2. Secret Identity
Writer: Kurt Busiek Artist: Stuart Immonen
This book has one of the strangest setups for a Superman story that put me off reading it for years - but I was wrong to avoid it as it is easily one of the best Superman books ever written. The premise is that in a world where Superman exists in modern culture and is well known to the public at large, a young boy from a small town in Kansas, also called Clark Kent by parents who misguidedly thought it'd be funny, gets superpowers when he's a teenager - and those superpowers are exactly like those of the Superman in the comics. It sounds ridiculous but Kurt Busiek gets to the heart of the character, giving this Superman all the qualities of the real Superman as to make the two indistinguishable. But there are differences, like Clark of course isn't from Krypton and the Lois he marries is of Indian descent and not a reporter (he himself writes for the New Yorker initially before becoming a full time bestselling author of nonfiction). And there is no Lex Luthor or bad guy really. The book is about Clark keeping his superpowers a secret from everyone except for his closest family. The US Government (the only real baddie in the book) is after Clark and hunt him down and try to vivisect him to find out how he got his powers - but besides this incident in issue #2 there's little action and the focus is on Superman's character and his philosophy. Stuart Immonen's artwork is fantastic. Usually the guy draws breathtaking superhero fight scenes whereas this story only has one superhero and he doesn't do all that much fighting so Immonen instead draws ordinary human actions with a number of stunning splash page countryside vistas of quiet beauty and of Clark flying through silent space looking down upon the planet. Just amazing visuals in every one of the four issues, Immonen does Superman proud with his work.
This is also, like Red Son, an Elseworlds book and Busiek said that he was inspired to write this as an epilogue for the character of Superboy Prime after the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths. The story evolved since then to become Superman: Secret Identity and Superboy Prime's epilogue wound up being written by Geoff Johns in Infinite Crisis, but it's still a really amazing Superman story that's definitely worth your time.