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Who's Wearing the Mask?: On the Nature of Secret Identities
San Francisco, 9:07 AM
Fri Dec 4
28 posts in the last 24 hours
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04/05/09
I guess Wolverine might work for this too, but not as well.
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04/05/09
But for every hour they spend developing their civilian identity, that's less people saved or skills honed.
So, are secret identities, ultimately, a selfish act?
That said, anything that keeps preturnaturally powerful beings with egos outsized enough to wear skin-clinging lycra sane is probably a good thing - unselfish even.
I'd also add the Fantastic Four (even though they cross outside of Alyssa's DC-centric focus), simply because they're the first, and perhaps only, supers who have NO secret identity. Heck, they even license themselves.
04/05/09
Perhaps The Phantom's mask is there to carry on the illusion that it's the same person across the ages, and not to hide his public/private selves?
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I don't know if there are any major heroes that have gone this route. Wasn't there a batgirl that was unknown, but again not a main or title character for a book.
04/06/09
In ongoing comics, it doesn't really happen because even if a superhero is introduced without a secret identity being thrown in, someone is very likely to tack one on before too long if the writing isn't exclusively limited to the creator.
@omgwtflolbbqbye:
Rorschach doesn't really count on the basis that even though Watchmen was released in 12 issues, it's still a single story. Every character's secret identity is still introduced within that single story. Some just took a little longer than others.
04/05/09
To me, Superman becomes a much more interesting character when you realize he was raised as a human and thinks of himself that way, harboring humans goals and dreams. If it wasn't for his feeling that he is part of humanity, he wouldn't work so hard to protect it (he'd probably enslave it instead).
I think Straczynski played with this concept in a more sinister light in Supreme Power, having the government orchestrate a traditional American upbringing for Mark Milton so that his loyalty would be to the country and humanity in general.
04/05/09
No one has ever tried hard enough to get behind Superman's psyche as to why he does what he does, and I for one would welcome a tale that does so. I mean, Batman's all screwed up because his mommy and daddy died whereas Superman had HIS WHOLE PLANET BLOW UP, yet he seems to get along quite nicely.
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04/05/09
I don't think so.
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04/06/09
Superman did not have his planet blow up. Earth is fine, and that's the only planet he's really known in his younger life. The whole thing with Krypton doesn't have the same emotional investment that the Wayne murders have because he really didn't experience any personal loss. To him, it was just a more complex form of the whole "we adopted you" story that so many ordinary humans hear from their adopted parents every year.
04/05/09
This dork [threatquality.com] had some pretty deep thoughts on secret/dual identities recently. He meanders off into religious topics but it's still worth reading.
And yes, there was a Blue Rajah in the print version of The Mystery Men. I seem to remember he had telekinetic power over all kitchen utensils.
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As for Superman, the Clark-is-real/Superman-is-real inversion really crippled the character. More than actually scaling back his powers, it implied that he was just an aw-shucks ordinary man, and not a particularly clever one at that. No wonder Batman ran away with the hearts and minds; as Becca alluded to and Ra's al Ghul put it in the Nolan film, a legend has to be more than just a man.
Incidentally, I notice a dearth of Marvels on this list. Perhaps this is because their psychologies tend to be more homogeneously sociopathic. ;)
04/06/09
JL/U handled that whole thing really well. Superman could figure out who anyone was if he knew what their public identity looked like (supervision and all that), and wasn't once depicted as wondering exactly who Batman was under the cowl. Batman, on the other hand, was Batman. He had files on every superhero of note, and probably most of the rest. Those files included both their public identities and any vulnerabilities, should he need to take them down someday. The Flash didn't know anyone else's secret identity and assumed that held true in reverse. John Stewart was the only human in the original Justice League who introduced himself by his civilian name while on the job (and everyone called him John as a result).
04/05/09
OBJECTION!!!
But instead of explaining the whole thing in this post, I'll let Mr. David Carradine do the talking for me:
+ Watch video
04/05/09
both you and Bill are right.
Byrne 86 reboot was wrong.
Superman is the real identity and Clark the mask. to argue otherwise is logically inconsistent.
Superman cannot turn off his powers, his super senses work 24/7 - he lives in a cardboard and paper world, that he can break apart like so much tissue paper.
