Over the past couple of decades, superhero secret identities have definitely fallen out of fashion: a lot of heroes that traditionally had one… which used to be pretty much everybody… no longer uses one. Even among those who still keep one, it’s a back and forth between the identity being made public, then reset, then being made public again.
Why are secret identities no longer ubiquitous? I can think of a few reasons:
- Plausibility. It takes some suspension of disbelief to accept that public figures who are constantly under the public eye could manage to fool everybody for several years, even including close friends and loved ones.
- Technology. It takes a lot more effort today to keep your life secret from everybody.
- Overuse. After decades and decades of the same plots about protecting one’s secret identity, there are very few scenarios that haven’t been explored to death.
- Practicality. If a hero has a secret identity, you have to give SOME importance to the civilian life. But if you’re not interested to explore that, you’re better of with a well-written public identity than a half-assed secret one.
Where am I going with this, besides my usual rambling? I wanted to see if there’s a way to see the various categories where a hero can fall. And I can think of four.
ALWAYS SECRET
These are the characters that, in my opinion of course, absolutely cannot work if they have a public identity. And I only put five heroes here… well, five-ish… in order of seniority.
SUPERMAN
This has been explored countless times, but Superman really needs a human identity to keep him grounded. You don’t necessarily have to go into the excess of many of his not-so-subtle equivalents from other companies and make him become a psycho or a despot. A well-written Superman would definitely still be a good guy if he didn’t have to put on the glasses, but he would lose purpose.
This is MASTERFULLY shown by Samaritan, his equivalent in the Astro City universe.
BATMAN
On a purely technical note, I suppose it COULD work… Bruce Wayne already has the resources of an entire country, so he would just have to become fully independent.
But it wouldn’t exactly be Batman! This extends to MOST of the Bat-Family, of course, unless you get to people more removed like the Huntress.
CAPTAIN MARVEL (Shazam)
You already have to limit the number of superheroes who know he’s actually a kid, in order to avoid having them distrusting him. Do that with the general public and it simply doesn’t work.
The same goes for the rest of the Marvel Family, obviously.
SPIDER-MAN
When he’s written right, Peter Parker is even more interesting than Spider-Man. The ramifications of what would happen if his identity became public have been explored multiple times, with results that range from great (the Civil War stories written by Peter David) to terrible (the other Civil War stories).
DAREDEVIL
If you want him to be a lawyer, the identity has to stay secret. This has been explored very well in the Mark Waid run just before the 2015 Secret Wars (which went quite deep into showing off why a public identity fundamentally does not work for Daredevil).
And that’s about it for the heroes that, in my opinion, MUST have a secret identity.
But there’s the other side of the coin: the heroes who work ONLY if their identity is public.
ALWAYS PUBLIC
FANTASTIC FOUR
Not only they’ve always been public, not only the “celebrity superhero” is a big part of their dynamics… but how do you hide the Thing and more importantly convince the Human Torch to shut up about how awesome he is?
LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES
The Legionnaires could definitely use more scenes showing what they’re doing in their private lives, sure, but they’ve been budging the trend since 1958.
I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting someone, but I can’t think of any other heroes whose identity HAS to be public.
Everyone else is fair game as far as I’m concerned, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have my preferences for certain characters!
BETTER SECRET
IRON MAN
I don’t have a problem with Tony Stark revealing his secret. In fact, it opened up a lot of narrative choices! But we lost one opportunity: we no longer have scenes with Tony Stark having to fake that Iron Man is a blue collar worker, or have him hear people say bad things about Stark to his face.
BETTER PUBLIC
FLASH
Wally West having a public identity was a million times more interesting than anything Barry Allen ever did with his secret one.
WONDER WOMAN
If I’m being honest, I’ve never found ANY version of Diana Prince to be interesting. I much prefer her as a representative of the gods.
Speaking of which…
THOR
…the best thing that ever happened to Thor is getting rid of Don Blake.
Well, except that time under Simonson when he just put on civilian clothes and pretended to be a regular guy.
CAPTAIN AMERICA AND BASICALLY EVERY OTHER AVENGER
Steve Rogers had an interesting live in the DeMatteis and Gruenwald runs, but that’s about it; he’s much better off with a public one.
Most of the other Avengers I haven’t mentioned don’t even have a civilian life already.
THE X-MEN
I cheered when the X-Men FINALLY went public in the 2000s. The fact they were preaching public acceptance of mutants while also pretending to be humans at every occasion never sit right with me.
INDIFFERENT
SUPERGIRL
Unlike her cousin, I think she could potentially pull off a public identity. It would prevent what I believe was one of her flaws in the 70s: they didn’t do ANYTHING with her civilian life.
Plus it would make her stand out from Superman. On the other hand, it would eventually create pretty much all the problems which make me say Superman doesn’t work.
Again, I’m certain I missed some heroes where discussing whether they could have a secret or a public identity could be interesting.
I’ll leave potential candidates to the comments.
Bruce Banner would desperately want a secret identity but would probably have the most difficult time in keeping one.
Bart “Impulse” Allen inverts the secret identity trope. Everyone in Blue Valley High thinks Impulse is just another boring super-speedster. There’s dozens of them. Bart, however, is the coolest kid ever.
I don’t know enough about Black Panther’s early history to know if it was always common knowledge within Wakanda that the king was also the Panther or when the world at large found that out. But it seems to me that it would be a pretty hard secret to keep that the ruler of a nation tends to dress as a cat and fight crime.
The Super King is not a particularly large subset, and Black Panther is the only one off the top of my head who might have ever tried to maintain a secret identity. Namor and Dr. Doom definitely never did. Black Adam doesn’t really need to, as it’s not like some 5,000 year old guy has any civilian relatives he needs to protect from people discovering his true identity. And Doom and Adam definitely count as “superheroes” in their own minds.
Anyhow, I think the Super Kings fall in the Always Public category. If you’re the protector of your nation, you’re going to want the world to know you’re that nation’s nuclear option.
Planck Time is the shortest amount of time that makes sense with our current understanding of physics.
It is, however, considerably longer than Doom Time, defined as the amount of time Victor Von Doom can shut up about being Doctor Doom.
🙂
Of the JLA, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Hawkwoman, The Atom, and Black Canary (a wig? Really?) all had secret identities but little of interest was done with them, so would they fall under Better Secret?
Green Arrow went public, I think, after he lost his fortune. The mask didn’t really work. The beard was a dead giveaway.
Aquaman was Always Public. There was no attempt to hide his Arthur Curry name, and what does an undersea king need with a secret identity, anyway?
The Martian Manhunter might have been Always Secret as being a detective would have helped him get close to cases, but I’m not familiar with his solo stories.
The Red Tornado might have started out as Always Secret as his John Smith (boring name!) identity helped him interact with and understand humans, but, again, little was done with it.
The Elongated Man probably should have been Always Secret considering what happened to Sue.
Zatanna was Always Public–no need for any other identity.
Firestorm was Always Secret since, like Peter Parker, he was a teenager (or half-teenager) and had a family and growing life to protect.
Personally I’m indifferent for most of the Justice League. With exception of Superman and Batman, basically anyone else CAN work with a secret identity if you make it interesting.
And if Green Arrow shaves.
Marvel’s Ghost Rider definitely wants a secret identity! I mean, the avatar of a demon is sort of a complicated life, eh!
This is one of your best posts! I generally agree with everything (regarding Superman, I like to remember when Clark said in Superman The Animated Series that he has to be Clark or he’ll go mad, Clark is who he really is), though I have to say that I like Wally West’s identity being secret.