The era is 1970s New York and the story begins in the offices of Triumph Publishing, a comic book company trying to make a name for itself.
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Carmen Valdez is working as a secretary at the company, but she dreams of being a comic book creator. Valdez and one of her coworkers come up with a new powerful female hero called the "Lethal Lynx."
Then one day her partner is found dead and the comic book does not have her name on the credits.
That’s the story of "Secret Identity" by Alex Segura. It’s the March Sundial Book Club pick.
WLRN’s Luis Hernandez spoke with Segura about the book and how it was influenced by South Florida. You can join the club here.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
WLRN: What was the thing that lured you into the 70s, the decade of disco bell-bottoms and 8-track tapes?
SEGURA: The 70s are a really interesting time for both New York and comics. Today, comics are everywhere in terms of movies and TV shows, even characters that when you and I were kids were minor or supporting characters now have their own TV shows or movies or action figures. And in the 70s, in comics, the industry was kind of fading a little bit. There weren't comic book shops in the way there are today. There weren't huge pop culture conventions. There were like tiny gatherings in a hotel ballroom. So I think a lot of people saw comics as disposable and like a transient industry like something that would fade away over time. Obviously, it hasn't, but I really wanted to focus on a low point for comics. So Carmen, being the super fan, is in the minority in her passion for comics. And New York in 1975 is completely different from the New York of today. It was dangerous. It was menacing. The economy was collapsing. So I really enjoy playing with that contrast with readers knowing what was to come to show a very different comic book industry and a very different New York City.
Carmen Valdez is a woman in a business that's run by men. What inspired you to tell the story from this perspective?
It was reading and rereading a lot of comic book histories and trying to kind of find my way into the story. I knew I wanted to write a comic book noir just because I love novels that take me to other places. And I know comics very well, just having spent my career there.
I was reading this book called The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu. It's a story about the 1950s horror comics implosion, and what that means is there was there were congressional committees and a lot of oversight criticizing the content of horror comics, saying they were unfit for kids, and so on. But what really grabbed me was the opening chapter was about a woman who worked in comics at the time and her career never recovered from that implosion. She was never able to kind of regain her foothold in comics because the industry itself contracted to such a degree and just changed that so many creative people just lost their way.
Also, comics is littered with stories of creators not getting credit or characters being owned by companies that aren't owned by the creators who made them. So I really wanted to kind of echo that without making it an essay about intellectual property.
I spoke to a lot of women that worked in comics too — at that time — and kind of ran the story by them. So it was interesting to get their context and point of view.
Carmen is Cuban. She's from Miami. You make references to Miami. Is that kind of like a love letter back home for you?
Yeah, Miami is my home and I could really relate to Carmen's experience of moving from Miami to New York around that age because I did the same thing. That first year for me in New York was particularly lonely, even being in this huge, sprawling metropolis. You're still like a new person in this big ocean of people and you long for the things that are comforting to you. I pulled from my own experience to really evoke that.
Everything I write is going to have some connection to Miami. Except for maybe something like a Star Wars novel where it's impossible because there is no Miami in Star Wars, but you can find a way. Weave it in any way. My own crime novels will always have an element of Miami. It's just part of who I am and it's just in my DNA.
