Mr. Cryptic wrote:Yes, the only physical change when Ishtar changes from Maria to Ishtar is her hair. You can generally assume that when Ishtar has her Ishtar hair, she is not concealing her divine aura and people recognize her as Ishtar. When she has her Maria Jones hair (which has varied, but is generally a little less glamorous looking), that means she's concealing her aura and people won't recognize her as Ishtar.
Sorry that is confusing, but that is my way of justifying why no one recognizes Ishtar and Maria Jones as the same person, even though she doesn't wear a mask.
I've been kind of figuring that one limitation on Ishtar's magic is that she never shapeshifts herself to look different than she is. Since she's a love goddess, hiding her beauty goes against the nature of her divine powers. Likewise, she doesn't turn invisible either. The aura concealing thing is kind of a workaround in that it doesn't hide her appearance, just her identity.
What you're running into there is the same issue comics artists have had for years dealing with the Clark Kent/Superman thing. People have always made fun of the idea that a pair of glasses could fool anyone, and recent artists and writers (as well as the movies) have made the explanation more believable. Some of the same issues with Superman work for Ishtar.
1. The hero doesn't wear a mask. Like Superman, the public aware of Ishtar's origins: both are (essentially) non-humans from somewhere else, both have their powers naturally, there's nothing particularly secret about their heroic personas. As such, there's no particular reason to assume the hero
has a secret identity, unlike, say, Batman. It's obvious he's hiding something, so people would be more on the lookout for people who could be Batman out of his costume.
2. One of the things Christopher Reeve demonstrated was that the same person could play Clark and Superman and really make them come across as two different people: tone of voice, way of speaking, posture, movement. These things are hard to show in a comic, so over the last few years they've had characters do things like Green Lantern commenting that Clark wears clothes two sizes too big and slouches, Martha Kent early on pointed out that he (as Clark) should never wear a tight t-shirt or anything else that made his physique obvious. So you can assume that Ishtar-as-Maria does the same sort of thing.
3. You go to work one day and notice that a co-worker looks like Tom Cruise. Do you assume (a) that he's really Tom Cruise incognito, or (b) boy, your co-worker Bob looks a lot like Tom Cruise, ain't that a hoot? Same thing. Clark looks somewhat like Superman. Maria looks somewhat like Ishtar. It happens. Consider Natalie Portman and Keira Knightley: the latter was cast in
The Phantom Menace specifically because the casting director noticed how closely Knightley looked like Portman, thus they were able to conceal the reveal that there was a person acting as the Queen's double. When they were in costume, Portman's mother couldn't tell them apart on set. So it's not unbelievable that people don't connect Ishtar and Maria Jones since the latter doesn't run around in ridiculously revealing bikini and have the obvious sex appeal that a goddess of love would exhibit.
In the case of the story, the discovery came after her partner saw her hair change for no obvious reason, she was butt-naked, and sex was on his mind. It's much easier to make the realization in those circumstances, just as it would be if someone saw Clark Kent wearing a tight t-shirt and without his glasses suddenly demonstrating great strength (even if not superhuman).