Much hilarity (for some values of hilarity, anyway) has been made about how flimsy a shield against discovery Clark Kent’s glasses are, but there’s a bigger question at play: Was the secret identity ever something that could work? Modern stories only touch on the concept as a plot point, and many of them overtly mock the idea that a superhero could keep their secrets in a modern age of cell phone cameras and NSA surveillance. Even Justice League Unlimited, a show that embraced many traditions of comic-book storytelling, highly implied that Amanda Waller (and by extension, the government) knew exactly who was under the cowl of The Batman, leading to today’s alter-egotistical query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) is, however, still infuriated by TV Barry Allen seemingly telling every person in Central City in alphabetical order, asking: Does the secret identity matter anymore?
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It only matters if writers have patience and vision to make it matter, which means it doesn’t matter at all in modern comics.