Name Authority & Secret Identities

Superhero comic books bring extra complications with their layers of secret identities that make it difficult to choose the right names and titles to organize records by series records or name subjects. But even if you can only afford to use the simplest form of the names in your catalog records, that doesn't mean the information can't be provided somewhere else.

Wikipedia has very helpful and interesting tidbits about superhero comics characters (and manga, too); why not incorporate it? Linking to outside sources from the catalog can be time-consuming and inconvenient for both staff and patrons when the links break and there is limited time to fix the problem. Perhaps we could create a sidebar or links spot on our webpage for teens? It could be a bonus service addressing the multiple aliases/nomenclature issue as well as offering the nifty character insights (history, powers, etc.) from the Wikipedia pages.

With the Green Lantern "SuperAlias" box on Wikipedia, you can see that one hero has been "played" by many different characters over the past 67 years. Unlike Bruce Wayne, who lives forever, other superheroes do retire or relinquish their positions. Fans following the story of one character may want to sort out the previous stories and figure out allusions. Pointing them directly to Wikipedia would allow you to provide that information without having to have resident experts in your staff or update name authority records when the plots evolve further and characters continue to change.