, as well as an immersive tutorial in comic-book publishing of that era.” A spot-on manner of summing it up.
“People outside of comics who read the book were fascinated because it pulled the curtain back,” Alex Segura says, “and showed you not just what inks they used or how they couriered pages from the letterer to the office, but also what the dynamic was in the office at the time based on my research and the people I spoke to. I think you need the slowburn of fiction to show you that, because you can only accomplish so much just real estate-wise with a couple thousand words on a website. Having readers experience that through [the main character’s] eyes, it at least makes you think about it.”
This novel has definitely captured the eye and reward of oldsters within the conventional literary world, lots of whom had little familiarity with comics going into it, however on the similar time, Secret Identity can be the uncommon prose work that appears doubtless to be of curiosity to the overwhelming majority of comics fandom too, or no less than to anybody inside that fandom with a passing curiosity within the history of the medium.
There are a few totally different artistic — and sensible selections — that make Secret Identity work so effectively.
The Comics Pages
One alternative that makes Secret Identity work so effectively as a novel is that the ebook is a tight, grounded homicide noir pretty much as good as any the style has to supply. It reads effectively from its first web page, possessing attention-grabbing characters and an immersive take a look at a area of interest industry throughout a particular (and arguably formative) second. At the identical time, it additionally deploys a system by which a part of its narrative work is completed by precise comics artwork. Artist Sandy Jarrell has illustrated comics pages as in the event that they had been those talked about within the novel. These pages are not any gimmick, transcending a easy try to seize the vitality of the ’70s for flare.
No, the comedian ebook artwork in Secret Identity consists of precise particulars that push the novel’s plot ahead, laying a sturdy groundwork that can have seasoned superhero comics readers feeling as if these pages have been plucked from a misplaced work of the period, as if culled from a full seven-issue run.
The pages add layers to the novel because the novel provides layers to the pages, and thru this, Alex Segura and Sandy Jarrell appear to have achieved one thing that feels nearly unprecedented with this ebook — utilizing fiction to put readers within the precise comics industry of the time, an achievement that’s equally charming to individuals who know little about comics, in addition to volunteer writers for blogs like this one, who steep themselves in comics all the things.
“When Sandy and I were working on the book, all the work that goes into creating a comics series went into it, you just only got those 14 pages,” Segura says. “I’m not saying we drew seven issues worth, but we definitely had to build the world and create the characters. Sandy did the designs and the costumes, and by the first few pages, I was saying — this is a comic already. We created this comic to serve the novel, but it’s also a comic on its own. So, we’re going to do it as its own thing, and like the Dark Horse Escapist books, it’s going to be very tongue in cheek. These are the lost issues of The Legendary Lynx that Alex, the editor, is compiling, and it’s the work of Harvey Stern and Doug Dettmer, so that’ll be fun too.”
And whereas Alex Segura might see the imaginative and prescient behind this — being not solely a fan of comics, however an industry veteran himself, having labored at Archie, Oni Press, and DC — comedian ebook pages in a mystery novel is a bit unconventional. When it got here to promoting this novel — Segura’s eighth — to a prose writer, he knew he wanted to do some work prematurely in order that others might see the imaginative and prescient, too.
“I knew I needed to show proof of concept when I sent the pitch in,” Segura says, “and I knew I wanted Sandy Jarrell to draw it, because not only is he a great artist and underrated and just a pro, he’s a historian too. He knew what I was trying to do. He didn’t try to draw like Frank Miller or Neal Adams or any artist of that era. He very much drew like himself, but he evoked the time period. I wanted him to try to draw like he was just one of the books out at that time, in his style. We got a page that was all set-up and lettered, and that became part of the pitch when my agent shopped it around. We said, this is what it has to be and the comics pages are essential to the story. People have noticed that with the comics pages I tip off things that happen in the novel, and vice versa. That was very much by design. I wanted it to be essential. Once it was pitched as that, I think [Wagman] was able to wrap his head around it.”
The History of the Book, and the History in the ebook
The ebook, Segura tells The Beat, was truly a very very long time in coming.
“The genesis started 20-some odd years ago when I was in college, reading Kavalier & Clay, which I loved and was the overlap of my two passions — reading fiction prose, but also reading comics,” Segura says. “I was already a knee-jerk comics historian, and seeing all the research [Michael] Chabon did for that book was thrilling for me because I love all that meta storytelling, where you’re weaving through history. My one minor gripe was I wanted to read those Escapist books. Dark Horse did them eventually — that was its own cool experience — but I really wanted while reading that novel to hop into the comics. I put the idea away, and I wrote a short story in a creative writing class about a comic book company employee who discovers a lost character. I always wanted to play in that space, in comics history but in the business, looking under the hood a little bit.”
Setting the ebook within the comics industry of the ’70s additionally pushed Segura to do extra — and totally different — analysis for this novel, than he had for his different prose work.
