One of the fun things of the last two years was a) reading Alex Segura’s comic book mystery SECRET IDENTITY and b) watching it become a critical, award winning success..
And a sequel is on the way: ALTER EGO, out in November. However the cover has just been revealed, and Popverse has the first preview.
For those coming in late, Segura was already a well established comics and mystery novel writer when SECRET IDENTITY came out in 2022, but this is where he brought it all together. The book is set in the 1975 New York comics industry, where aspiring writer Carmen Valdez toils at Triumph Comics and tries to survive its line-up of eccentric creators and editors…until a murder shows just how serious it can all be.
It’s a wonderful book and Segura recreates the world of 1970s comics publishing in vivid detail, almost like he was there! It wasn’t just comics nerds like me who loved it: the book won the LA Times Book Prize for Best Mystery, amid a shower of praise and other award nominations.
The book even spun off into a comics series based on the book Carmen writes in SECRET IDENTITY: The Legendary Lynx from Segura and Sandy Jarrell and Grey Allison.
And now there’s word of the sequel: it’s another mystery but set in the comics industry of the modern day, with a story to match:
Annie Bustamante is on top of the world. A cultural force like none other: an acclaimed filmmaker, an Oscar nominee, an author, a comic book artist known for one of the all-time best superhero comics in recent memory. But there’s one thing she’s never been able to tackle: her longtime favorite superhero, The Lethal Lynx. Only known to the most die-hard comics fans and long out of print, the rights were never available. Until now.
“Alter Ego is the other, darker side of the Secret Identity coin: a modern-day thriller set in the comic book and entertainment industry that spotlights the endless struggle between art and commerce through the eyes of a new, modern-day protagonist in Annie Bustamante,” Segura told Popverse. Although it’s a standalone novel, some of the characters from SECRET IDENTITY will show up in ALTER EGO, including Carmen herself.
ALTER EGO is available for preorder now, but you’ll have to wait until November 26th to buy your own copy. Can’t wait!
