The double identity is a key element in a comic book superhero’s mythology and, this paper argues, in the representation of masculinity in superhero comics. The secret identity, which comprises a plain-clothed mundane identity and a costumed heroic identity, allows male adolescent and adult identities to be structured in relation to private and public identities, with the private linked to the adolescent, and the public to the adult. In other words, the private sphere represents all things that the teenager must leave behind in order to become a man, defined here in limited, heroic terms.
This raises the question of how the hero relates to the domestic, and what it means to be a hero at home, a hero with a family, a hero with a wife. It will be seen that the costumed form of the comic book superhero embodies a dominant masculinity which is identified in opposition to all things feminine, including the domestic. However, it will be argued that this apparent exclusion of the domestic can be reinterpreted as an exclusion from the domestic. The hero ultimately removes himself from the home because he cannot trust himself not to harm his family, given the violence that defines him as a man. For the sake of those he loves, the comic book hero exiles himself from the very worlds he has sworn to protect.