Jimmy Olsen’s Blues

Comics flow through a marketplace so fickle and so resistant to innovation that getting off on the right foot is damn near essential to any sort of success. While certain comics have been able to overcome a non-descript opening story (Daredevil came to mind while breaking out this list), today we tip our hats to these ten, who have made it particularly easy for subsequent writers to show us something worth reading each month, some of them for decades. In no particular order:

Oracle. “Babs” Gordon’s transformation from the “cute if not especially interesting” Batgirl into the “sexy in a Hot Librarian way and far, far more useful and interesting” Oracle was rooted in one of the seminal Batman stories of the last 20 years, Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s The Killing Joke. The sequence where the Joker inflicted the genesis for this change on her might have been sickening to behold, but the worst thing to ever happen to the character has also proven to be the best thing to happen to her from a storytelling perspective. And while we’ve been given a couple of (mostly well done) “it sucks to be in a wheelchair” moments, they’ve been few and far between and outnumbered by page after page of just how little of Barbara Gordon’s heroism was wearing that cowl.

Spider-Man. Spidey’s origin works so well less for its details — though those work, too — but for its thematic significance. The phrase “with great power comes great responsibility” is now so well-known and so associated with Spider-Man that it’s taken on its own life, used for other non-Spidery purposes — though if you search Wikipedia for “with great power comes great responsibility,” you get redirected right back to the entry for Spider-Man.

Preacher. When most preachers recount their experience “finding God,” doesn’t it always seem more like God found them? Garth Ennis thought so and gave us a fresher, more accurate use of the phrase. By hitting drunkard and reluctant man of the cloth Jesse Custer in the mouth with Heaven’s dirty little secret angel-demon baby, Ennis set Custer on a far more literal “finding God” story. (Now that I think about it, we could probably have included Preacher’s Saint of Killers and Herr Starr on this list as well.)

Captain America. If loving this tale of one man so patriotic and devoted that he gave up polio for his country means I actually love propaganda, then you can go ahead and sell me the “I <3 Propaganda” t-shirt today. Seriously though, the same basic Cap ideal (One man is Superman, the living embodiment of all that is Good and Right about America, and at the same time Everyman) that thrilled millions in the 40’s has managed to sustain an ongoing comic series for nearly a year and a half (and counting) without him in it.

Superman. Not only does Superman’s origin hold up — and has been used as the basis for the origins of plenty of other heroes, both literally and metaphorically — it’s also a powerful metaphor for the American Jewish experience in the early part of the 20th century. So says Michael Chabon, and I believe him.

Batman. This story’s so good, so primal, that the many, many interpretations of “Which one’s the mask: Bruce Wayne or Batman?” and “What’s Batman’s mission?” — not to mention the many interpretations of Batman himself — have only made the core origin better. Unlike the origins for most superheroes with actual superpowers, Batman’s beginnings resonate because it’s easy for us to imagine ourselves and our reactions to a similar situation. Batman’s the ultimate DIY story.

The Fantastic Four. So sixties “bad science,” it’s almost “good science.” Who knew “cosmic rays” could be so flexible in their application?

Jewel. Teenaged Jessica Jones was about to tell nerdy Peter Parker how she loves him for him — only to get interrupted by a freak accident involving a radioactive spider. Then she gets into a freak accident of her own involving a truck of radioactive chemicals (a bit of origin detail stolen directly from Daredevil’s) which kills the rest of her family. She goes comatose, only to awaken when Galactus sets foot on Earth for the first time and the Silver Surfer flies by her window. You wouldn’t think a casserole of metacomic wink-wink would read that well, but it damn sure does. J.J. might actually be a character created this century that actually sticks around for awhile. If she’s not a Skrull.

Cyclops. OK, yes, mutant — that part’s not especially memorable at this point (though to be fair, Cyke was one of the original five X-Men, making him one of the first official Marvel mutants). But having young Scott Summers’ father shove Scott and his little brother out of a malfunctioning airplane, only to have the parachute strapped to Scott’s back catch fire, leading to a high-velocity crash into a forest, leading to massive head trauma for Scott (largely because Scott was protecting his brother from the impact), thereby causing him not to have any control over the optic blasts he develops when his mutant genes kick in as a teenager? Yeah, that’s an origin.

Iron Man. While Tony Stark’s unfortunately suffering from a bit of the “timeslide” too common to characters whose origins are rooted too deeply in a certain era (like the Punisher, Stark’s story was originally rooted in the Vietnam conflict), the basic details of his origin (war profiteer/inventor kidnapped, injured, builds super-powered armor for survival/escape) have stood up to time well, as the recent blockbuster flick displayed so well.