It's A Bird : Most Important Shot

  This straight on, medium shot of Steven Seagle is a great summary of the book in one picture.  It is hard to summarize an entire book with a picture but I think that if you had to choose this would be one of the best in the entire book to do it.  This frame shows Seagle's body under the broad chest of Superman.  This shot reminds me of those boards that are painted of an entire scene and then the faces are cut out for you to put yours in.  I feel like Steven Seagle was trying one of those to put himself in the shoes, or uniform, of Superman to try and feel some connection.
  Besides the image of Seagle, the words are very important too.  The caption says "I need to find STRENGTH" which I find sort of ironic as he looks like he is Superman, the ideal source of strength and justice in comics.  He says that he needs to find strength but this scene comes just two pages before he tells Lisa that he is going to stay with his brother.
  The fact that he brings up Lisa is also interesting because, as I just said, this is just before he tells her he is going to stay with his brother.  Even though he is about to leave he'll still turns to Lisa for strength and power?  Does Lisa change to Kryptonite later in the scene?  I think that Lisa is someone who is there to support and strengthen Steven.  She is there for him, trying to help him think of ideas, and there for him when he is looking for his father.  When Seagle leaves he isn't leaving because she is bad for him, he just needs his Fortress of Solitude.
  This shot from "It's a Bird" is the best single shot in the book to summarize it because of the many parallels linked to it and the implications and questions it leads the reader to about Lisa.

It's A Bird : Fate vs. Free Will

How is Steven "fated"?
  Steven seems to be fated in more than one sense.  There is the story line of the family medical history with Huntington's Disease and weather or not he will write the Superman comic.  He seems fated in both, if he didn't write the comic, 1st of all, it would be a strange and sort of pointless graphic novel.  2nd, the parallels with Huntington's Disease would be lost making another strange aspect to this graphic novel.  Steven does seem to have free will as he does choose to make a meeting with his friend Jeremy about making the comic.  Even though things seem to be set in the terms of what makes sense, the parallels between the disease and the comic, he makes small choices along the way that inevitably help him come up with the "best damned story ideas you've ever heard for Superman" (p. 124).  

It's A Bird : Will The Real Steven Seagle Please Stand Up?

Identity:
  In this section, the book seems to suggest that we construct our identity from the world around us.  On pages 66-69 Seagle is in the steam room and starts to daydream about what it would be like to stand out, like Superman does when he is in him costume.  On pages 75-79 Seagle's thoughts about Superman are changing because of interactions with someone on the train.  He focuses more on what comic books used to be and how he doesn't like the change they have taken.  Seagle is reminded of how the comics used to be good lessons for the kids that read them and how now they are nothing of the sort.  Justice, hero's, and good have been traded in for "snide and mean-spirited", overpriced picture books.
  The book seems to say that we are shaped by everything that around us, our emotions are reactions from situations around us.  In the first section that I mentioned, Seagle is hinting that he believes our clothes to be a uniform.  When he shows Superman embarrassed to be in a world of naked people while he is dressed in his costume he is relating that to how he felt when he was the only naked person in the world.  It is weird to stand out that much when we are so used to blending in.