The Clark Kent everybody knows is a lie. Even setting aside the milquetoast version for Brynes acknowledged lift of the George Reeves TV version of Kent, it still falls apart, since Superman is still lying to Lois ( for the longest time ) and everyone else for that matter. Kent is a pretence at being human.
Superman is the real person because when Superman is being Super he is being honest about his abilities and life purpose which is the never ending battle ( no retirement there ) against evil.
When he's pretending to be merely human that is denying his true nature.
Arguably the only people that Know him fully are his true friends, Diana and Bruce - and his parents; and latterly Lois.
But to argue the guy that has to walk is the real deal over the guy that gets to fly to where he wants to be is just silly.
04/05/09
Superman is the real guy. He's always Superman. He pretends to be Clark Kent b/c he longs to fit in with the world he's found himself on, and b/c he loved his foster parents.
Originally, Supes/Clark became a reporter so he could get news from all over the world first of disasters. Through, I dunno, phones and ticker tape or whatever. News didn't get out to average people until it was processed through the media, either newspapers or radio/TV.
Now we have 24 hr. cable and internet news, but they're stuck with Clark as a reporter for the Daily Planet (what'll they do when newspapers die? dailyplanet.com?) so they've had to faff around with explanations that don't really work with the character.
If you take a random poll of people on the street -- not just comics geeks -- they'd say Clark's the mask.
Superman is his nature, and he cannot change that.
04/06/09
That scene should have been cut from the film, burned, fed to a bat, launched into space, and completely disavowed. Taken on its own, it is, hands down, the most retarded thing that Tarantino has ever done. Even if he chewed off his own arm he couldn't top that.
Dude was born Kal-El, raised Clark Kent, and invented Superman. His morals and values come from being Clark Kent, not Superman. His powers come from being Kal-El, not Superman. The only thing he gets from being Superman is anonymity and a reputation.
Even the Golden Age Superman blurred the lines. He was still raised by the Kents, so he grew up Clark Kent and not Superman. While the persona of Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent may have been a fabrication, the identity most certainly was not. And while the persona of Superman may have held true to the boy the Kents raised, the identity was still a concoction.
Any way you slice it, there's no Earth-based birth certificate for Superman, but there's probably one for each version of Clark Kent. And Bill's bit of verbal diarrhea doesn't jive with that.
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04/05/09
I never thought of that, he was originally named something (John, Dan, Morty?) Reid, but once he got the Mask he never took it off (except to go undercover as a henchman or a hobo). It's not like he had any living family or, Grodd forbid, a girlfriend to protect. Why the mask at all, just to freak out the bad guys?
Hmmm...
04/05/09
I think a reconciliation council is in order...
04/05/09
The man The Lone Ranger was died the day his brother was killed by bandits. Maybe it's easier to be judge, jury and executioner with a sense of anonymity.
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"Tonto" means "stupid" in Spanish, dude got beat up everytime he went into town to "get the information" (Bill Cosby actually has a skit about that), and there's that whole thing where white people (probably specifically Americans) think all foreigners look alike. The writers probably never really cared enough to consider how risky it might be for him to hang out with the Lone Ranger.
Also, from the other side of things, a masked Native American during the days of the Wild West probably would be shot by anyone with a gun (especially anyone who's had a few drinks) on the assumption that he was wearing war paint and planning to kill people. He'd also have a hard time doing anything anonymously in a town with nothing but white people if he was wearing a mask when doing so, and if he only wore a mask when he appeared with the Lone Ranger it wouldn't be too long before people realized that there was always a non-masked Native American in town the day before the masked one showed up with the Lone Ranger.
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04/06/09
So...he should just stay in half-Martian form when he wants some downtime?
JLU did a great job of explaining why, exactly, J'onn needs to be John. He stuck around in the Watchtower, up in orbit, and _never_ set foot on the ground after they opened up membership to pretty much every superhero on Earth. Eventually he lost touch with humanity. He's not human, and the only people he interacted with were superheroes and supervillains, but never the general populace, so he kinda stopped caring about Joe Public. If there's any Earth-based superhero who desperately needs to interact with the human population, it's J'onn. And if he's not doing it anonymously, it really won't do him any good.
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Then there's my old favorite, The Shadow! He was the original dude pretending to to be the dude pretending to to be another dude.
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Someday there will be a decent modern production of The Shadow (without Will Smith or Keaneu Reeves), but I ain't holding my breath.
04/05/09
good post!
04/05/09