The Secret Unrevealed

Well, as expected, the status quo of Superman secretly being Clark Kent was restored in the most recent issue of Action Comics. 

What was not expected is that the person responsible for putting this particular genie back in a bottle was Lex Luthor.

And even more not expected was Luthor's motivation for doing so: that Superman is more effective when he can take time away from being Superman and mingle with shoulder to shoulder with humanity as mild mannered Clark Kent. 

Well, not quite. Luthor thinks Superman is more effective if he is regarded as something above humanity, a god even.  To that end, public knowledge that Clark Kent is Superman has to go.

The machinations for Luthor's restoration of Clark Kent as Superman's secret identity were a bit of a mishmash of stuff from Superman lore, a combination of alien tech from Warworld and Manchester Black's mental powers.  

The restoration of a secret identity for both people called Superman (Clark Kent and his son Jon) kind of calls attention to why it was a bad idea for Superman to out himself as Clark Kent in the first place.  

Bruce Wayne points out once unanticipated impact for the public revelation of his duo identity, the impact on his wife Lois.

Brian Michael Bendis' reasoning for why Superman would seek to discard his duo identity as a secret made a sort of sense. For a hero fighting for "truth, justice and a better tomorrow", lying to the world about who you really are seems like an affront to the first word of that motto. 

But as noble a sentiment as that is, there are practical considerations of having some kind of private life away from the public.  

Lois, Jon and even Clark deserve a life beyond that of Superman.  

OK, so Luthor's fix to restore Superman's secret identity may be a bit of a Rube Goldberg contraption but at least it wasn't just a handwave with a cosmic reset in the aftermath of Dark Crisis.  

The implications of Superman's initial decision to reveal is identity as well as the implications of it being restored are given a full analysis.