After an extended Christmas break, we’re finally ready to present to you episode 5 of the Graphic Novel Book Club! Please, stop emailing and asking about it, you’re making yourselves look needy.

This month, we’ve read and discussed Superman: Secret Identity, by Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen, an alternate reality Superman story that was recently republished as two bumper issues collecting all 4 instalments of the original series. Incidentally, before recording we looked up how to present Busiek, and it’s apparently BYOO-sik, to rhyme with “music”. So if you hear us pronouncing it any other way it’s because we’re struggling to absorb that fact, having learned it about 30 seconds before pressing the record button.

As ever, you can subscribe to the podcast through the iTunes Store here, or if you don’t want to wait for it to show up there, you can download it directly from our Podomatic page.

The discusion points for the episode were:

1. Is this a story about superheroes, or a story about ordinary people told with the trappings of the superhero genre?

2. Ostensibly, the book pitches as a “superheroes-in-the-real-world” story. How much does this actually hold true, and how does it compare to other entries in the genre? Does Clark’s world feel like the real world, or is it actually as fictional as the DC Universe?

3. As an exploration of the character and ethos, how does this compare with other “definitive” Superman stories?

4. Does Lois work as an analogue for Lois Lane, or does she serve a different role in the story?

5. How well might this concept translate to other characters, especially in light of the announced plans for a thematic sequel about Batman?

Remember that you can still discuss and respond to the points made either in the comments section of this thread, or by e-mailing gnbc@alternatecover.com.

We’ll be posting the discussion points for the next episode’s chosen title, Local (By Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly) on our blog shortly, and we’ll be recording the episode in March.