Does anyone else miss secret identities?

[Prof. Warren]

Of course, if we throw too much common sense at this...

• The vast majority of superheroes would have been Ceased and Desisted into retirement the first time that they broke something really expensive...
• Fantastic Four incorporated and Stark Industries would have been sued or regulated out of existence long ago...
• 99.87% of Stark's waking hours would be spent trying to keep Chinese and North Korean agents out of his computers...
• The US Army would have hit Captain America with a Stop Loss the second he thawed, and kept him black opsing ever since, except for stops at the lab for more samples...
• All of those superheroes that privately invaded other countries would have gotten extradited to, or assassinated by those invaded countries...
• The X-Men would be under indictment as domestic terrorists (they and they Mystique's Brotherhood ripped up Washington pretty good a couple of times)...
• The Westboro Baptist Church would be constantly raising an atrocious racket in front of both Xavier's School and Dr. Strange's Sanctum...

So, arguments about the implausibility of maintaining a secret identity in comics based on Real World conditions really don't make any more sense than the comics themselves. It's strictly a preference.

Yes, if you apply hard logic to comics, all of it will fall apart. But you can ask the reader to accept that some people are born with a gene that gives them special powers, or that a radioactive spider bite will transfer a spider's abilities. That's all in the realm of pure fantasy and if you don't buy into that, you're not interested in the story anyhow. But within that fantasy, there should be a certain sense of plausibility to help ground what's happening in an otherwise recognizable reality.

Having a character be able to believably maintain a secret identity is just harder now than it used to be. For some character's it's worth keeping that aspect up. For a lot of others, it really doesn't matter all that much.

If I had to pick one character to restore their secret identity, it'd be Captain America. I always liked it when he had his supporting cast who didn't know who he was and that he had to make a living as a freelance artist. On the other hand, the idea that Captain America has to hold down a regular job to pay the bills on top of his responsibilities to the nation seems like an unnecessary inconvenience. I mean, if being Captain America isn't a full time job in and of itself, what is?

[Alan2099]

You mean the supporting casts that:
1) haven't changed in decades
2) get dumped everytime the writer changes
3) get superpowers

Still better than the supporting cast which is "those heroes from another book that aren't going to get development here because they have their own stories elsewhere."

[theoneandonly]

actually secret identities area not viable as long as following class is there to pry
tech heroes who have sophisticated scanning arrays who can record all the body vitals and match them.
telepaths
supernatural entities who can possess or scry for knowledge etc.
omniscient cosmic powered individuals

[Dragonick]

Not really, the ones that a secret identity is of any real significance for the most part sill have them. I also think it's important to differentiate between characters who's secret id is know to the general public and those who's family and friends know. Something that hasn't really been brought up is the people closest to the hero not knowing their secret id is bound to put a lot of stress on the relationships and it gets to the point of asking why would the hero's friends or significant others continue to hang around someone that they can't really rely on. Some of course would stay, but for some it just wouldn't make sense to stick around.

[davew128]

Has Wanda Maximoff or Scott Summers ever had a normal human romantic interest? I mean, EVER?!

Scott briefly dated Lee Forrester and Colleen Wing.

[davew128]

It depends on the character. Spidey, Moon Knight, etc need secret IDs but it never made sense in the first place for Iron Man, Cap, etc to have one.

I disagree about Iron Man. It was GREAT when most of his teammates didn't even know who he was. As the CEO and majority shareholder of a publicly traded company, it really MADE SENSE to have an anonymous super hero body guard.

[KurtW95]

Suspension of belief doesn't mean stupid we can believe in crazy stuff because of that is the rule of the place but you can't trick yourself into believing stupid and domino mask in real life doesn't fool anyone so suspension of belief is gone out the window. Also the biggest user of the trope secret identity used pair of glasses.

Well...

[Tony Stark]

It really doesn't make sense for some of the heroes to have a secret identity, but I think it's essential for some.

[KurtW95]

It really doesn't make sense for some of the heroes to have a secret identity, but I think it's essential for some.

Yeah. Of course. I'm not arguing for secret identities for the FF or the X-Men. Or other characters that never had secret IDs. But the ones that have traditionally had secret identities and traditionally wore masks for that purpose... I miss that. Apart from adding a cool concept that has been inseparable from comic books since their inception, it also provides basis for masks. If they don't have secret identities, there is no purpose for masks, or a costumed identity. And part of the appeal of comics are the cool costumes and mask. I doubt many people would be interested if everything looked like screenshots of "Heroes."

[DrNewGod]

So, ultimately, we're willing to bend the rules of The Real World to allow secret identities for some (Spider-Man, et al.), but not others (i.e. The Punisher).

It strikes me that superhero comics need room for both, and Real World logic can't (and shouldn't) slow that down. It also strikes me that the heartburn really sets in when those of us that don't like secret identities want to like a character who has one, and those of us that do like one that doesn't.

[Matternativ]

Well...

Is that supposed to proof anything? Because it's mostly the lightning and haircut that makes her look different here.
Those huge glasses in general only make you look like a hipster version of yourself, not a different person.

[Matternativ]

Double post because technical difficulties.

[KurtW95]

Is that supposed to proof anything? Because it's mostly the lightning and haircut that makes her look different here.
Those huge glasses in general only make you look like a hipster version of yourself, not a different person.

Superman has a different hairstyle from Clark Kent as well.

[brettc1]

For me the problem with stripping away the secret ID was in most cases it stripped away the character having a life outside of being the hero. Cap used to have a real life, but ever since he was outed he is just all Cap all the time, and he is boring now because of it.

This is what I was talking about.


Sure people can say the writer can put normal people in their lives, but considering the likelihood they will then be targeted by HYDRA or some other group of villains it actually seems selfish on the part of the super to be mixing with them.

[Hypestyle]

I miss them but what are you going to do? inevitably some writer(s) is going to come along and say that "it makes no sense!" for fill in the blank character to have a secret identity in this era of cell phone cameras, security cameras in alleys, ATM machines, restaurants, businesses of all kinds, etc., compared to 1960, 70s or even 1980s up to a point.
Plus nowadays Google satellites, cell phone tracking, etc.

So I wish more heroes had secret IDs but I doubt that they will come back as a universal standard. I just wish that writers were not reckless in revealing secret IDs to all the people who have been finding out over the years. It might make for one good story arc, but then after that, it runs the risk of being really sketchy because inevitably the angle of "one of the people who knows tells someone who should absolutely NOT know" and then super-bad things happen, etc.