7 of the Strangest Superhero Origins in Comics
Let's face it, folks: not everyone can be rocketed to Earth from a doomed planet just moments before it explodes. With thousands of comic book characters out there, some of them are going to spring from beginnings that are less than humble. It's just the law of averages.
That's the lesson that we think we can learn from this week's "DC Universe Origins" paperback, which collects the two-page origin stories that ran in "52." And while the creators did a great job summing up the "who they are and how they came to be" for characters like Batman, Wonder Woman and the Joker, there are plenty of others who got their starts in strange, bizarre, and occasionally outright terrible ways! Which is why we here at ComicsAlliance, ever the champions of the underdog, have put together a look at our favorites from seven decades of bizarre origins!
BOUNCING BOY
As one of the Silver-Agiest comics of the Silver Age, "The Legion of Super-Heroes" is full of weird origin stories, including characters that were swallowed by whales, kept in the Phantom Zone for a solid thousand years, or just hailed from a planet where everyone ate rocks or whatever. But even in that crowd, there's only one character that got his super-powers through sheer stupidity: Chuck Taine, a.k.a. Bouncing Boy.The ability to turn oneself into a gigantic ABA basketball would make for a pretty weird power by itself, but it's the story of how he got them just pushes him over the top. When running an errand for a scientist who developed a "Super-Plastic Fluid," Chuck gets distracted by a robot gladiator tournament at the local stadium and ends up in the stand watching two robots beat each other to scrap with giant clubs. That, we can get behind, but when he gets thirsty and reaches for his soda...
MARVEX THE SUPER-ROBOT
If the Silver Age was a time when the rules were crazy, then the Golden Age was when there just weren't any rules at all, which is how we ended up with characters like Marvex. On the surface, he doesn't seem that strange, as a robot that rebels against its evil creators is actually pretty standard for science fiction, even if the robot in question rebels by picking up its diminutive maker and beating other little people to death with him:
HALO
Here's the short version: Originally a teenage amnesiac with super-powers that Batman found in Europe and promptly put to work fighting crime (because, you know, he's Batman and that's what he does when he finds teenagers), young Gaby Doe was eventually revealed to be Violet Harper, a sociopathic juvenile delinquent who was murdered by an agent of Tobias Whale, a hugely obese albino that used to fight Black Lightning. And this is where it starts to get weird.
As Violet's soul exited her body, it was replaced by Aurakle, an energy being from the beginning of time that came to Earth and apparently got its kicks spying on teenage girls. Thus, traumatized by "death," Aurakle got amnesia but kept its super-powers, and Halo was born.
All in all, pretty simple. Now if someone could just explain why anyone likes Geo-Force...
THE CAPTAIN
SWARM
One of the truisms of comic book science is that if you get bitten by something, you become (at least partially) that thing. BItten by a vampire? You're a vampire. Bitten by a radioactive spider? Congratulations, you've got radioactive spider powers. And if you happen to be a Nazi scientist experimenting on enslaving mutant bees after fleeing to South America to avoid war crimes trials who gets eaten to death by said mutant bees?
THE VAGABOND
We love that guy.
Elsewhere on the Web:
Adult Swim's 10 Most Presidential Moments [Adult Swim]
Keyboard Cat Vs. Keyboard Dog [Gorilla Mask]