I'm at work and so can't watch youtube.

Can I assume that's "Bicycle Repair Man" from the 'MP' reference?

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

Yes. (yes you can assume it, and yes, it is.)

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Re: secret identities, Meteor Man didn't do a good job of staying secret and his friends and family were endangered because of it. That sounds like a fairly realistic idea of what would realistically happen if a "real" superhero showed up.

Personally, I'd wear a full-head helmet, a bulky costume, cover every inch of skin, use a voice distorter and put lifts in my shoes. And fly home by a different route every night. Can't be too careful these days.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Secret identities are a plot contrivance. A SuperHero like Superman doesn't need one - in fact it takes time away from his real job.

Only if he's willing to totally give up having a normal life, give up all contact with family and friends*, and be Superman 24/7. Everytime he's been shown doing that, he's had a meltdown. Basically, he's dweeby, nerdy Clark, who sometimes goes out and puts on an act while helping people. But it's not his whole life.

*And even that wouldn't necessarily protect them. Superman has a lot of enemies, many of them very intelligent and with vast resources, and if the writers didn't keep throwing plot devices in their paths to prevent them from finding out the truth everyone Clark ever knew would need to be in a permanent witness protection program.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Let's not forget the inevitable discrimination. We humans, as Stephen King puts it in Danse Macabre, have been trained to shun the mutant. And the X-Men definitely fit that description.

I do agree that the only way to keep Superman's loved ones safe is either taking them to the Fortress and leaving them there or maintaining a secret identity.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Is there a character, place, or other thing named "Utra" in some comic book somewhere?

I don't believe society would be anywhere near as hostile to superpowered people as the comic books tend to assume... although exposure to the concept ahead of time through comic books for decades could be what's acclimated people to the idea enough for me to say that!

oh well, still, a funny movie

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There is no dark side of the moon really, as a matter of fact it's all dark - Pink Floyd, The Dark Side Of The Moon

But how can Superman (in his secret identity) live with himself? Sitting around with friends and family, having a brewski, while hundreds more people die. I think this is a BIG problem for SuperHeroes with virtually unlimited powers - how can they relax for even a moment? If they need to sleep, fine - if not, then it is a 24/7 job.

And he surely doesn't need to waste his time going to a job like a newspaper reporter. With super hearing and x-ray vision does he really need to be sitting in an office to know what emergencies are happening? His secret identity could be a homeless person.

Like I said, a secret identity is a plot contrivance. Don't get me wrong, it makes the story much more interesting but is it necessary? Not for Superman.

Ultraman

As for the other, I think the get-the-mutant mindset would be very common. Anyone "better" than "us" will be seen a threat to at least part of the population. Heck, even just being different is cause for violence with some people. Take that same attitude and direct it at a group that can turn into living flame, throw ice bolts, or become invulnerable to all normal weapons at will, and I think you'd end up with a lot more followers. Then when you consider that not every person with these abilities will be the altruistic comic hero and it causes more of a problem.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

They've covered that. Several times. Every time he's tried being "just Superman", he's had a nervous breakdown, eventually re-realizing each time that he can't prevent every disaster, can't save everyone. It's been touched on many times for nearly all versions of Superman; he needs to be Clark, a deep phychological need.

Put yourself in his cape:

You're growing up in some conservative little cowtown where everybody knows everybody. As a kid, you start to develop some weird powers, but your parents immediately get scared and tell you to never tell anybody, because they'd drag you off to a lab somewhere, and you'd never see them again.

So now you're scared, and you get used to hiding these powers. As you grow up, your powers increase, so you try to act as "normal" as you can, and maybe even go a little further into acting "wimpy" or "clumsy" just to prevent suspicion. Better to be thought a regular old Nerd than an inhuman freak. When your X-Ray vision developed, you got in the habit of squinting and staring around the room, so now you need to get glasses to cover that up. And at some point you've also discovered that you are an actual alien, that you're not even the same species as everyone you've ever known and loved, including your own parents. Imagine how traumatizing that would be. And you still can't tell anyone, because it would make you an outcast and hurt your poor parents.

But there's people who need help, and you can do something about it. So you come up with an idea. You'll wear a disguise, pretend to be someone else, then you can help people openly. But if you wear a mask, folks will go out of their way to find out who's behind it. So, as "Superman", you show your face to everyone, act like there's no secret at all. And totally change your voice, stance, hair, expressions, etc. As Clark, people think you're a nobody. So who would suspect? Maybe someone even comments on the physical resemblance, and laughs it off. Lots of people kind of look like someone famous, right? Thus your lifelong compulsion to hide your alien nature is unthreatened.

And thus, the secret identity. Yes, it is a plot contrivance, but not an entirely unbelieveable one.

There have been a number of issues-- going back to the 60's, IIRC --where he says that he does "almost as much good" as a professional beans-spiller as he does stopping meteors.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I said "Utra", not "Ultra". "Utra" is what's in this thread's title.

Hey, I never noticed!

I guess Utra-geeky is the next level above Ultra-geeky. Then would come Ura-geeky, Ua-geeky and finally U-geeky.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

From the Superman Animated Series

Lois Lane: I'm confused, Kent. See, I've lived in Metropolis most of my life and I can't figure out how some yokel from Smallville is suddenly getting every hot story in town.

Clark Kent: Well, Lois, the truth is I'm actually Superman in disguise, and I only pretend to be a journalist in order to hear about disasters as they happen and then squeeze you out of the byline.

Lois Lane: You're a sick man, Kent.

__________________
Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

Superman having a secret identity causes a problem: He has to remove his clothes to expose his costume. This is problematic as shown by this old Bill Cosby routine:

(Superman picks up a crime with his super-hearing and is busy changing clothes in the phone booth when a cop walks up and knocks on the door)

COP: What are you doing in the phone booth?
SUPERMAN: I'm changing clothes officer.
COP: Right. (Whistles to his partner) Bring the paddywagon over here!
SUPERMAN: Really officer. I'm Superman.
COP: You better come out of that booth!
SUPERMAN: No. Really. I am Superman. Can't you see this red "S" on my chest?
COP: I'm gonna give you a red "S" and a black eye if you don't come out of that phone booth!

That was only a problem for the Golden Age Superman. By the Silver Age, he was fast enough to change in a microsecond, and had "super-ventriloquism" to distract Lois with to boot!

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Of course, Magneto can manipulate any metal, and Superman is the Man of Steel, so...

[I kid]

Well, Conan could beat the crap out of Magneto and Superman - with one arm tied behind his back. So there!