"Saving himself a lot trouble" is not a good recipe for drama or action .
Any point in secret identities?
- Thread starter Replica Picard
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"Saving himself a lot trouble" is not a good recipe for drama or action .
After a while (and a few reboots) it just gets damn repetitive.
Drama and action?
The Spider-Man films are using it. Though I guess they are Marvel-adjacent.
Are you a Spider-Movie behind?
Although it was a mid end credits scene, so you may have just walked out of the movie early.
Nah. I saw it. I'm the guy who stays for the entire credits. Point remains, though.
Well put. Parker is not a mirror of that particular reader, and exists in a world where it was long established that his costumed life poses dangers that civilians simply cannot handle, and gain nothing from knowing at all. Again, its a desire for superheroes to some high school giggle club, when the very nature of being a superhero means there's the acceptance that his or her life cannot be an open book to everyone, and should not be.
Probably.
No, they exist in a world where the Fantastic Four and half the Avengers have no secret identities, yet their civilian pals get by just fine. If Wyatt Wingfoot can handle it, Mary Jane can too.
If we're counting the Netflix characters, there was also Hellcat/Trish.
And are all of the AoS characters' identities public now?
Of course I've basically stopped counting any of those shows as mcu now, anyway. The only one the movies ever cared to acknowledge in any way was Agent Carter and AoS diverged so heavily from the movies that it literally can't be the same timeline as I understand it, though I haven't seen that season myself yet. And while I'm open to being surprised, I'm not expecting the Netflix shows or actors to get any more continuations now that Marvel TV is more directly under Feige's control.
I'm rereading some old Pre-Crisis comics and it seems to me that Superman has more social life than Clark Kent. Perry White considers him a good friend, Lois Lane is more or less in love with him, and Jimmy Olsen is known as "Superman's Pal". On the other hand, Clark Kent is such a shapeless amoeba that it is not clear why someone would like to be friends with him. In fact, he always refuses friendship offers with some excuse as Superman's help is needed somewhere. So, whatever are his reason to keep a secret identity, keeping safe his loved ones is not one of them. Still, every time Lois Lane tries to talk about this subject, this is the justification he offers to her.
He was a dick.
He was a dick.
Maybe he really only cared about protecting his parents?
In the PreCrisis continuity they were dead when Clark was an adult (and when they were alive they did know his secret identity).
Really, I'm not a Pre-Crisis expert, but I struggle to remember any important character who wasn't both an acquaintance of Clark Kent AND Superman. In the same period, it wasn't like Aunt May spent her free time with Spider-Man or Bernie Rosenthal (an artist who was engaged with Steve Roger) routinely had coffee with Captain America. Obviously there was always a bit of overlapping between the people who knew the hero and who knew his/her alter-ego for drama's sake, but only in the case of Superman they both coincided almost perfectly.
He was a dick.
Another big difference is that both Superman and Clark Kent often had a meaningful relationship with the same person. While other heroes who knew the some people in both their alter egos tried to maintain the distance in at least one of his/her identities, Kal had no qualms. I don't know how many time Lois or Lana talked with Clark about their private issues with Superman or viceversa. I would feel a little uncomfortable in such a situation, but he had absolutely no problems ...
I don't think that's true. A lot of Superman stories have been about how he struggles with that very problem. After all, stories are about problems. The whole reason to tell a story like that is to put the dual-identity character in a dilemma or show his struggles to maintain his secret. If it had really caused Superman zero problems, then it wouldn't have been worth putting on the page.
And I'd hardly say it's unique to Superman. That "My romantic interest loves my superhero identity but thinks I'm a bore" was a routine formula in Silver Age DC -- Barry Allen/Flash and Iris West, Hal Jordan/Green Lantern and Carol Ferris (with the added angle that she was also the villain Star Sapphire without knowing it), Diana Prince/Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, Bruce Wayne/Batman and Vicki Vale, you name it. (Go back to the Golden Age and the Clark/Lois pattern was repeated to an extent with Bruce Wayne and Julie Madison.) And Marvel did it too, with Spider-Man and Betty Brant, Daredevil and Karen Page, Iron Man and Pepper Potts, etc.
Even beyond love interests, it's always been commonplace for the same supporting cast to interact with both the hero and civilian identities. J. Jonah Jameson was Peter Parker's boss and Spider-Man's nemesis. The Green Goblin was Spidey's arch-enemy and Peter's best friend's father. Flash Thompson was Peter's worst bully and Spidey's biggest fan. Doc Ock once almost married Aunt May. And so on. Beyond that, characters who are connected to a superhero's civilian identity have a tendency to get kidnapped or endangered a lot by that hero's enemies, often purely by coincidence, which renders the whole "I must hide my secret from them to protect them" line a bit silly. It's just the nature of narrative that you need to use your main characters, to have the stories involve people the audience knows and cares about, and that means it's common for superheroes' supporting characters to get involved in both sides of their lives.
Only because he took it back, using the Purple Man's kids to hypnotize the whole planet in 2017.
15 years ago, a News Paper outed Daredevil, so Matt sued for defamation, and won the entire Newspaper. It changed nothing.
Daredevil is scary.
The same drama, the whole "No one must EVER know my secret!" stuff. And "Poor Aunt May would die of fright!" as well.
That just means you’ve read too many comic and probably should’ve stopped a while back.
No, she can't. Wyatt Wingfoot regularly spends time going on the Fantastic Four's adventures with them, so he isn't just a civilian acquaintance. For the record, it was retconned that Mary Jane knew Peter was Spider-Man all along, as she had seen him sneak out in costume more than once. This is the main reason she turned him down the first time he proposed, according to the retcon. Originally she was just shallow, but a later writer gave her more depth. And with the depth, he gave her a perspective that caused her distress even without the danger from his enemies, though she avoided him a lot because she knew that knowing his secret could eventually get her killed.
As for the Fantastic Four, they don't have civilian friends. All of their friends are members of other hero groups, and can take care of themselves. Same for the Avengers that let out their IDs.