10 Legal Problems Superheroes Don't Like To Talk About

10. Your Secret Identity May Be More Trouble Than It’s Worth

There are two ways that a ‘secret identity’ works, if you’re a hero or villain trying to keep your private life separate from your more colourful escapades, and it depends which comes first.

People who adopt a super-identity later on in life will have been born and raised in the system: they’ll have genuine birth certificates, social security designations etc. For them, the issue will always be the separation of church and state: constantly policing how their masked activities impinge upon their personal lives.

That mask will have no legal weight, so no additional legal documentation will be necessary to adopt it… but it carries its own share of problems. Many hi-tech solutions to gaining super powers will require licences to operate, and certain power sources may simply be illegal. There’s a paper trail that comes with obtaining the parts and fuel for these things, and more and more, all of this paperwork is stored digitally. Even low tech heroes will need to replace things like costumes and weapons on a regular basis.

When your super-identity is your default and you’ve adopted a civilian identity to blend in or hide, you’ll need all the documentation that goes into maintaining that identity in the 21st century. The more you want this new ‘person’ to take on a normal role in society, the more entrenched and official this fake documentation needs to be.

It’s practically impossible these days to undertake significant transactions without identification and without leaving that ubiquitous paper trail. Renting an apartment, opening a bank account, obtaining insurance - even something as simple as getting a job is fraught with problems.

In this day and age, fake identities will usually be unable to withstand serious scrutiny. And the more bulletproof your fake identity is, the more laws you’ll have had to break - or have broken for you - to obtain it.

Aside from the moral/ethical issues in committing a felony, breaking the law creates a different kind of paper trail. Everyone always cites the example of Al Capone, who wasn’t indicted over any of his appalling criminal activities as a racketeer, but simply over failure to pay tax. And if you need to move money around to fund or facilitate your super-identity, that creates a trail of its own, and may violate money laundering laws.

Above all, maintaining the necessary legal fictions in this day and age pretty much requires you to be, or employ, a super-hacker just to keep your head above water, with all the ongoing felonies that go along with that.