I’ll putz you one better by remembering how Tigra discovered Stark was Iron Man. The Avengers (at that time Captain America, Tigra, IM, Thor and a couple others) and the Silver Surfer were up against Molecule Man. He molecularly disassembled IM’s armor, Thor’s hammer, Cap’s shield and the Surfer’s board, saying “I know what you’re thinking: ‘My indesructible fill in the blank! Impossible! It’s made of fill in the blank!’ Well it’s allmolecules, people!” The Avengers present learned IM was Stark (and Thor was Donald Blake). Later MM re-assembled everything except IM’s armor (circuitry was too complex for him), so he whipped up some red and gold cloth and made Tony an IM-patterned suit.
Got any pics?
See I would think they would be much more along the lines of “is/was _____ gay?” threads.
10 GOTO DAGOBAH SYSTEM
20 IF YODA: RUN JEDI TRAINING
30 IF NOTAFRAID=YOUWILLBE
I am now forced to seek out our IT guy and find out if he’s got something to take spit coffee off the monitor without streaking. Thank you.
"Okay, let’s summarize what we know about Spider-Man so far:
- Seen most often in New York, sometimes in Queens.
- Skinny and fast
- Always masked
- Wisecracking joker
- Around 5’8", 150lbs.
- Often seen with the Human Torch
“The evidence suggests an older-teen/early-20s male, built like a track star, with a tendency to motormouth. Hanging around high schools and pizza parlors in the NYC/Queens area ought to be a good start. If he’s always masked, that might indicate some sort of noticable facial scar/tic/tattoo, so that would narrow the field down considerably. Don’t waste your time looking for the nerdy quiet bookworm types, either…”
Golden Age-Superman also made some Bruce Wayne/Batman androids to help Bats hide his identity.
Steve Rogers seems to spend most of his time as Cap. He’s not around most of the time. It isn’t ‘Where was Steve for those 5 minutes Cap showed up?’. It’s ‘Hi Steve. Another fun week of talking to eachother’s answering machines. Call me.’
Going at it from the other direction, the secret identity of Captain America is top secret for reasons of national security.
Jay Ward used his vibratory powers to keep a distortion effect over his face. Barry Allen never seemed to bother with that. Villains from the present seemed strangely unable to figure out who he was. Villains from the future knew his name as a matter of historical record. I haven’t really read the adventures of Wally West.
Distinctive beard. A mask that’s no more concealing than a pair of sunglasses. Why the heck didn’t they recognize him?
All the lanterns could easily have disguised themselves in a suit of green armor, big enough that even their body types and gender were concealed. Instead, Alan Scott, and Hal Jordan wear domino masks. Kyle Rainer wears a slightly more concealing mask. Guy Gardner wore no mask, because it got in the way of having chicks recognize him.
Peter conceals his muscles (while superhumanly strong, he is not bulky) and still acts like a nerd. IMHO This is a hell of a lot more effective than androids or anything else.
I loved Christopher Reeve’s performance as Clark Kent. His Clark is a man who wants to help people, and make the world a better place and would rush off to battle villains if his friends didn’t restrain him for his own safety.
I thought she gave up her secret identity a while back.
Read my above post about Starbrand.
That Daily Bugle photographer, Peter Parker, always seems to get the best photos of Spider-Man. Maybe they have some kind of connection.
I believe that he has now gone public, and lives in an average Brooklny neigborhood.
Actually, this bears repeating:
Oh, and as for the guessing secret identities thing, I will give it a try.
**
Captain Marvel**:
*Bears a strong resemblance to actor Fred MacMurray , of the film “Double Indemnity”.
*Apears to be anywhere between late 20s, and early 40s.
*never masked
*Black hair, blue eyes, 6’ 2"
*looks like he weighs somewhere around the 220s
*seems to be based around Fawcett city, but also seen at many major superheroes battles
*Know to have held his own against superman, and judging from past super villain actions, it seems Superman is vulnerable to magic
From this, I feel quite confident is believe that he is actually Fred MacMurray. I do not know how he can still be alive, but since magic seems to be involved, there is any number of explanations.
Re Spiderman
Jameson hates Spidey. Jameson has met Spidey plenty of times. Jameson has never noticed that Spidey and Parker have the same voice.
Batman
Silver St Cloud did something nobody else was smart enough to do. She deduced Batman’s identity by studying photos of his face and comparing them to photos of likely suspects.
The canon explanation for this is that Spider-Man’s mask muffles and distorts his voice to the point that it’s unrecognizable.
