Oh I’ve thought a lot about it. On my salary, I can’t afford to be up all night fighting crime and then go to work (Peter Parker would have been so fired by now). If I even once considered using it for good, I would try to hide my identity, and not just because people I love would be endangered; I just wouldn’t want people to know, period. (They call me “mysterious” at work for a reason.). I’d try to make it so no one even knew what happened. Of course that would depend on my power(s). If it’s something like invisibility, teleportation, or telekinesis, all mine baby. Fend for yourselves.
There’s another reason to have a secret identity:
My dad was a cop and he said this exact thing happen to cops all the time when they’re on their lunch breaks. “Why aren’t you out arresting criminals?! This is how my tax dollars are spent?!”
By the ex-wife of another superhero
And of course, that’s Guy’s ego at work there. “Am I a superhero? DAMN RIGHT I AM!” Same reason that his is the only GL ring that makes noise.
Except Rot Lop Fan’s, of course. I suppose you could argue that his isn’t strictly a Lantern ring.
Dear heavens, that’s funny! Thank you for that.
I’ll be in my bunk.
Wonder Woman’s seems most pointless: i always forget she has one.
Captain Marvel’s (DC) seemed silly too as he didn’t really have much going for him. Thought to his credit, he was a completely different person.
While having a helpless alter-ego who has to utter a magic word to become powerful no doubt originated as a plot device to avoid the Superman problem (lack of vulnerability makes it difficult to come up with credible threats) and to create a more identifiable hero for young kids, the power to become Captain Marvel wasn’t intended to completely overshadow Billy Batson’s life. The fact that he had to spend a significant part of his life without that power was probably a wise decision by the wizard Shazam (at least in retrospect).
The Alan Moore “Miracleman” series, which was analogous to Captain Marvel, showed what that amount of power could do to the psyche of the person in question when he (Kid Miracle) didn’t have to revert to his mortal form for years on end. It was not pretty.
Did Jocasta (the robot-chick) ever have a secret identity?
Don’t think so. Her boyfriend, Machine Man, used to go about as Aaron Stack though
Machine Man has one of the best justified secret identities. All the other androids the project made went insane and became homicidal and/or suicidal. X-51 was the only one who stayed sane, because Stack had given him an identity and guided his emotional development.
The Superman thing got really weird in some Byrne era (or a few years thereafter, but before they started Zero Hour Hypertime Reality Punch Final Crisis 52ing everything up) story where Lois or Perry or someone at the Planet figured out the whole Kent/Superman connection. So what does Supes do? Concocts some bullshit about how the Kents found him (well, that’s not bullshit, but here it comes) and raised him side by side with Clark, like they were brothers.
WHAT? What purpose did that serve? How is that any better than “yep you got me, I’m Clark, but don’t tell anyone kthx”?
That’s almost as ridiculous as the silver age story where revealed he used super-hypnotism to make everyone on Earth think Clark Kent was a bald fat guy as part of his identity cover.
Minor nitpick: the balding Clark appears thin and frail – not fat.
Doc Cathode:
That’s what everyone had assumed. John Byrne decided to reveal her as real in Fantastic Four # 239.
Didn’t the Hulk at some point have some lame “Mr. Fix-it” identity, where he was still giant, green, and unbelievably strong but somehow pretended NOT to be the Hulk? I’m really asking, here, because that was the impression I got from seeing that persona in a few odd issues but I never got into the Hulk enough to follow the comic for long.
In those days I remember him being grey.
He adopted Mr Fixit so he could hide out in Las Vegas for a while. He had undergone a mutation at the time, which meant he was grey, had average intelligence, and wasn’t quite as strong. He started working as a leg breaker for a casino owner, and used to walk around in designer suits.
As the Hulk is well known in the marvel universe as green and stupid and walking round half naked, no one really made the connection. I think he had officially been declared dead at the time too
It was all during Peter David’s run, so it actually worked pretty well
I liked that arc.
I like that this poster already has a SuperDoperName.
IIRC, early in the FF series, Johnny Storm tried to keep his Human Torch identity secret. He used to exit the house by zooming up the chimney. There’s a story where it’s revealed to him that everybody knew his secret, but played along for some reason, like to give him privacy or something.
Why can’t I remember important things? 