Alter Ego by Alex Segura

 

This not so much a sequel to Secret Identity as a follow-up: While there are come connections, there aren't a lot of major characters in common. The story focuses much less on the dying industry in the dying city (comics in NYC in 1975) and leans much more toward telling the story of people working out how to reconnect with a past self, for what are mostly good reasons. It's non-linear as hell, happening in mostly two timelines with smatterings of others, but everything is clear--even/especially as it becomes obvious there are tragedies in it that have approximately nothing to do with comic books. There's also a wide bold streak of art-vs-commerce stuff happening, here, complete with a strong statement about LLMs and suchlike and what they create and whom they screw. This is less of a mystery, structurally, but it might be a better novel than its precursor, for all-a-that.