Good Hand Bad Hand SecondSecretIdentity?

im just wondering: can anyone think of an example of a story where a superhero has two identities, one as a hero and one as a villain? Or a hero who is also secretly a villain?

I can think of a few where a hero temporarily adopts a villinous disguise, or where a villain tries to pass himself off as a hero, but are there any characters who actually maintain both identities? would be a cool thing to write about, yea?

I don't think I have ever seen it.

It is an interesting concept but it would be very hard to write. How do you define the personality and motivations for a person that is driven consistently to both heroic and villainous acts. You might find something under Split Personality but I would have trouble getting into a character that woke up in the morning and had to decide if they were putting on the hero suit or the villain suit for that day.

What might work better is if a character had an Ideal Hero identity and an Anti-Hero identity. Then they could walk around in the daytime being the public's golden boy pulling people out of burning houses and getting kittens out of trees. Then at night they could change costumes to beat the stuffing out of criminals and terrify the villains of the city.

I've only seen cases where the villain is also secretly a civilian friend of the hero, but that's not quite the same thing.

The Amazing Antagonists has a protagonist who is a villain by night and works in a womens shelter by day, and also frequently dontes her ill gotten gains to the charity, which is close, but not the same.

The way I see it, theres 3 possible ways to write this:

1. Villain With Good Pulblicity, they're actually evil, they just want to be admired as a hero.
2. Anti-hero/Anti-villain, a Chaotic Neutral-type character, like Deadpool or Jack Sparrow, is a villain or hero as they feel that day
3. Hero/Anti-hero, a Pragmatic Hero or Unscrupulous Hero uses a villanious identity to do what their hero identity cant. such as killing villains/overthrowing dictators/stealing from the rich to feed the poor.

The third version sounds the most interesting to me. If I cant find one i might have to write one myself. I am planning a superhero book soon, when i finish my sci-fi novel.

edited 24th Mar '15 11:20:15 AM by PistolsAtDawn

Well, you could make the hero a prankster and their alternate personality a Harmless Villain who pokes the poodle.

Alternatively, you could have a villain who has mostly reformed but keeps up the evil facade for whatever reason while secretly doing good deeds under an alternate identity.

Isn't the "robs from the rich, gives to the poor" thing covered under Just Like Robin Hood?

edited 24th Mar '15 1:33:03 PM by Fighteer

The OP sort of reminds me of two Marvel comics characters:

First, there's a Spider-Man villain called Mr. Negative. Negative has/had this civilian identity, Martin Li, who is this wealthy philanthropist who is saintly and has healing powers. The Mr. Negative identity is a crime lord who does bad things and has corrupting powers. There's this sort of Yin Yang thing where for every good deed Martin Li does, Mr. Negative does a bad deed. Initially, the two personalities didn't know about each other, but now they do. It also turns out that the original guy was this Triad slaver/illegal immigrant smuggler who stole the identity of one of his "cargo" who had died. He ended up getting experimented on, and so basically the evil identity is the real one.

Additionally, Marvel has this Superman equivalent/parody called the Sentry, and he's introduced as being in opposition to this Eldritch Abomination called the Void. Turns out, he is the Void. And it's also the case that the Sentry isn't really a real identity either- he was originally this low ranking employee who was an addict and drank some weird chemicals for a buzz. There's also some weird Dr. Manhattan like stuff to the effect of the Void creating the guy so in turn he could become the Sentry.