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Secret Origins of the World's Greatest Super-Heroes (1990)

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"Batman: "The Man Who Falls"": Batman prepares to jump from a building ledge into the night of Gotham city and he remembers all his life up until this moment.

Mother! I'll get you for this! Why couldn't my first case be something simple? Like a serial killer!
— Black Canary

Secret Origins of the World's Greatest Super-Heroes is a one-shot with a cover date of March, 1990.

Synopsis for Batman: "The Man Who Falls"

Batman prepares to jump from a building ledge into the night of Gotham city and he remembers all his life up until this moment.

As a young kid he was falling down a hole on the grounds of Wayne Manor. Bats begin to swarm toward him and out the hole. Bruce's father, Dr. Thomas Wayne, rescues him but is angry at Bruce's carelessness. Bruce's mother, Martha Wayne, comforts her son. When Bruce asks if he was in Hell, she reassures him it "was just some old cave." Bruce knew that it has all begun and he remembers the murder of his parents and him kneeling at their dead bodies.

At the age of 14, Bruce leaves Gotham City to explore and obtain skills in martial arts and forensics. His early training as a teenager included failed attempts at college along with failed attempts to bond with other people, and last a disillusionment with working with the FBI upon turning 20. He realizes that to achieve justice the way he sees fit, he cannot work within "the system." Bruce then remembers his time training at a monastery, hidden in the Paektu-San mountains of North-Korea. After nearly a year of training, Master Kirigi tells Bruce he has exceptional intelligence and physique, but his traumatic past has made him self-destructive.

Bruce Wayne leaves Korea and heads to France, where he trains with a bounty hunter named Henri Ducard, who shows him "the uses of brutality, deception and cunning." When Ducard kills a fugitive he had been tracking one night, Bruce becomes disgusted with Ducard's brutal ways of punishing criminals and departs.

On his journey, Bruce meets and learns from every great detective in the world and at some point he approaches Willie Doggett. Bruce, now 23, and Doggett track down a man named Tom Woodley to a mountain ledge, where Woodley guns down Doggett. Woodley and Bruce fight in the mountain and Woodley falls from a precipice. Bruce, without food or warmth, wandered the snowy mountains. After being knocked unconscious, he is rescued by a Native American shaman. When Bruce awakens, the old man tells Bruce he has the mark of the bat, an animal sacred in his tribe.

Bruce returns to Gotham to begin his crime-fighting. On Bruce's first night out, he ends up fighting street thugs while still uncostumed and is deemed a failure. While brooding in the library of Wayne Manor that night, a bat crashes through the study window. Modeling himself after the recurring images of bats, Bruce creates his costumed identity which he names the Batman.

Batman finally jumps off the ledge and he reckons how metaphorically, he is always falling.

Appearing in Batman: "The Man Who Falls"

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Synopsis for Superman: "The Haunting"

This story is reprinted from The Man of Steel #6.

Clark returns to Smallville after a long time away. His adoptive parents pick him up. Jonathan Kent is about to tell him something but Martha shushes him.

Later that night, Clark cannot sleep as he wonders what his father was about to tell him. When he goes for a midnight snack, a "ghost" of Jor-El surprises him and touches him.

Superman discovers himself to be on an alien planet where he encounters his biological mother, Lara. As the hallucination wears off, he is face to face with his old flame, Lana Lang.

In a flashback, it turns out that on the night that Clark learned his heritage he went to Lana and revealed the truth of his powers to her. She confesses her feelings to him. She realizes that Clark can no longer belong to her, that he belongs to the world and this fact had hurt her. She had gone through a period of depression and finally accepts the fact.

The next day, Superman thinks about what she said and starts wondering about where he truly came from. He goes to the location where Jonathan hid the rocket ship he was found in only to find that the ship is gone. The hologram of Jor-El reappears and tells him to be silent and to learn. It appears that Superman is under some kind of psionic attack, but the Kents arrive in time and Jonathan breaks it off by attacking the Jor-El hologram with a shovel. Superman flies away, realizing that it was not a mental attack but a download of knowledge of everything about Krypton into his brain. He finally knows his biological parents and where he came from and though he appreciates the knowledge he has been given, in the end, he embraces his humanity even more.