Of course Jameson’s got this bizarre blind spot on the topic anyway. On at least two occasions Spider-Man was unmasked in front of him and he simply refused to believe Parker was really Spidey. Once Doctor Octopus pulled off his mask after defeateing a fluish Spider-Man, and once Jameson was tapped into cameras that were blanketing the rooftops of NYC and caught Spidey on camera pulling off his mask.
I don’t remember how Peter got people to disbelieve the first incident, but the second he thwarted by having a Peter Parker mask made. He then layered a Spider-Man mask, the Parker mask and another Spider-Man mask and went back in front of the cameras. He pulled off the first Spidey mask and then pulled off the Parker mask, and for some reason JJJ bought it 100%. Dumbass.
Meh. Some tabloid journalist did that to The Blue Falcon years ago. Narrowed her list of suspects down to about four, then got close enough to BF to spray dye on his chin. The one who showed up in public with a dyed chin was BF; conversely, if one of her suspects didn’t show up in public for a month he was BF. BF outwitted her by having the other suspects dye their chins too. One smart cookie, that Blue Falcon.
Back to Batman though, didn’t Ra’s Al-Ghoul figure out his identity by determining equipment that Batman would need to fight crime then tracking down who bought those items?
The animated series did something like the first incident. A group of villains captured Spider-Man and unmasked him. Dr. Octopus recognized Peter Parker immediately. What saved Peter was that he was suffering from an illness that presaged his mutation problems. The illness made Spider-Man so weak that he put up a very poor fight, and none of the villains could believe that Peter was the same guy that had kicked their asses so many times before.
This is a good point. Peter Parker doesn’t look or act like the type of guy who would normally do something brave. He looks like the kind of ordinary Joe Schmo who would run for cover at the first sign of danger. Unlike, say, Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent, who are big beefy guys who do look like they could plausibly be a superhero. Maybe if we saw more evidence of the playboy lifestyle that Bruce Wayne supposedly enjoys, (so that he came across as a decadent Hugh Hefner type) it could be more believeable that people would dismiss the idea that he’s Batman.
Nit-pick: While it was show in the series, it was originally taken from a story from the first few comics.
As I recall, earlier in that story he took pity on a cat-burgler, or somthing. Later, at Peter’s request, the burgler did him a favor and dressed up as Spiderman, did some acrobatic tricks up the side of a building, and entered the same room as Peter.
There was a comic in which Peter enlisted the aid of The Prowler to throw Gwen Stacy’s father off the track of his secret identity. The Prowler, dressed in a Spider-Man costume, showed up at the Stacy home while Peter was there. It was another instance of Peter thinking his powers were fading. I literally found a reprint of that story (without a cover) on the playground when I was like nine years old.
That was one (of many) thing that Batman Begins did very well. You got a palpable sense of him playing that side of his persona up, culminating in the newspaper story at the end
Drunken Billionaire Burns Down Home
Good god, I can see it…heated arguments turning into outright flamewars; mods finally starting a policy of locking such threads because they always turn into quagmires and because of vague legal concerns—which probably just means someone in the SDMB staff works for, is, or owes a favor to a hero—wags and pundits going on about how it’s their right as citizens to know and speculate on the identities of heroes, or how protecting their identities just unfairly supports the manocratic Establishment keeping the proles down…
Sorry, what the heck are we talking about, again?
I seem to recall Silver figuring out Bats & Bruce lived in the same body after meeting the Dark Knight within a day of studying Bruce’s…jaw.
Well, we saw plenty of Bruce’s faux-playboy lifestyle in, say, Batman: Year 1. I recall one scene in which then-Lieutenant Gordon and, for some weird reason, his wife, are interrogating Bruce on that very issue at Wayne Manor. Wayne’s in a horribly skimpy robe, and at his side is a nameless blonde wearing a nightie. Bruce, pouring himself a glass of champagne at 8 o’clock in the morning (Gordon demurs because it’s, well, 8 o’clock in the morning, says, “I’d introduce you to my friend, Lieutenant, but I’m not sure of her name and she doesn’t speak any language I know.”
Mrs. Gordon replies, “That must be convenient.” And spends the rest of the day calling Wayne a pig.
Of course, Gordon wasn’t really fooled, but by the end of Year 1 he had pretty much decided to pretend he was in the interests of plausible deniability. But I can easily see the average Gothamite thinking, “Bruce Wayne? Batman? Rrrriiiiigggghhhhttttt.”
You have to know the headline writer spent so much time laughing that day that he was effectively useless.