“When I realized it was a comic book history murder mystery,” Alex Segura says, “I thought this would be the easiest research I’ve ever done, because it’s all in my DNA. I’ve read Marvel: The Untold Story. I have a whole shelf of books about comics history, which I ended up going through again. Research becomes different when you have an idea about what you’re looking for versus reading as a fan of comics history, someone who is curious about the history of the medium they work in. I read those initially as a fan, and then when I came back to them it was with an agenda. I knew what I wanted to cherry pick from different eras for the novel. I wanted Triumph Comics — which is where Carmen works — to be not a Marvel or DC competitor, but like Quality or Charleston. Atlas is probably the best comp, a company that tries in that space but never manages to. Re-reading those books, I had an eye out for details that could help authenticate the story. Part of the challenge to was that I wasn’t alive at the time. So, I did a lot of research into New York in the ‘70s and also just history.”
One of essentially the most attention-grabbing sides of that history was interviews with real-life comics creators who performed main roles within the industry throughout the ’70s.
Secret Identity is wealthy with composite characters who borrow sure issues from real-life individuals, a little bit of Alex Toth right here, a little Steve Ditko there, and many others. But the individuals within the ebook are all fully-realized, unique creations. It’s the world and enterprise they kick round in that feels just like the one-for-one translation from precise history. The interviews Segura performed are a large a part of the rationale for that.
“I also realized after re-reading all those books, I needed to talk to people who were actually there, especially women who worked in comics in or around that era, and people who are historians but much more qualified than I am,” Segura says. “I talked to Paul Levitz a few times and he read the manuscript, and I talked to Gerry Conway at length. He was so gracious with his time, we ended up chatting for an hour and a half. There’s an anecdote in the book that he actually told me, and he’s name-dropped at that moment. He was a party, and he realized it was not the party he thought he was at. There’s also little bits about where freelancers lived in Manhattan at the time. Just a lot of little color things that we as readers don’t think about. And also creators like Linda Fite, who wrote The Cat for Marvel. She was the first woman to write a female superhero for Marvel in their own series. Louise Simonson and I had a nice phone conversation, and she walked me through her time at Warren and her early days in comics. I talked to Karen Berger, who started later in the early ‘80s, but could also give me context of her experiences entering a male-dominated industry. It actually become this really journalistic endeavor.”
And whereas the choice to set the ebook within the industry’s previous did necessitate that further analysis, it additionally does a lot of labor for the story, serving to to form the world by which the principle character exists. Secret Identity is the perfect form of historic fiction, the type that grows proper out of the gritty really feel of the interval by which it’s set.
“I knew right away that I wanted it to be in the ‘70s because 1975 is a particularly weird time for comics,” Segura says. “It’s before the direct market starts, and it’s kind of a low point for the industry. Not creatively, but people were wondering if this was going to really work, or if comics was going to go the way of the dodo. It’s cyclical. It always happens. Comics is a medium and will continue in some way, but the mid-70s were a low point. I wanted to show the contrast between today, when we have a Scarlet Witch and Vision show, Moon Knight has a show, Ant-Man has a movie, Peacemaker has a show — there’s a pop culture awareness to a degree we’ve never been ready for.”
Alex Segura on the way forward for Secret Identity
Alex Segura will not be finished with the world of Secret Identity after this novel. No, there are plans for a sequel, in addition to for full comics that spring from the ebook, not simply the person pages that readers first obtained to see.
“We were doing this and wondering, why don’t we just make this a comic too,” Alex Segura says. “We’re going to launch digitally on Zestworld. It’s going to be serialized there, and then the plan is to collect it in print. We’re going to treat it as if these are the actual lost comics we are collecting and remastering and printing for the first time. It’ll have an essay from a noted comic creator — we’re just going to treat this as if it actually happened. We’re basically manifesting this into history, which is kind of a thrill.”
The mission is scheduled to launch this month on Zestworld, with the eventual print writer TBD. Working with Segura and Jarrell on it, will likely be Grey Allison on colours, Jack Morelli on letters, and Allison M. O’Toole modifying. You can discover a pair of preview pages from these initiatives above.
As for the sequel, it would even have comics, solely they are going to be by a totally different artist and set in a completely totally different time interval, identical to the ebook itself.
“I went into the series thinking it was going to be a standalone, but then as I wrote it, I realized there’s another side to the coin,” Alex Segura says. “If this book really happened, theoretically, what is the natural second beat? To me, that’s the next book, which is set in the modern day and is about someone who gets hired to work on a relaunch of The Legendary Lynx, but the relaunch is some entertainment company that’s bought the assets. They really want to just print the comic so they can make a TV show. Then, this woman gets hired and she’s burnt out on comics, she’s pivoted to storyboards and movies, but she starts to dig into this character and realizes there’s a sordid backstory. So, it’s the other side of the IP. In real life, someone would have discovered the Lynx and realized there’s value in this IP, let’s buy it and make it into TV or a movie. What if in their efforts to do that, they chose improper means to protect their IP. That’s kind of what happens in the first book, and this is the dark echo.”
Comics Bookcase, previously a comics weblog, is a new month-to-month column at The Beat.
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