Steve has just been given the opportunity every comic-book writer dreams of: the chance to write Superman. Only it's an assignment he couldn't want less. To Steve, everything about Superman is ridiculous. To write about the Man of Steel, Steve must believe he could exist…but he can't.

Steve's story is the focus of IT'S A BIRD…, a semi-autobiographical original VERTIGO hardcover graphic novel written by former SUPERMAN writer Steven T. Seagle. IT'S A BIRD… isn't about how Metropolis's defender would function in the real world, but how he does function in the real world. Our world, where he's just a fictional character.

How does anyone relate to a Man of Steel — much less Steve, with his own fear of death and the specter of a family history of a terrible illness hanging over him? Steve tears through every cultural and symbolic component of Superman's importance, leading to a series of stories told in a variety of styles that form one provocative question: How does the most important heroic icon of the 21st century affect our lives? A Superman story that doesn't feature Superman at all, IT'S A BIRD… is perhaps the most realistic Superman story DC Comics has ever published — a story about the character's profound power as a fictional ideal.

• TPB
  10/9/2017