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.