Superman is Proving Marvel Was Right To Get Rid of Secret Identities
Warning: contains spoilers for Superman: Son of Kal-El #11!
DC's Superman is one of the oldest superheroes in the world, and the poster child for how comic books handled secret identities — which made him officially dropping his secret identity all the more notable. The Man of Steel fooled the entirety of the DC Universe and kept his life as Clark Kent a secret for nearly 80 years (in real-world time) until he finally decided to reveal that the two were one and the same during a press conference. Now, Superman: Son of Kal-El #11 proves Superman's method of ditching his secret identity altogether works wonders for superheroes — especially those in the Marvel Universe.
Superman was not the first hero to have a secret identity, but his fame certainly codified the trope in superhero comics. Plenty of stories capitalized on the trope: Clark and Superman would have to be in two places at once, a supervillain discovered Clark's secret and would threaten his family, etc. Nearly every DC superhero would have a secret identity of their own, and Marvel would follow suit — except with the origin of the Fantastic Four, a team that notably never wore masks and was treated more like celebrities than vigilantes by the public.
Related: Superman's Super-Intelligence Is Finally Making Its Official Comeback
The practice of superheroes maintaining secret identities fell out of favor around the 2000s; both Captain America and Iron Man revealed their identifies to the world in 2002 (and the MCU's Iron Man film famously ended with the same gesture in 2008). In Superman: Son of Kal-El #11, written by Tom Taylor with art by Cian Tormey, Batman has a discussion with Johnathan Kent about Superman's decision to publicly reveal his own identity (seen
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