For the comic fan, these revelations aren’t new. Secret identities are part and parcel of the storylines of superheroes. Imparting an economic slant on this subject may seem superfluous. Surely the attempt to protect an identity is self-explanatory? After all, we’ve spent the last four pages doing just that. This is an economics book, though, and we have yet to touch on that aspect of identity preservation.
Every Choice Has a Cost
Economists are fond of saying there is no such thing as a free lunch. This means that no choice is costless, even if you do not have to pay money to acquire something. Think about a situation in which the boss comes into the office and offers to buy everyone lunch. Your co-workers are excited. The boss usually provides a pretty good spread when picking up the check. You start to think that whatever is served will certainly be better than the cold ham and cheese sandwich you have in the breakroom. The office is eagerly anticipating lunch but to your surprise the boss says “everyone to the lobby, I’ve got a bus chartered. We are going out to eat!” Whoa! No one expected this. Three cheers for the boss! On the way to the restaurant everyone is chatting, the mood is high, the boss is nodding his thanks as everyone sings his praises. But you notice something odd. The boss has a sly look. Something doesn’t seem quite right.
When you arrive at the restaurant, everyone disembarks and the wait staff ushers you to a reserved room. As soon as you step through the door you realize the trap. In the room there is a man in a suit, a man you recognize from the accounting department. He has a laptop and a projector set up and you can hear him quietly humming to himself. GASP! This isn’t a free lunch at all! This offer was just a cover for the tedium that is the quarterly sales meeting!
No matter how good the food is, the cost of this meal just became exorbitantly high because of what is included as part of the process. The proposal that there is no such thing as a free lunch means that even if someone else is paying for it, there is some cost involved for the participants. Obviously these aren’t monetary costs. Those are being picked up for you. The costs here are of a different nature.
When economists talk about costs we mean more than just what you pay for something. In fact, when you buy a movie ticket, a back issue of Nightwing, or the newest action figure, economists aren’t talking about costs at all. When you make a purchase you are paying a price. Prices are determined by the interaction of demand—what the buyers want and how much they are willing to pay—and supply—what the sellers have produced and how much they are willing to accept to part with their goods. In a free-market economy these prices are not handed down from the price gods. There is no political body meeting in a smoke-filled room where the good of society is weighed before the price of baby spinach is graciously bestowed upon humanity. No, prices are much more of a mystery. Somehow, prices are determined without a centralized authority getting in the way. Adam Smith, still a force to be reckoned with in economics even though he died in 1790, referred to market competition channeling self-interest as occurring via the invisible hand4—a superpower that might best be analogized to Dr Manhattan, or Jean Grey on a Phoenix bender.5 The invisible hand is an uncontrollable, fate-altering force that unifies opposing interests, interests that are brought into alignment through prices. The invisible hand is underestimated at every turn, and when evil miscreants try to thwart the invisible hand, their efforts are always met with disaster.
The Invisible Hand: Bringing Buyers and Sellers Together since 1776
The invisible hand is the impetus facilitating market activity, and before you dismiss the importance of this, consider that without markets it is unlikely you would have gas for your car, coffee for your commute, or even an affordable pencil. You see, markets provide the framework for bringing buyers and sellers together and it is the invisible hand that coordinates the price that is agreeable to both the buyer and the seller. Given that it is in the interest of the seller to charge as high a price as possible and it is in the buyer’s interest to pay as low a price as possible, it might be the case that no transactions would take place, since each party is only interested in achieving what is in their own best interest. Put another way, both the buyer and the seller are really selfish. If no trades were to take place then the buyer and the seller would actually both be worse off!
