In my discussion of the story "The Day Supergirl Revealed Herself!, which appeared in Action Comics #265 (June 1960), in which Supergirl inadvertently revealed her existence to the people of Smallville, I criticized Superman's resoluton to the issue as follows:
"Superman finds an amnesia gas that he made for the War Department as Superboy. (Superboy got up to all sorts of stuff, didn’t he?) He unleashes the gas on Smallville, lacing it with Green K so it will affect Supergirl. While the gas does its work, Superman edits the last few days’ copies of the Smallville Gazette to omit all mention of Supergirl, and then replaces all the copies in town. Sure hope that he didn’t miss any and that no tourist passing through bought a copy and took it out of town and that no one outside of Smallville heard about a Supergirl appearing in Superboy’s old home town (which would be huge news) and that no one in Smallville happened to call Cousin Maggie up in Collinsport or Cousin Mary-Anne over in Winfield or whoever about it. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think that Superman’s plan would have worked."
Now, one may perhaps forgive Jerry Siegel for this somewhat implausible solution, since he was writing with an audience of ten year-olds in mind, with no reasonable expectation that his work would be dissected mercilessly over six decades later by a horrifying, cynical old fart with too much time on his hands, i.e., me.
However, I have come across a similarly implausible and poorly-conceived resolution to a situation in X-Men #25 (October 2023), written by one Gerry Duggan, with whose oeuvre I am unfamiliar. To set the scene, the character of Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), an Inhuman, was recently "killed off" , only to be "resurrected" and revealed to be an Inhuman/Mutant hybrid shortly prior to the events of this year's Hellfire Gala at which time Emma Frost promised to alter her family's memories so that they no longer remember her "death". Later, the climactic events of said Gala make it imperative that this be done.
So, in X-Men #25, Frostie takes Kamala home under cover of darkness. Frostie puts the 'suasion on Kamala's parents and older brother, and informs the young Inhumutant that, and I quote:
"In a moment, your family will wake up and believe that you have been on a school trip to Washington, D.C. All traumatic memories of your death have been erased. This afternoon, I visited the New York coroner's office. I'll cut to the end: Nodody has any recollection of you dying. there will be no death certificate."
OK, so what about the rest of her family? What about her brother's wife? What about Cousin Inaya in Islamabad? What about Great-Uncle Awani over in Smallville who's still traumatized by the fact that he's the only who remembers Supergirl visiting his town in June of 1960? What about all of her friends and relatives that attended the funeral, and the Imam who conducted the funeral, and all the mosque employees? ("Why do we have this check from Pa Khan for a funeral that none of us remembers?) What about all of the super-heroes that knew about her death? I bet about a bunch of super-villains heard about it, too!
For that matter, what about the general public? The death of a super-hero - especially one who had been an Avenger - would be big news. It would have appeared in newspapers, and in television, radio and on-line reports worldwide. You'd need Time Lord level technology at least to pull that off, and I'm not sure that the Doctor themself could do it.
Oh, and the "school trip" story? Even if Kamala can bluff her way past her parents, that's gonna last until Ma or Pa Khan runs into one of Kamala's schoolmates and ask them how they enjoyed the trip, or maybe runs into the kids' parents at the Stop & Shop or Starbucks and ask them how their kids enjoyed the trip.
I could go on, but I feel that this cover story would break down very quickly. I think that this is down to sloppy writing. If nothing else, Duggan should be aware that his readership includes a much larger number of horrifying old farts and a much smaller number of ten year-olds than Siegel's did. To be fair, I'm sure that Marvel said to him, "This is what we need you to do with Ms. Marvel", and he did his best with it, considering that he had three pages out of a comic that was desperately trying to set up the new status quo for Marvel's mutant books to do it in.
Personally, I think that the whole "Death of Ms. Marvel" thing was a mistake. No one took it seriously (Was there a comics fan alive who thought that they were going to keep her "dead"? Did anyone think that it wasn't a cynical ploy to boost sales?) and it created the unnecessary complication of havong to undo her "death" a month later! New Rule: If you're going to "kill" a character, they have to stay "dead" for at least five "real-world" years.)
I'm guessing that Marvel wanted her "reborn" as a mutant so that they had an excuse to bring her powers more into lime with the way that they're depicted in her live-action show, and possibly to distance her character from the failstank of the Inhumans' TV show, but it could have been handled much better. Why not just have Charlie-Boy show up and tell her something like "I recently upgraded my Mutant Detector Hat and it's telling me that you're a mutant, which it didn't pick up on before because your Inhuman genes were jamming your mutant genes somehow, even though that's scientific nonsense. We'd love to have you join the X-Men, but I realize that this is a big decision, so why don't you come to our special annual Giant Mutant Party That Always Ends Disastrously But Might Not This Year so you can see what being an X-Man is like?"
Bang! Kamala's a mutant, and she's present at the Hellfire Gala, and you can have Frostie drop her off at home that night, and if any mind-wiping needs to be done, Frostie can just make her family believe that Kamala was up in her room studying all night and that they just had no occasion to speak to her for the last few hours. Nice and simple, and more believable.
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For that matter, what about the general public? The death of a super-hero - especially one who had been an Avenger - would be big news. It would have appeared in newspapers, and in television, radio and on-line reports worldwide.
True, but aren't the general public used to heroes dying and coming back by now?
"Oh my God - the Thing is dead!"
