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Any point in secret identities?

TREK_GOD_1 said:
anyone knowing the hero's identity led to tragedy (Gwen Stacy, Iris West Allen, et al.).
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Er, no. Gwen died in the comics most likely BECAUSE Peter kept it a secret.

Being a superhero is not a high school club for giggles; it is the most dangerous of "professions" and being superheroes, their adversaries are usually of a level far beyond civilians' feeble ability to "protect" themselves against an attack of that kind.
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Keeping it a secret and still hanging out with them as a Superhero shows utter irresponsibility on the heroes' behalf.

The idea that a hero's friends and in some cases, one barely known individual after another has any right to this information (they do not)
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If they have no right to know the person, then that person has no right to involve these people in their life to begin with.

Superman put the Daily Planet folks in danger by associating with them as Superman, he has no right to get worried about how them knowing who he was would affect him.
 
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People don't reveal everything to everyone. Since I don't tell my friends all my secrets does that mean I have no right to have them in my life? O_o
 
Depends? Is your secret that you enjoy wearing frilly undergarments? Fine. Is it that you have a separate identity in which you piss off powerful beings who might attack you and anyone you seem to care about, possibly even when you're in street clothes? That's a different matter. They either deserve to know, or you shouldn't be indulging yourself and endangering them.

Btw, though, I saw someone suggest telling them wouldn't allow them to defend themselves. Maybe, but supers often end up with access to all sorts of super tech that might help with that. Will a defense-only ring copy onto their hand that's there when yours is charged. Build Pepper her own Iron Man suit. ;)
 
Pepper has her own Iron Man suit.

It's blue?

She was in the 50 state iniative, and has the handle "Rescue" . She was wearing the Rescue Armour in the latest movie Endgame.

Because Tony is sexist, and Pepper is a save the whales type, her armour had no offensive weapons, she was just flying around dealing with humanitarian issues like car crashes and forest fires.

Eventually, in a crunch, Pepper flattened her force field into a ring and chain sawed through some baddies who thought that she was a push over.
 
Christopher said:
Not under the Comics Code, when there couldn't really be any serious crimes. One could presume that Superman had effectively cleaned up crime and thus had a lot of free time on his hands.
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Well, you are right. Perhaps a more recent example. This is from Superman #301, from July 1976. So technically we are during the Bronze Age, where stories should be more serious than in the Silver Age.

Here he used super hypnotism on Steve Lombard so that he could replace Clark Kent
Steve.jpg

So, he forced people to act against their will just to protect his petty secret. If he met a supervillain who did the same thing, he would have super-punched him to the nearest jail.
 
Nerys Myk said:
Intrepid girl reporter is a bit of trope in the 30s and 40s especially.
A grown woman being taken across the knee and spanked, often by a husband or boyfriend,is one too. One that seems to have lasted well in to the 20th Century and possibly beyond. I'm sure there's some wacky psychology involved in that!
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It's just another human kink. Humans have lots of them. Basically role playing that feeds into male masculinity of needing to feel powerful or something like that.
Jason
 
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In the Darkest Timeline, they made 5 more Brenda Star Movies.

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Jayson1 said:
It's just another human kink. Humans have lots of them. Basically role playing that feeds into male masculinity of needing to feel powerful or something like that.
Jason
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In the panel that I posted the all thing was clearly not consensual.
 
Skipper said:
So technically we are during the Bronze Age, where stories should be more serious than in the Silver Age.
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It's not like a switch was flipped and things immediately got more serious the moment New Gods #1 came out. It was a gradual evolution, and a lot of Silver Age conventions and silliness continued well into the Bronze. (Just look at anything Bob Haney wrote during that time.)
 
Anwar said:
Er, no. Gwen died in the comics most likely BECAUSE Peter kept it a secret.
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Norman didn't know Spider-Man's secret identity, but the Green Goblin did. Split personality, separate memory caches.

Here's what Peter didn't know... Norman Osborn was the father of Gwen Stacey's children, so really, honestly, that murder was probably way more about Gwen than it was about Peter.
 
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Anwar said:
Er, no. Gwen died in the comics most likely BECAUSE Peter kept it a secret.
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Nonsense. Gwen was an average woman. Her knowing Parker's (or Osborn's) secret would not have prevented her from being captured by a man with superpowers, kidnapped and killed. Nothing. The Green Goblin flew to Peter's apartment looking for Parker and found Gwen. She had no defense against that, and considering at that very moment she was distraught over the entire Harry relapse business, she would have never seen it coming.

If they have no right to know the person, then that person has no right to involve these people in their life to begin with.
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More nonsense. The person--the civilian side--is all the others knew to begin with. Parker did not walk up to Liz, Flash, Harry, Gwen or anyone else, saying, "Hi! I'm Peter Parker and Spider-Man" because at the various periods of time where he met those characters, he wisely concluded that his superhero life was none of their business and they were better off not knowing. Being in on a secret of that magnitude sparks dangerous curiosity, overreactions to want to get involved to "help" (when they cannot) or loose lips, which can be just as deadly as the weapons of a supervillain.
 
TREK_GOD_1 said:
Nonsense. Gwen was an average woman. Her knowing Parker's (or Osborn's) secret would not have prevented her from being captured by a man with superpowers, kidnapped and killed.
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If she'd known, she'd know why Peter wasn't at his place and instead of waiting around for him to come back just go home and see if Spidey was okay on TV. Thus, she wouldn't have been there when the Goblin came to Peter's place looking for HIM.

You really need to accept that there are just some things about these characters that are outdated and need to either be discarded or reworked.
 
Anwar said:
If she'd known, she'd know why Peter wasn't at his place and instead of waiting around for him to come back just go home and see if Spidey was okay on TV. Thus, she wouldn't have been there when the Goblin came to Peter's place looking for HIM.

You really need to accept that there are just some things about these characters that are outdated and need to either be discarded or reworked.
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This assumes she'd not be of a mind to wait for him at his place, regardless. That's not a safe assumption, especially since Gwen was the type to wait for Peter at his place, as had been seen more than once. If she wanted to see if Spider-Man was on TV, she could just watch at Peter's place. That was kind of the point.
 
It's a bit absurd to think Gwen would be somewhere that that Goblin couldn't get if she knew Peter was Spider-Man. The story hinges on the Goblin abducting her and eventually causing her death. Knowing Peter is Spider-Man will not change that, because that's the story Conway was telling. The difference would be Peter beating himself up because he told Gwen he was Spider-Man.
 
FormerLurker said:
This assumes she'd not be of a mind to wait for him at his place, regardless. That's not a safe assumption, especially since Gwen was the type to wait for Peter at his place, as had been seen more than once. If she wanted to see if Spider-Man was on TV, she could just watch at Peter's place. That was kind of the point.
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And if she'd known he was Peter and then Peter told her about Norman, she'd also be of the mind to not be in places Norman would likely come to. Including Peter's place.

Nerys Myk said:
It's a bit absurd to thing Gwen would be somewhere that that Goblin couldn't get if she knew Peter was Spider-Man. The story hinges on the Goblin abducting her and eventually causing her death. Knowing Peter is Spider-Man will not change that, because that's the story Conway was telling. The difference would be Peter beating himself up because he told Gwen he was Spider-Man.
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Now you're just discussing the Anthropic Principle.
 
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