Envisage this scenario. A comic book dealer has a new stack of X-Men comics. She knows that fans will be tromping down to her store after work to pick them up. The last issue ended with a tremendous cliffhanger and Marvel has kept the conclusion to the story tightly under wraps. Because she knows all the X-Men fans must get their hands on this issue she decides to sell copies for $200 a piece. When the work day ends and the readers rush into the store, they are shocked by the obvious attempt at highway robbery. The store owner won’t budge on the price and the fans file out of the store to get their X-Men fix elsewhere. The store owner has a stack of unsold comics and the readers are left having to go far afield to find the books. No one is happy.
Enter the invisible hand. While the store owner would like to sell lots of books at $200, she can’t. Not even the most devoted fan will pay that. They have limited resources. So, the invisible hand whispers “lower the price.” Bemused by the disembodied voice, the store owner rushes to the door of the shop and yells “Wait! Come back!” The disappointed fans lift their collective heads and turn them towards the shop owner’s pleading cries. “How much do you want to pay?” she asks. A murmur runs through the crowd and they collectively call out “$1.00!” The shop keeper’s shoulders slump. She knows that if she sold the books for $1.00 she would be out of business because at that price she would not be able to cover her costs of acquiring the books in the first place. Costs are what businesses pay to produce the things that consumers want. These include line items such as wages for workers, rent for buildings, your employee’s cell phone plans, and what you have paid to acquire comic books for your store. In order to stay in business you must pay all of your costs, otherwise you are losing money, and at a price of $1.00 a book, the store will lose money because this price is not enough to cover operating costs.
So, the comic book store owner, knowing she can’t stay in business if the price the buyers pay is too low, counters “How about $10?” Some in the crowd start to squirm. This is far less than the original $200 but still more than they would like to pay. While the members of the X-Men mob grumble, a voice, just loud enough for all of the horde to hear murmurs “Offer a higher price than $1.00.” Wondering who made such an odd suggestion, someone in the crowd yells out “How about $2.00?” The seller is encouraged by this. $2.00 is much closer to her costs, but still not quite enough. The mysterious voice suggests she reduce her asking price to $5.00 and the buzz in the crowd is noticeable. Some of the rabble begin shoving, trying to get to the shop, but the stronger ones hold them back. “$2.99!” someone shouts, and the shopkeeper, knowing that at that price she can cover the costs of acquiring her inventory and make a little profit, agrees. The fans flood back into her store and buy up the available issues. All the customers are able to get the book and she has nothing left over. It was like an unseen force had shoved the seller and the buyers together and held them there until a mutually agreed upon price was reached. Sure, the seller would have preferred to charge $200 and the buyers would have been more satisfied at $1.00, but in a market both sides must receive a benefit from the transaction. Nevertheless, there is one reader who has remained outside the store, grumbling. When asked what is wrong, he says “In my day, comics only cost 99 cents. This cost is outrageous!” You walk away, silently correcting the old-timer. You know he is wrong. Comics never cost 99 cents. Comics were priced at 99 cents.
The use of the term “cost” is admittedly a bit confusing, and economists’ insistence upon using the term correctly can make the non-economist worry about their sanity. Cost. Price. Who cares? Let’s not debate that particular distinction too finely. Instead, let’s examine a different aspect to costs, one that will bring us back to the point of
this chapter which, of course, is to answer the question of why heroes work so hard to maintain their secret identities.
I Quit. Sincerely, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
At the beginning of the chapter, we were thinking about what superpower you would have, what you might call yourself, and what your disguise would be. The dream of having superhuman abilities sounds great. Using that power to help yourself would make your life better, but could exercising this skill set to help others be equally beneficial? Helping people is inarguably a good thing—even if they don’t know who you are, and even if you don’t get paid for it, wouldn’t it be a worthy goal? Your self-sacrifice to improve the lives of others, to protect them from harm, and to, in short, be a hero, is surely what having powers is about? Isn’t it? Didn’t someone once say “with great power, comes great…” Oh, rats, what does great power come with? Well, no matter. These new powers have been granted and you are determined to use those powers for good; not just your good, but for the good of all.
