My So Called Secret Identity: Volume One is a story about a normal girl set in an abnormal city and situation, designed around one simple premise: having a female superheroine who is just normal. And the protagonist of MSCSI, Cat Daniels, isn’t a typical superheroine: she doesn’t prance around in spandex, she is anatomically correct, and she doesn’t have superpowers (other than being really, really, really smart). Will Brooker, part of the creative team behind MSCSI, explains the creation of Cat as coming from a spark of an idea: “Why do we never see women like this in comics – women who are normal, likeable and just really, really clever?” That’s Cat in a nutshell: she’s just your average PhD student, who wears dresses and jeans and possesses a MENSA-worthy intellect.
Volume one is our first ever introduction to Cat Daniels: we are offered a formal introduction to her, her personality traits, the characters who will populate her story, and the setting in which everything takes place. It’s a pretty formulaic first installment, but provides necessary groundwork for readers to latch onto the story and to begin to care for Cat.
In an interview with Brooker, he explains his intrique and focus on studying Batman in his own academic work:
“Batman is just a normal person who never gives up. He doesn’t have special powers, he goes up against incredible odds, he walks with gods like Superman and Wonder Woman, and puts himself in danger every night — even on a normal patrol, he’s deliberately going out against armed thugs, without a gun of his own — and he just keeps on coming. He will not give in.”
This “normal” superhero element is undeniably what makes Batman so fascinating. It’s why people adamantly stand by his side in the inevitable fight: whose better, Batman or Superman? And it is this aspect of the caped crusader that Brooker is trying to recreate in Cat (minus the spandex, of course). Cat is a normal girl positioned in an extraordinary situation, and the thrust of Volume One is watching how Cat responds to the events that unfold around her.
The only problem with Cat is that there isn’t a problem. For someone who is supposed to be a normal superhero, she’s anything but. She’s perfect. She’s pretty, and confident, and smart, and capable, and makes friends easily. Get the picture? I sound bitter, I know. But in Brooker’s attempt to make a great superheroine who is also normal, he missed one essential quality: relatable. Even when she’s being picked on her for looking young, she still overcomes this by turning to her own confidence and ability to shrug off the opinions of everyone around her. Batman gets away with it because he’s not pretending to be normal. He wears his dysfunction on his sleeve.
Aside from my apparent jealousy of a fictional character, My So Called Secret Identity does stick the landing with the setting. Like any good superhero, Cat knows her city. The interesting part of his story is how Cat interacts with her setting, Gloria City. This is her Gotham, and there is no mistake about it. She knows the ins and outs of it, and is able to spot irregularities as if she’s equipped with a Geordi La Forge-esque viser. Gloria is populated with eccentric figures that are only hinted at in the first volume: we know there are some caped vigilantes running amok, but we don’t know who they are or their stories yet. Brooker explains that “They are more like celebrities and reality TV stars than crime-fighters,” which creates an unexplored dynamic about revering superheroes as the rich and famous, rather than a menace to society. Gloria City, with it’s reality-show level of infamy superheroes and villains, is a good setting with quirks and secrets, and acts as the perfect stage for a character, who is caught between normal and superb, to test out her identity.
As both Brooker himself states and as volume one implies, MSCSI is about theatre and performance, especially of identity. Volume one ends with Cat being faced with a costumed-character who appears to pose a threat: his spotlight on her and intimidating stance leaves the readers with a sense of dread. If MSCSI is about performance, then this establishes the ground work for Cat to enact her own sense of self: will she stay the confident, down-to-earth gal that she is or be swept up into the glamour of being a superheroine? If all the world is a stage, then Cat is performing her identity just as Bruce is performing Batman, and the intrigue in MSCSI is seeing how if Cat will be able to maintain herself and her composure in the midst of Gloria City.
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