10. Why The Code Names And Secret Identities?
DC ComicsRight, so bear with us here, because we do understand these...to a degree. The usual explanation given for superheroes living amongst people and keeping their alter egos a secret is so that they can live a normal life when they're not saving lives, and so that their loved ones won't become the targets of devious supervillains who want nothing more than to tie them up and leave them on a train track, except maybe the train is powered by a nuclear engine or something. We're about to call shenanigans on both of those explanations because, once you stop to think about them, they totally don't hold up. Okay, so the keeping loved ones safe thing? Very noble, and of course as somebody who's given their life to protecting innocent people, those closest to you are gonna be included in that. Except it demonstrably doesn't work. You can look at literally any superhero from the last 75 years and come up with scores of examples of their friends, lovers and relatives getting kidnapped, beaten or straight up murdered by bad guys. Spider-Man's got, like, a dozen girlfriends and associates who've been killed off by the Green Goblin alone. So it's a nice idea that you want to keep them safe, but that's one of those good intentions the road to Hell is paved with. Along with the bones of Gwen Stacy. Then there's the "living a normal life". Yeah, you're not living a normal life at all. Superman originally chose to live as Clark Kent because the dude's an alien, and his parents insisted that he wouldn't care about saving puny humans if he didn't live amongst them for a while and sympathise with them. That's his excuse. What's Bruce Wayne gaining by pretending he isn't Batman, though, other than wasting time he could be spending eradicating crime, and kidding himself he's not a total nutjob?