Appearing in Superman: "The Haunting"

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  • Helen Lang (First appearance) (Dies in flashback)
  • Lois Lane (In dream sequence only)
  • Mary Ellen Anderson (Mentioned only)
  • Tom Harold (Mentioned only)
  • Clyde Harold (Mentioned only)

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Synopsis for Green Lantern: "The Secret Origin of Green Lantern"

This story is reprinted from Secret Origins (Volume 2) #36.

Chip, a young boy with a years-long obsession with Green Lantern, runs an ad to find a test pilot for his agency. Hal Jordan finds the ad and drives from Detroit. When he reaches Chip's address, the boy recognizes Hal as Green Lantern. Hal denies it and gets back in his car, but Chip catches up to him. Cornered in the L.A. traffic, Hal doesn't see any other choice but to indulge his fan.

Hal gives him a ring duplicate and they fly over Los Angeles, while Hal narrates to Chip how he became a Green Lantern. He then takes him to the desolated Oa, where he shows him the destroyed Central Power Battery. They soon encounter a group of scavengers raiding the remains of the Citadel, and they take them out of the planet. Afterward, they return to Earth.

After thinking about it for some time, Hal accepts Chip's job offer but urges him to keep his secret identity. Chip calls his associates and introduces Hal to the Elite Design Consultants, a.k.a. the "Gremlins."

Appearing in Green Lantern: "The Secret Origin of Green Lantern"

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  • Elite Design Consultants (First appearance)
    • Al
    • Chip
    • Dex
    • Hawk
  • Francis

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  • Raiders

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Synopsis for "Martian Manhunter"

This story is reprinted from Secret Origins (Volume 2) #35.

Appearing in "Martian Manhunter"

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Synopsis for The Flash: "Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt"

This story is reprinted from Secret Origins Annual (Volume 2) #2.

Chronically late Barry Allen graduates from the police academy with a science degree on the basis of his thesis proving the existence of tachyons and obtains a job as a police scientist. At a crime scene, police detective Russo feeds Iris West information about an upcoming police raid on a terrorist group called LDL. Iris visits the site and is kidnapped by LDL, then is forced to broadcast their demands. Seeing the broadcast, Russo races to the scene while Barry frets about being too slow to help. A bolt of lightning breaks enters Barry's lab, freezing in mid-air, where it speaks to him and offers him super-speed at the cost of a shortened lifespan. Accepting the bargain, Barry places a jar of ammonium sulfate on the shelf as instructed by the lightning bolt, which then strikes the chemicals and makes Barry the fastest man alive. After rescuing Iris from LDL, he models himself on the comic book hero the Flash to begin his own heroic career.

At a later point in Barry's career, the Rogues create employ Weather Wizard's powers to create a "Human Thunderbolt" that can move as quickly as the Flash, distracting him while they trash the Flash Museum. After the Human Thunderbolt breaks from his fight to destroy a Flash Museum billboard, Barry realizes that the Thunderbolt is attracted to his costume rather than having a mind of its own. He changes into his civilian clothes, using his empty costume as bait to lure the Thunderbolt into the ring where he keeps his costume in compressed form. At the Flash Museum, the Rogues suddenly find themselves all dressed in Flash costumes. As they realize that the Flash must have changed their clothes at super-speed, Barry appears and releases the Human Thunderbolt from his ring.

During the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Barry confronts the Anti-Monitor, who boasts that the beam of his anti-matter cannon travels too fast for the Flash to stop it, offering Barry a ten-second head start to prevent the Earth's destruction. Barry sees that the cannon is powered by a single tachyon, which he must outrace and catch in order to save the universe. Although attempting to run at the speed of a tachyon will cost him his life, Barry knows he must try. As he breaks the lightspeed barrier and begins to catch up with the tachyon, Barry sheds his physical form, becoming pure energy; he travels backwards in time, moving back through the events of his own life. Finally catching the tachyon and thwarting the Anti-Monitor, Barry becomes the lightning bolt that entered his own lab so many years earlier, granting himself the power of super-speed.

Appearing in The Flash: "Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt"

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Synopsis for Justice League of America: "All Together Now"

This story is reprinted from Secret Origins (Volume 2) #32.

Appearing in Justice League of America: "All Together Now"

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  • Appellaxian Meteors
  • British double-decker bus

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Links and References

  1. ↑ Green Lantern mentioned he would take the animals to a zoo near Livingstone. If the place of the fight against the Golden Roc was in the same country, he was in Zambia.
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