Secret Origins (SPOILERS)

Read issue #1 earlier. Three origins in this one.

 

Superman:  They had to start with Supes, I suppose. Pretty much the familiar origin, told with alternate voice-overs from Lara and Ma Kent.  Apparently, New 52 Lara was a soldier, which I'm pretty sure is a new thing, and Ma and Pa Kent appear to have been killed in a traffic accident, instead of by a space virus (was it a space virus? Some kind of a virus, wasn't it?).  The story is well-told, but gosh-all fish-hooks how I loathe the New 52 Superman costume.

 

Robin:  A pretty good updating of Dick Grayson's origins. The only new things I noice are Dick going after his parents' killer before Bruce adopts him, and the business of robins being Ma Grayson's favorite bird.

 

Supergirl:  Another OK origin updating Allura is described as being a "peace praetor", which I guess is a sort of cop.  Was New 53 Krypton a matriarchy?  No "Linda Lee" business here. Does New 52 Supergirl even have a secret ID?

 

Overall, an interesting book, particularly considering I'm not generally interested in the New 52 universe so far. I'm a sucker for "Secret Origins" books, though.

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  • I think I'm the exact opposite.  I think the vast majority of origin stories are pretty poor.  There are a handful that stand out, but I've always felt the vast majority of them were the "let's get this out of the way so we can tell a story" type.

  • Thanks for the rundown. I was curious about this book, and will probably pick up the odd issue here and there, depending on who's featured. On my flip-through, I noticed that a scene from the Grant Morrison story about the kid who wears Superman's cape was referenced; it's cool to see that start to get a foothold in canon.

  • IIRC, Superboy took Ma and Pa Kent on a vacation into the past where they contracted a bug that modern medicine had never seen before.

  • My recollection is he thought they'd caught it in the past for part of the story, but eventually worked out they'd actually gotten it from opening the chest they found when on vacation in the Caribbean.

  • I thought I remembered them opening a chest, but thought it was in the past.

    Luke Blanchard said:

    My recollection is he thought they'd caught it in the past for part of the story, but eventually worked out they'd actually gotten it from opening the chest they found when on vacation in the Caribbean.

  • They find the chest, and Superboy takes them back into the past to learn more about it. The original story was "The Last Days of Ma and Pa Kent!" from Superman #161, reprinted as "The Death of Ma and Pa Kent" in Superboy #165. My recollection is the story was briefly retold in Action Comics #500 (which was a Superman's life story issue) and Superman #362-#363 (in which Lois and Lana caught the plague from a piece of old glassware Lana dropped).

  • For some reason, "The Last Days of Ma and Pa Kent" is one of the most misremembered stories of the Silver Age.  But Luke has it essentially correct---the Kents contracted the disease in the present, not the past.

    As the story describes, Ma and Pa Kent are on a vacation in the Caribbean.  While nosing around an island beach for seashells, they uncover a buried chest and open it.  Within are some relics and a page from the diary of pirate Peg-Leg Morgan.  When Superboy shows up to see how they are getting along, the Kents ask their son to take them back to the eighteenth century so they can learn what Peg-Leg Morgan was doing on that island in the first place.

    The Boy of Steel flies his parents back through the time barrier to the proximate time that Morgan was on the island.  There, they discover that Morgan was one of Blackbeard's crew, and Blackbeard marooned Morgan on that island for some unspecified reason.  After Superboy has a bit of sport with the infamous freebooter, he brings his parents back to the present.

    The next morning, the Kents take ill, and Clark calls their doctor.  After his examination of the couple, the doctor calls in a specialist---which is never a good sign.  After the specialist makes his examination, the two physicians give Clark the bad news.

    His parents have contracted a rare virus---the Caribbean fever plague.  It's fatal and there's no cure.

    What's mystifying to the doctors is that there have been no documented cases of the Caribbean fever plague in over a hundred years.  It was believed to have been eradicated---until now.

    Naturally, Clark blames himself for his parents' condition.  Obviously, they must have contracted the disease during their time-trip to the eighteenth century.  Most likely from eating some of the island fruit.

    The story progresses through Clark's efforts to save his parents and Pa Kent's dying words to his son.  After the funeral, the guilt-ridden Clark vows never to become Superboy, again.

    Not too long afterward, certain events take place which reveal to Clark that the Kents weren't infected with the fever plague during their trip to the past.  Rather, they became infected before their time-trip---when they opened the chest that they had found on the beach.  The virus had transferred to the Kents from the page of Peg-Leg Morgan's diary they found in the chest.

    Superboy was not responsible for them contracting the fever plague and there was nothing he could have done to prevent it.

    Hope this helps.

  • ...I did not know that there was a new SO title !

     Could someone please give me the info - price , format , # of story pages per - about this one ?

     I liked the around-during-the-late-Eighties SO , tho there were problems with it...

  • Commander Benson said:

    Superboy was not responsible for them contracting the fever plague and there was nothing he could have done to prevent it.

    Obviously the Boy of Steel was not responsible for his parents' deaths, though technically he could have prevented it but only in hindsight. It was well established that the Kents lived modestly and Superboy seldom used his powers to give them anything extravagant. But he made an exception to that rule to give the Kents a well-deserved vacation in the Caribbean and built them a huge yacht (presumably with a robot crew though none are seen). If he hadn't or sent them somewhere else, they wouldn't have found the pirate chest, opened it and contracted the fever.

    But that's like saying if only the Waynes hadn't gone to the movies that fateful night or if Peter stopped the Burglar as he ran past him. You can never predict the consequences of all your actions.

    That's why Clark still felt a little guilty about his foster parents' tragic end. It wasn't his fault but in hindsight, he knew that he could have prevented it. He's haunted by those two words: "If only...".

    btw, I always wondered why Superboy never went to the 30th century to look for a cure or brought the Kents there. Yes, because it wasn't a Legion story but the Legion is a huge part of the Superboy mythos that it seemed odd that it wasn't mentioned.

  • EKDJ, it's a monthly, $4.99 book. There are three stories per issue. I don't know how many story pages there are, but my guess would be around 40.

    Commander, I think the Kents' death story is misremembered so much (including on this board; I'm pretty sure this is at least our second time 'round this particular mulberry bush, if not more) because the action that caused the death -- opening up a pirate chest -- is the sort of thing that would happen during a time travel story back to pirate times, which also takes place in the story. Given that many of us probably first encountered the story in truncated flashbacks in later Superman comics, it's not surprising that those two events get conflated. I think it's the similarity between the cause and the apparent cause that, while it makes for a good story, also made for a difficult-to-remember one, especially secondhand.

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