What if this IS my secret identity?

I'm told Superman has major issues with this, or at least his writers do.


Who's the real person, Kal-El whom dear Mom and Dad sent packing in a rocket from Krypton when he was a baby? Or is it Clark Kent, raised by dear Mom and Dad in Smallville who moved to Metropolis as an adult and works at the Daily Planet? And both ARE Superman -- up until the mid-80s this wasn't (again, as far as I've read or been told) such an issue, for Superman/Kal-El was the real person and Clark Kent was his secret identity.


Then came Crisis On Infinite Earths, DC Comics' golden anniversary housecleaning and after that the roles got reversed. Kal-El's who the man who's Superman really is, and Clark Kent's his secret identity. And I just confused myself writing that! Though I don't read comics as much now as I did growing up, it isn't AS hard to get caught up in the age of the Internet -- you can look up every plotline imaginable as well as see the critiques of them by longtime fans. Both can be disconcerting.


Now in Secret Identities (ISBN 9781632154408), the Image Comics seven-part story by Brian Joines, Jay Faerber, and Ilias Kyriazis we are presented with the Front Line, a team of super-powered heroes infiltrated by Crosswind whose benefactor wants to destroy them. And the heroes themselves, some have secret identities and some don't. One character, the speedster Rundown, has three of them. Another character, Vesuvius, is a walking mass of molten rock. Can't really hide that.


And isn't that the purpose of a secret identity? To hide something about you, to keep the ones who don't like you very much from coming after everyone you care about while you're "off duty" or even on duty somewhere else? That's my take on it, at least. And that would be the end of this post except that I don't want it to be. Got home last night with Totino's pizzas for the kids and I, and Martha already had one in the freezer.


The Disney Tsums Tsums (say "sume sumes", apparently only Disney has a brand of them right now) will stay home home from now on ... let me explain. The oval beetle-like toys that are made to stack on one another -- in fact, the name's derived from the Japanese word for stacking -- that I bought for the kids to share Saturday ... well, Jeffrey lost two of his in the van when I brought the kids home last night. And he and Sarah remembered where they put them and found them this morning!   


And that's my five paragraphs for the day and my sanity, David