Superman Secret Identity

Welcome to Give ‘Em Elle, a weekly column that hopes to bridge the gap between old school comics fandom and the progressive edge of comics culture. This week I’ve been thinking about superheroes universes, and what it means to have a whole population of costumed characters running around. Sometimes I think that the population of superheroes (and villains) that you don't have a chance to get to know is almost as important as the heroes at the center of the story.

Last week, DC Comics released a new paperback of Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen's Superman: Secret Identity, and if you haven't read it, this is a pretty good time to remedy that. It's got a premise that's immediately interesting, starting from the simple question of what Superman would be like if he existed in the real world -- our world, the one that already has Superman as a fictional charact