Sarcastic Confession / Comic Books

Sarcastic Confessions in Comic Books.

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• Batman, as Bruce Wayne, was once called for Jury Duty and stated that he would not be a suitable juror because he was Batman, and helped apprehend the criminal. No one believed him, because everyone knows Bruce Wayne is a fop and an utter dope. It's not exactly a straight version of the trope, as Bruce actually isn't being sarcastic (he later told Robin that, since he was under oath, he had no choice but to admit that he was Batman), but the overall effect of his secret identity means that the response is more or less the same.
• From a Big Top story arc, where Dusty has been secretly replaced by a robot duplicate:
  Dustybot: Pete. Tell me a secret, please.
  Pete: What? What's with you? You've been acting really weird. Why do you want to hear secrets?
  Dustybot: It is my primary objective. I have been programmed for intelligence collection.
  Pete: Oh, ha ha. Seriously, what's up?
  Dustybot: I'm just needy. Hold me, human.
• Summed up neatly in Darkhawk with the line, "The best way to keep a good secret is to tell everybody—then nobody believes you."
• The True Crime graphic novel Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done recounts how Ed would openly tell neighbours about all the shrunken heads and Genuine Human Hide furniture he had in his house, or confess to a local murder. The comic leaves it ambiguous whether it was really this trope or whether Ed was simply really bad at keeping secrets, but the end result is more or less the same, with everyone else in town just assuming he's a harmless Cloudcuckoolander with a morbid sense of humour.
• Done strangely twice by Donald Duck in Double Duck:
  • The first time, tired of lying to her, he admits to Daisy he's a spy. Daisy, who previously fell for Donald's immense bullshit, believes it's a joke.
  • The second time Daisy has found out that Donald is a spy, and is asking him if he has other secrets. He tells her he's also Paperinik, Duckburg's own superhero/vigilante. She believes him (not that it matters, given she gets her memory wiped of the whole adventure soon after). The other agents don't.
• Cormor from The Dungeon Series is an automaton and therefore cannot lie. At the beginning of his life, it gets him into all sort of trouble. After a few centuries, he's gotten good enough at Sarcastic Confession to build a whole life as an undercover automaton.
• In Supergirl/Batgirl story Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, Barbara Gordon is signing books, and a customer asks how she gets so many details:
  Customer: Ms. Gordon — your books are so real! How do you get so many details?
  Barbara: I'm secretly Batgirl.
  Customer: No, really!
  [laughs]
• The Flash:
  • The Trickster does this in the prelude to Blue Devil.
    Security Guard: Hiya, Mr. Jesse! What brings you here? I heard you was working over at Associated Pictures!
    Trickster: That's right, Fred... I'm just here to steal the Blue Devil costume!
    Security Guard: Ha ha! Always with the jokes!
  • Barry Allen does this in a classic Silver Age Flash comic. (This one, if you're curious.) When Iris wonders aloud about the timing of Barry's absences, he just casually tells her she's right: "One and one still makes one! I'm the Flash!" Naturally, this flippant claim convinces Iris he's not.
• Hitman: Tommy Monaghan and his friend Nat the Hat are moving boxes of ammunition into his apartment when a neighbor asks what's in them. He tells her that they're full of guns and ammo, because he's a hitman, and he also has telepathy and x-ray vision. All true, but so absurd she doesn't believe him, and they end up dating. Sometime later, a hit goes bad and he turns up on her doorstep, shot up and covered in blood... She does not take this well.
• In an issue of Justice League of America, white Martians start controlling the minds of people in an attempt to ruin the lives of the Justice League. They force Dick Grayson to cut the Bat-Rope while Batman is dangling from it, send an angry mob after Jimmy Olsen, etc. One of their tricks is to briefly take control of Lois Lane while she and Clark are at the Daily Planet and have her rip open Clark's suit and expose him as Superman. Immediately afterward, she comes to her senses and tries to fix it via this trope. With Clark's super-speedy help, she is able to make it look like a prank by ripping open an intern's suit as well, revealing that he suddenly has a Batman shirt underneath. However, when she attempts to continue the gag by ripping open her own shirt and exposing herself as Wonder Woman Clark isn't fast enough and she ends up just... exposing herself.
• Marvel 1602:
  • The Grand Inquisitor's messenger Petros is asked by King James of Scotland how he manages to carry a message from there to Spain and back in only a few days. His response? "I ran very fast, sir." Naturally, King James remarks on how funny he is.
  • Subverted when an inquisitor investigating the witchbreed insiders takes his statement at face value to use it as a confession.
• The Punisher 2099:
  • A police department shrink strongly suspects that Jake Gallows is the Punisher (spoiler: he is) and barges into his home for a surprise visit/inspection/psych evaluation. When she starts questioning him, Jake confesses that he's the Punisher, and he has a bunch of criminals locked up in his basement, and he's just been down there beating one of them half to death for kicks. He even offers to show her the Punisher costume he keeps in the bedroom. Of course, she brushes all this off as misplaced anger over the death of his family. Little did she know that every word of it was true.
  • Subverted later when he feels attracted to her and feels bad for lying to her, so he actually confesses to being The Punisher. She doesn't believe him at first and thinks he's being sarcastic like the first time. He then proceeds to prove it.
• This was how the Metans operated in Ditko's version of Shade, the Changing Man: their outpost on Earth was disguised as a conspiracy theory insisting Metans were among us.
• Spider-Man:
  • In an early issue, Spidey is injured in battle with the Vulture and spends the rest of the issue with his arm in a sling, telling people he hurt it in P.E. Betty refuses to believe this is the case and asks him for the truth:
    Peter: It happened when I was fighting the Vulture in mid-air for dear life.
    Betty: Oh well. Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.
  • In another issue, Mary Jane's Aunt Anna confronts her with the evidence that Peter is constantly sneaking off at all hours and meeting with strange people, so obviously he's having an affair. MJ sarcastically explains that the real reason he does that stuff is that he's Spider-Man.
  • In a strip from the newspaper comic, Jameson demands to know how Peter always gets such good photos of Spider-Man. Peter comes out and says it's because he is Spider-Man, and Jameson kicks him out of the office complaining that he can "never get a straight answer out of Parker".
  • In yet another issue, this is an essential part of the villain's plan. The assassin, the Foreigner, promises Spidey that he'll turn himself in if the hero simply hears him out and helps him. Later, he keeps his word, telling the police that he's a murderer. However, as he expected, the cops believe he's a just a crackpot, and he's quickly released. (This is a brilliant move on the Foreigner's part, seeing as he's such a good assassin, only a select few people even know who he is, and there are almost no police files on him. The authorities simply don't know about him.)
• Spider-Man 2099:
  • Soon after Miguel gets his powers, his brother Gabriel bursts in his house looking for answers, and their exchange leads to this:
    Gabriel: Why are you mumbling?
    Miguel: Because I've grown fangs and if I open my mouth too wide you'll see them.
    Gabriel: [deadpan] Ha ha, very funny.
  • A Running Gag in the revival is that whenever Miguel displays future knowledge or lacks knowledge of the present, he simply tells people that he's a time traveller, they assume he's joking, and all is well.
  • Actually, this is a constant in Peter David and his works. Almost any of his comics will have at least a few scenes of a character explaining a bizarre event or action with the utter truth only to not be believed one bit.
• Subverted in Spider-Woman, a police officer asks Jessica what her Skrull-detecting watch is. She tells him it's a watch, but he doesn't believe her. So she tells him it's an alien detector. To her surprise, he nods and asks her how it works. After all, there's a dead alien in the morgue, and Spider-Woman put it there, so that makes sense.

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