Who has them, and who doesn't? Sentinel Comics seems to be in an interesting place on the secret identity issue, since I assume secret IDs to be common (more on this later), but as far as I can tell, the Parsons family has never used them in the course of introducing the very idea of superheroes to the world - and interesting side note I am becoming increasingly curious about. I wonder what hero (of the 1900s?) first got that idea started.
And, to be fair, I don't even know if I'm right about the "common" part. I think the only characters who we know for certain have secret identities are Ra and The Wraith. Everyone else has varying levels of doubt, as follows:
- Absolute Zero: I lean towards "public" - Ryan Frost was in a hard to cover up accident, and only decided (however unwillingly) to become a superhero years later, so there would have been no reason to keep things hushed up until then.
- Argent Adept: Probably secret. Akash'Bhuta manifestly knows who he is, but nothing about his origin or known actions would involve his identity as an out-of-work bartender.
- Bunker: He's working for the U.S. government, as part of a project which has been known to the public for over 150 years. His identity remaining secret is not beyond comic book logic, but it would stretch it.
- Expatriette: Who knows? Would she care about hiding that she's Dawn's daughter? Would Dawn admit it? Her bio story implies that she's not a terribly famous hero in either case.
- Fanatic: Probably semi-secret, since (while all those nuns might well stay quiet) I can see no reason for Fanatic to hide what she knows of her past. Admittedly, that's almost nothing, so a lot of her identity is secret by default.
- Haka: Meaningless. I doubt that much of anyone knows that he's Aata Wakarewarewa, but once your civilization no longer exists, the point is largely moot.
- Legacy: Public. People know who the Parsonses are.
- Mr. Fixer: Almost certainly secret, since he went unmolested in retirement for so long. What I don't know is whether it was secret when he was Black Fist.
- NightMist: Probably public, but unnoticed. She operates as an a=occult investigator, but I suspect that most people (and most non-magical villains) just aren't going to assume that she's a superpowered badass based on that.
- Ra: Secret. Uses a large group of people with cameras to hide his headquarters, which shows us how gutsy he is.
- Tachyon: Very public. She spends so much time using her superspeed For Science that she had trouble finding the time to get into traditional hero work.
- Tempest: Confusing. He doesn't seem to have any means or motive to pass for human, but is noted as going by "Mick Dalton" on Earth. Maybe that's just for ease of human pronunciation? Since he has a group of refugees to look out for, it's unlikely that he's even just doing things in seclusion, so all others signs point to public.
- The Visionary: Presumably secret. And trying to keep it that was, as part of her (doomed) efforts to keep this timeline from having one of her.
- The Wraith: Secret. Unlike Ra, she has a perfect cover - a full-time job and multiple college degrees. Her time management is so impressive, even I sometimes doubt she's The Wraith, and I have the narrator's word for it!
So out of fourteen heroes; two are certainly secret, two are probably secret, and two more make the issue meaningless. If they're the only ones, though, that's less than half of the heroes conforming to usual superhero ideas of an unknown identity. That's fascinating if true, but does it hold up? Am I missing anything?