Celebrated comic book writer Mark Millar believes Marvel and DC Comics have made a mistake getting rid of secret identities. The concept of the secret identity used to lie at the heart of superhero comics, but it seems to have gone out of fashion of late.

On the big screen, precious few superheroes seem to bother with secret identities any more. That’s especially the case in the MCU, where Tony Stark outed himself as Iron Man, Captain America doesn’t really care about trying to have a civilian life, and Thor can’t exactly hang up the hammer and pretend he isn’t the God of Thunder. Even Spider-Man’s secret identity was revealed in Spider-Man: Far From Home’s post-credits scene. And the comics are following suit, with Superman telling the whole world that he is really Clark Kent.

Comic book writer Mark Millar was asked his opinion on this trend in John Siuntres’ World Balloon podcast, and he expressed quite a nuanced opinion. As he notes, the secret identity reveal is really a very clever stunt to get the world talking about Superman again; “Comics work best with a great little stunt out there,” he observes. Still, for all that’s the case, in his opinion superhero books are making a big mistake neglecting the secret identity.

It’s interesting to hear this view expressed by Millar, simply because he was responsible for a similar secret identity reveal in his classic Civil War miniseries. There, Iron Man held a press conference in which Spider-Man unmasked before the world. But it’s important to remember that Marvel already had some kind of reset in mind, which became the controversial “One More Day” arc. In fact, Spider-Man’s unmasking arguably set events in motion for that, given Peter was driven to rewrite history after Aunt May was shot in an attempt to get at her nephew.

“I do think from a storytelling point of view I’m a massive fan of secret identities. I think secret identities is the most important component of all superhero things. It’s one of Marvel’s mistakes of 2000 to get rid of the secret identity.

‘Secret identities’ is what the reader is and then they become the hero through reading the stories… Kids identify with the human and then get a chance to do these adventures. Something quite unique to superheroes, someone who pretends to be a coward or a dandy. It works when Bruce Wayne pretended to be a shallow, shallow person, the last person you’d believe to be Batman. And the same with Clark Kent, a guy who can crush a diamond, and yet chooses to spend eight hours a day sitting and typing and taking abuse and hiding behind a pair of glasses. That’s the mythology of it. A god choosing to become a person, and I love that…”

Millar makes an interesting point. In narrative terms, the secret identity serves several purposes. It keeps a hero’s life relatable, simply because they have to deal with the pressures and struggles of everyday life; Clark Kent can be made redundant, Peter Parker can struggle to pay the bills, Kamala Khan can be bewildered by her private life. Furthermore, it adds a degree of risk to a story, because the hero’s personal and private lives often come into conflict with one another. Villains who discover the secret identity become iconic and unforgettable, threatening the hero’s entire status quo because of their forbidden knowledge.

Of course, in the case of Superman, it’s entirely possible that writer Brian Bendis is well aware of this issue, that he’s planning a short-to-medium-term arc exploring the repercussions of Superman’s press conference, and that he’s already prepared an exit strategy. The same may be true for Marvel Studios, with Spider-Man: Homecoming 3 spinning out of Spider-Man: Far From Home’s post-credits scene. Only time will tell.

More: Superman Exposing His Identity Won’t Mean What Fans Think

Source: John Siuntres’ World Balloon podcast (via Bleeding Cool)