That mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent seldom gets any applause. Superman 197, a 1967 80-page Giant, was the rare exception. So we tend to forget how much of Superman’s power — his fantasy power, not his fictional power — comes from his secret identity.
Superman feigns timidity, cowardice, and uncertainty as Kent in an emotional disguise that’s doubly necessary because his physical disguise is so slight. So Kent is, in a way, the repository for Superman’s human failings.
There’s a deeper psychological resonance in Kent as well. He’s the Everyman in Superman. He’s us.
Superman is often criticized for silliness because his friends would certainly see through his secret identity. But that misses the point, which is psychological, not practical.
The fact that nobody knew who Clark Kent was — particularly those closest to him — added greatly to the fantasy kick of the character.
Adults often feel that they are underrated and unappreciated by those around them, and children — still uncertain about their own identity — experience that feeling even more intensely. Clark Kent was our revenge and our redemption. If they only knew…
Of course, the fantasy of being the Special One has its downside — it’s inherently narcissistic, after all. But it can also provide emotional compensation in a harsh and/or indifferent world. Somewhere beneath every superhero story, we’ll find an underlying premise — the reassuring idea that one person can make a difference.
“The truth may be that Kent existed not for the purposes of the story but for the reader,” wrote cartoonist Jules Feiffer in The Great Comic Book Heroes, his seminal hardcover retrospective on superheroes published in 1965.
“His fake identity was our real one. That’s why we loved him so. For if that wasn’t really us if there were no Clark Kents, only lots of glasses and cheap suits which, when removed, revealed all of us in our true identities — what a hell of an improved world it would have been!”
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