There’s a thread going on about the Golden Age Flash and various silly origins of heros and villains are brought up.
So as not to hijack that thread, I started this one.
What do you think is the sillyest super hero or villain origin in comics?
I’m going to throw out The Time Trapper (at least the pre-boot version, not sure if there is a new one now). This mysterious, all powerful foe of the Legion of Super Heros turns out to be… Cosmic Boy, one of the founding members, who gets stuck in an infinite library and spends all eternity learning things so that when he comes out, he’s all powerful and at the end of time.
As a small boy in the Old West, he saw an alien from a flying saucer murder his outlaw father. Moments before the father died, he drew an outline of the saucer in the dirt and jabbed a bullet into it.
The alien wiped the boy’s memory of the murder, then took him to raise as his own. He grew to adulthood with the alien, then killed him in vengeance for his father’s murder, then returned to Earth. Because they’d traveled at relativistic speeds, it was now present-day, and Terra-Man (so named because he’s from Earth, get it?) became a villain to Superman with his high-tech alien technology styled to look like it’s from the Old West. Ray guns that look like six-shooters, that kind of thing. And he still talked in Old West idiom, calling Superman “pardner,” that sort of thing.
Now, you’re asking: How did he get vengeance on the alien if his memory of the murder was wiped? Here’s where we get to the dumbest part of this already dumb origin:
The saucer outline with the bullet in it was the clue that told Terra-Man who killed his father. Because naturally, if you’re a dying 1880s gunslinger, this thought will go through your head: “This creature who’s killed me, who I have no concept or understanding of, will probably wipe my son’s memory of my murder and raise him as his own. So I’ll make a circle and put a bullet in it as an CLEAR, UNAMBIGUOUS clue as to who killed his father. After all, I know this alien will wipe my son’s memory, but he won’t wipe his memory of what I do with my hands in my last few moments.”
This is the silliest, most convoluted and ludicrous origin ever. This will not be topped.
I believe the Red Bee was a District Attorney (a man with a law degree and presumably quite a bit of education), but decided to fight crime in a red and pink costume, using two TRAINED BEES that he stored in his belt buckle!
Yep, in fact in pre-crisis continuity, all stretchable heroes were thought to have something to do with that. Elastic Lad (Jimmy Olsen)'s formula was thought to be a gingold extract and it was even suggested that the acid that created Plastic Man was derived from the same plant.
There’s also Marvel’s The Terror, where an extract from a dog injected into a man by a very odd scientist turned him into a vampire so he could fight an escaped gorilla.
The Whizzer got his powers from a transfusion of mongoose blood. Those super-fast Mongooses whizzing by all the time must have been quite an inspiration. Wonder how Bob Frank’s father even managed to catch one?
How about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? From what I’ve heard they are the byproduct of another superhero.
Remember the mysterious, radioactive slime that turned them into TMNT’s? Apparently it fell off the truck that Daredevil knocked that old man away from during his (DD’s) own origin story. (I can’t remember DD’s original name, sorry.) Anyway, he was on his way home from school and saw an old man about to be hit by a truck with radioactive waste on it. Young not-yet-DD pushed the man out of the way but got some ooze on him, making him blind. One of the barrels fell down the sewer and viola! Mutant turtles.
Now that’s a neat way to tie up a loose end, donchathink?
To be fair, the TMNT origin was supposed to be silly, given that it was originally a parody of several themes prevalent in the comic industry at the time. Note also the name of the rat, Splinter – wasn’t it Electra who trained with a guy named “Stick”?
That said, Daredevil’s (Matt Murdock, yes?) origin is pretty ridiculous all on its own.
He’s a sub. Apparently growing plants real fast is not as useful as, say, super bouncing a la Bouncing Boy, who IIRC got his powers by accidentally mixing up a super-secret formula with a bottle of soda which he guzzled while at a ball game. because don’t we all, when skipping work to catch a game, bring with us super-secret formulas. In soda bottles.
Oh, and to be fair to Elongated Man, it wasn’t like he bought a bottle of Gingo-cola at the 7-11, chugged it and started stretching. He conceived as a child a fascination with India rubber men in the carnivals and through detective work figured out that they all drank this particular elixer. Ralph then concentrated it and consumed it to get his elasticity.
So still a silly sort of origin, but a somewhat different brand of silly.