I don’t have a secret identity. I went with more of the Tony Stark approach.
Only without the money.
Late last year, after Into the Spider-Verse came out, a lot of artists started making their own “spider-sonas” — so of course I couldn’t help making Spider-Mand into a real character!
At some point schoolyard bullies tried picking on me because my name starts with “man,” but it was never quite the insult they thought it was to intentionally misspell it as “manly” or something. It didn’t bother me, and just led to a lifetime of cracking my own dumb jokes about my name. Just last week at work I was called a “one-man shop” for web development, and I got to quip “one-Mandy shop” and make an entire conference room groan. It’s great!
In this case, I was proud of casually mentioning my superhero alter-ego with such a straight face that I think my coworker genuinely wondered for a bit, there.