Time to review. Where did you get your powers? Was there anything that you did to acquire the ability to fly, the super strength, the x-ray vision? For most superheroes, power comes from an outside source. Regardless of whether they are born a mutant or if their powers come from Asgard, Atlantis, or the Weapon X Project, heroes don’t pay for their powers. There is no hero superstore where a can of magnificence can be bought.6 In essence, the price of powers is zero dollars and zero cents. Nevertheless, if we dissect the cost of being a superhero, not even the most over-zealous, impassioned, joyful hero would confess that the job is costless. When economists start talking about costs, you’d better watch out. Something bad is about to go down.
Consider Peter Parker. He gets bitten by a radioactive spider and voilà, he’s got the strength to weight ratio of an arachnid! Not only that but he can leap amazing distances, cling to the sides of buildings, and sense when danger is coming. Now Peter, who happens to be a genius, has some physical aptitude to go along with his mental fortitude. Using his scientific acumen (and a sewing machine) he creates a high-tech, web-slinging device and one of the best costumes in comics. Overnight Peter has gone from being a nerd of the first order to being a supremely powerful nerd of the first order. He’s going to have riches and fame. Except these things don’t happen, at least not in the original storyline. Instead, Peter’s uncle Ben is murdered and his Aunt May is left destitute, eventually developing some serious health problems. Peter wants to go to college, take care of his aunt, and live up to the legacy of his uncle, but being Spider-Man is increasingly becoming a full-time job and Peter realizes he may not be able to have it all.
Peter Parker can’t do everything he wants in life for the same reason we non-super-powered people can't do all we want in life: Scarcity. In this case though, scarcity has nothing to do with money. Yes, Peter and his Aunt May are poor. Even with selling pictures to The Daily Bugle newspaper, Peter and May are just scraping by. He can’t get a job as a researcher, for which he would be qualified, because his extracurricular spider activities get in the way. He could give up being the Web Slinger but he constantly feels the tug of that “great responsibility.” Simply put, Peter doesn’t have enough time to do all the things he wants to do. As a result, he has to choose—and here’s where the costs come in.
A choice, by definition, means having to give something up. Think about going to your favorite ice cream shop. You look at the board that tells you what flavors are available that day. There are many good-looking options but you narrow it down to two. The rocky road looks tempting, but if you get that you know you won’t be able to eat the coffee chocolate chip. Decisions, decisions! When you choose the coffee chocolate chip, you have given up the rocky road. This is what you would choose, your back-up choice so to speak, if the shop were to run out of coffee chocolate chip. Rocky road is your next best option, and since you didn’t select it that makes it the sacrifice of choosing coffee chocolate chip. In other words, this is a cost of having to choose. In economics, we call this next best option, the option B, an opportunity cost. All choices entail costs, even if they aren’t dollar costs, because choices necessitate giving something up.
At the beginning of this chapter I mentioned the idea that there is no such thing as a free lunch. The reason now has a name, because when you choose to go to lunch with someone, even if they are paying for it, you have chosen not to go to lunch with someone else, or not to do something else with your lunch break. Whatever your next best option is, that is your opportunity cost, and since there is a cost involved it means the lunch is not free. For example, Peter Parker might have the option of going to lunch with his long-time friend Mary Jane Watson. She has been out of town and really wants to get together. She even offers to pay. Peter, having no money, accepts. A free lunch, right? Wrong. Just after agreeing to Mary Jane’s offer, Gwen Stacy, a girl Peter has had his eye on for quite some time, calls up. She too would like to see Peter and also offers to pay for the meal. Peter is now in a pickle. If he says yes to Mary Jane, he has to give up lunch with Gwen. That makes Gwen the opportunity cost. If he says yes to Gwen, he can’t enjoy the meal with M.J. Now she’s the opportunity cost. Either way, Peter doesn’t spend any money, but there is still a cost to the decision he makes.