"Yeah, maybe it'll take a couple months for him to be back to life. Anyhow, wasn't that in the Daily Bugle? I wouldn't use that rag to wrap fish in."
"Gee, that's Mr. McCafferty of McCafferty's Fish Market - he'd know!"
If I lived in the DCU or MU, I'd sue every time a dead hero returned - "Marvel Girl is alive again but what about my Aunt Estelle, the ER nurse? Why doesn't she deserve to come back?"
Sure, but it would still be something that would be remembered. Also, Kamala Khan coming back from the dead at about the same time might just give away her secret identity.
No argument there! And I'll bet she has too many family and acquaintences to just brush off her actual DEATH. Family that didn't live with her, school friends (as you noted), and perhaps most especially - her villains would probably notice.
Back in Tales of Suspense #95 (Nov 1967), Captain America revealed his secret identity to the world. In the Steranko issues of Captain America, Cap faked his own death in such a way that indicated "Steve Rogers" was a false identity. At the conclusion of that adventure (#113), Steve Rogers memorably reveals, "Captain America has a SECRET IDENTITY once more!" In Avengers #106-108, Steve Englehart revealed how, with the help of the Space Phantom, that plan succeeded. The explanation wasn't perfect, but certainly more plausible that the "Steve Rogers was a false identity" ploy.
A while ago, In the current DCU, Superman revealed his identity to the world. More recently (Action Comics #1050, Feb 2023) Lex Luthor decided, for reasons of his own we need not go into here, that Superman needs a secret identity. So he constructed a device which prevents people (except Superman's personal friends, due to writer's fiat) from retaining the knowledge that Clark Kent is Superman. If anyone learns it now, the knowledge could kill them. Here's how it works. Perry White visits the Kents in Smallville for a family gathering and they exchange pleasantries.
MARTHA: Perry White. Thank you for traveling so far.
PERRY: Thank you for inviting me for dinner, Martha. I've missed my best reporters. So good to see you again, Jonathan!
JONATHAN: Perry! Have you met Jay Nakamura?
PERRY: Uh, no. But of course I know who you are. Everyone knows who you are. You and Superman--the younger Superman--you're... I'm sorry. Why are you here?
JAY: What? Why wouldn't I be--
SUPERMAN (arrives with his son): Sorry we're late.[Perry is nonplussed.] It's so good to see you, Mr. White. Thank you for coming so far.
PERRY: Superman? I don't... what are you doing here?
LOIS: Clark. Something's wrong.
PERRY: Where...? Where is Clark?
SUPERMAN: Perry. It's me. It's Clark. I'm right here.
PERRY: Cla...rk... Kent. [collapses]
I never read that Luthor story, but what I heard about it made no sense. Every media outlet on Earth would have covered the story of Superman going public with his secret ID Are people all over the world constantly getting sick every time they go back and read or watch those old stories?
Presumably. After the first few times, I imagine they'd subconsciously avoid them.
It's funny. I can accept the impossible stuff in comics way more easily than I can accept when the mundane stuff doesn't make sense to me.
Let's blame it on a Green Lantern. Or on an amnesium meteor that burned up in Earth's atmosphere and affected everyone.
What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think that Superman’s plan would have worked.
Nor would it have worked when he tried a similar stunt in Justice League of America # 19 (May, 1963), at the end of "The Super-Exiles of Earth".
For those unfamiliar with the story, the members of the Justice League are forced to reveal their secret identities to each other in order to combat an evil construct of the JLA created by Doctor Destiny. In the effort, the heroes' civilian ID's are exposed to the public.
After the evil JLA and Dr. Destiny are defeated, Superman informs his fellow members that will use the amnesium kept in his Fortress to remove the knowledge of their secret identities from each other and from the rest of the world.
Several years ago, in a review I wrote of "The Super-Exiles of Earth", I expressed problems with the Man of Steel's plan:
The big rub came at the end, when Superman states that he will use the amnesium from his Fortress to remove the knowledge of their secret identities from his fellow members and the rest of the world.
I don’t have a problem with the JLAers erasing their mutual knowledge of their secret identities from their minds---there’s no justifiable reason why they should share that information---and obviously, we can’t have the general public knowing who they are when they go home and hang up their capes and masks. But there were some problems with the Man of Steel’s proposed solution.
It sounded kind of sloppy. Yeah, I know he’s Superman and all, but it struck me that using amnesium to erase memories lacked a certain . . . precision. It would be difficult for even Superman to be so exact in a global application of the stuff that he could remove just the public’s awareness of their identities and not of other things. And what about the folks who already knew a hero’s secret ID with his blessing, such as Alfred or Pieface? And, theoretically, Pete Ross should have forgotten that he knew Superman was Clark Kent.
Green Lantern’s power ring would have done the job much more handily. All G.L. would have had to do was order the ring to affect only those people who learnt their identities in the last twenty-four hours.
But there’s another wrinkle. The story doesn’t specify exactly how much time had elapsed between their defeat of their evil super-selves and the wrap-up in the secret sanctuary. But certainly there was enough time---at least, the time it took them to go Dr. Destiny’s jail cell and have it out with him---for the newspapers and radio and television to report the revelation of their secret identities.
Sure, Superman or Green Lantern could wipe out the public’s memories of their identities, but what were they going to do about all of the special editions of the Daily Planet with the headline “SUPERMAN IS CLARK KENT!”? Or all of the video tapes of television news broadcasts announcing, “This just in---the Green Lantern is actually famed test pilot Hal Jordan . . . .”