Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Obscure Fanboy Rant of Rage: Secret Identities

Obscure Fanboy Rant of Rage Secret Identities As a comic book fan, I often find myself asking how most superheroes keep their identities secret. Some of them are clever, sure, but others completely lack imagination. Now, you might ask yourself why they keep secret identities. It's simple. Very few superheroes have the will power to fight crime 24/7. Imagine stopping for groceries, only to be attacked by legions of fans and the wannabe supervillain who works in the produce aisle. Nobody needs that. I'll start with the most obvious superhero. Superman. The first thing you'll notice is that Superman's entire disguise is a pair of glasses. Obviously, you wouldn't expect some guy named Guido from Jersey to know who the hell Clark Kent is. Not only is Clark's regular public exposure a semi-daily newspaper biline, but he's a freaking low-profile reporter. Lois Kent is the one who gets all the front page crap about terrorists and political scandals. Clark writes the reports about finds in the scientific community, the local bakery, and the elementary school running out of chalk. I'm more upset that Lois had to be told they were the same man. I mean, shit. I got my first pair of glasses when I was 16, but everybody recognized me when I showed up at school the next day. Top investigative reporter, indeed. Next comes that jerk Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man. At first, you'd think Peter had the perfect disguise. You can't even see his skintone beneath his mask. And who'd ever suspect Peter Parker? He's a high school teacher! But how many times must Spider-Man make out with Mary-Jane Parker before people catch on? "Hm. Peter doesn't seem to mind that a masked vigilante gets to second base with his wife on a regular basis." I'll give Aunt May her credit, though. She knew what Peter was doing the whole time. Up until a year or so ago, the X-Men's identities were secret. I know, I'm surprised, too. But no one knew Cyclops was really Scott Summers, Phoenix was really Jean Grey-Summers, or Professor X. was Charles Xavier. As far as anyone knew, Xavier was a human who knew a hell of a lot about mutants, and ran a private school in Weschester. How nobody recognized his students is beyond me, but what can you do? Recently, while under the possession of his evil twin sister, Professor X "came out the closet," as it were, about he being the leader of the X-Men, and his school haboring mutants. He shortly abandoned the school altogether, and moved to Genosha to start one of his "Magneto and I are still friends" phases. The current Batgirl, Cassandra Cain, totally screwed herself over. She grew up without an identity-- no birth records, no first name until ex-Batgirl Barbara Gordon started calling her Cassandra. Batman made her the new Batgirl, and even gave her a new suit. Babs Gordon was working on forging a fake identity for her, until Cass made the huge mistake of going out and stopping a crime in borad daylight without so much as putting on a mask. What's worse, is that she was toppling a government conspiracy, and they got her face on file. So now Batgirl can't even go out in public mask-less, because she blew an identity she didn't even have yet. Way to go, bitch. But what do I know? The Fantastic 4 go out in public all the time, and nobody recognizes them until they see Ben "The Thing" Grimm. And let's be honest-- Sue keeps him invisible whenever they go to Starbucks. Much Love

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