This issue becomes more pronounced as Peter continues his dual life as the indigent photo-journalist and friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. In The Amazing Spider-Man #17, an ill-fated encounter with the Green Goblin causes Spider-Man to run off, leaving many to wonder about his heroic status (Lee and Ditko, 1964a). In the next issue, we see Spider-Man calling the police to thwart a crime rather than taking care of it himself. Later, in issue #18, he is seen escaping from the villain Sandman (Lee and Ditko, 1964b). What’s going on here? It transpires that Aunt May is sick, and Peter is worried that if anything happens to him, she won’t be taken care of. For Peter, the cost of being Spider-Man just increased. Add to this the girl he likes, Betty Brant, won’t talk to him because he skipped a date to do his webslinger thing and now she’s seeing someone else. Determined to help his Aunt May and get a good job, he throws away all of his Spider-Man gear, super suit and all. The costs of being a hero are just too high. By the end of the issue, May is well on the road to recovery and Peter has once again donned his costume; but this won’t be the last time he forfeits his role.
The most famous episode of Peter Parker quitting occurs in issue #50 of The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee and Romita, 1967). The storyline is similar to issue #18 but Peter is now in college. May is sick again, Gwen Stacy has asked him to a party, and he hasn’t been on a date with Mary Jane for a while due to his late-night Spidey gig. He laments that “So long as I hang onto my Spider-Man identity I haven’t time for anything…except new problems” (p. 5). Peter decides that it is time to grow up and, again, gives up the web shooters and the spider getup. The dramatic panel of him walking down an alley with his Spider-Man mask halfway out of a garbage bin is iconic. Despite the upturn in his studies, his job prospects, and his dating life, he is once again drawn back into the fray by saving an innocent who reminds him of his uncle Ben. The opportunity costs of not being Spider-Man turn out to be just too high.
Is It Better to Have Loved and Lost?
And then there’s his erstwhile boss at The Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson, who hates Spider-Man so much that he offers a reward for his capture. One of the causes of Jameson’s outrage is the mask. To Jameson, there is nothing good that can come from someone wearing a mask. But without that mask, the risks to Peter and his family would be monumental. Peter goes to some of the greatest lengths in the comics to maintain his secret identity, and for good reason. The villains he faces are really nasty, and when they find out who he is they go to extremes to make him suffer. For Peter, the most emotional grief he experiences results directly from the revelation of his secret identity. In The Amazing Spider-Man #121, Norman Osborne, the Green Goblin, has lost his memories about the Web Slinger’s true name (Conway and Kane, 197
3). Overcome with grief due to his son Harry’s illness, Norman Osbourne blames Spider-Man for Harry’s maladies, so when his memories are inevitably restored, Norman kidnaps Peter’s girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, and flies her to the top of the George Washington Bridge. Before Spider-Man can enact a rescue, Osborne hurls Gwen towards the Hudson River below. Spider-Man grabs her just before she strikes the water, but in a rare instance when the laws of physics actually apply in comics, the abrupt arresting of the fall breaks her neck. Because his identity was revealed, Peter Parker lost the woman he loved.7
This trope is seen again in Marvel’s Civil War. After a devastating explosion, Marvel’s heroes gather together to discuss the possibility of being registered in a government program. Spider-Man shows up and warns that this could have the unintended consequence of causing heroes to retire from saving innocents. He notes that the identities of the Fantastic Four have been public knowledge for some time and they’ve never had a serious problem. In spite of this, he worries that the situation could be different for him. One day he could come home and find “my wife impaled on an octopus arm and the woman who raised me begging for her life” (Millar and McNiven, 2007, p. 20). This is the great concern for all heroes. By revealing who they are, the doors will be open for their enemies to come after their loved ones. Keeping their identities secret is one way to prevent that eventuality. Because evildoers are vengeful, the protection of their loved ones becomes an additional cost to heroes. The way to minimize that cost is to keep your identity secret.8
Why Superman Doesn't Take Over the World Page 5
