I don’t know how this has happened but in the last month, I’ve been able to complete two comic book runs and come closer to completing a third just by stopping by my LCS to see what they have in their “Fresh Friday” backstock bins (which, btw, is one of the most simple and best promotions. I’m coming in to get my books anyway, make me stay and flip through some short boxes of stuff you just got). Among those completed runs is Secret Origins, a book I started collecting about a decade ago when the store was at its former location and with its former name and I picked up a bunch of issues in one of those “fill a shortbox” sales.

These three issues had eluded me for a long time. I’m not entirely sure why because they’re not key issues by any means. I guess they’re just those back issues that will show up when you’ve got the “luck of the draw” during the bin diving. I may do a read-through of the entire series (I don’t have any plans to sell it, at least not in the near future) but for now I decided to just read these in order to finish things out.

I guess I’ll go from what I liked least to what I liked the most in this stack of books, even though all three of them were enjoyable. Issue #46 is an all-headquarters issue and features the origins of the original Justice League of America HQ, Titans Tower, and the original Legion of Super-Heroes HQ. I’d known the origin of Titans Tower for years because it first appeared in the opening issues of The New Teen Titans back in 1980 and its “origin” (conceived and overseen by Silas Stone, Cyborg’s father) was fleshed out in the Tales of the New Teen Titans miniseries a couple of years later. This more or less recaps that in what’s a typical fashion–the character recollects the events. The other two are taken from Silver Age stories and have the appropriate amount of goofiness (the Legion HQ is actually made from the body of someone who auditioned and sacrificed himself to become the HQ?), so it’s a fun but forgettable issue and it does make me wonder if they were starting to run out of characters to write about. I could go on about how this issue dropped the same month Legends of the Dark Knight #1 came out and issue #50 was the same month that Spider-Man #1 dropped, meaning that we were entering the Nineties and DC no longer needed to take stock of its post-Crisis universe, but that might be a whole other conversation.

Speaking of taking stock, if I rewind all the way back to issue #31, we have the origin of the Justice Society of America written by Roy Thomas with art by Michael Bair. Here, Thomas does what he did a number of times in All-Star Squadron in the early 1980s, which is adapt or “work into continuity” a story that had already been told. In this case, said story isn’t from the Golden Age but is an adaptation of the Bronze Age origin of the Justice Society as told by Paul Levitz and Joe Staton in DC Special #29. The plot is how the heroes of the time are brought together to stop Hitler’s efforts to invade both Britain and the United States while he wields the Spear of Destiny. Thomas stays faithful to his source material while working around the biggest difference between the two versions: in the DC Special issue, the Earth-2 Superman and Batman are part of the story and they do not exist in the post-Crisis DCU. It’s a great adaptation and it was fun to read each version back to back. I do have to say that I enjoy the original more, mostly because I love the way that Joe Staton drew the JSA. Bair’s art is really good in this, though, and if you can find this issue and the DC Special comic, I’d grab them.

Finally, my favorite of the three is issue #45, which tells the origin of Blackhawk as well as the new El Diablo. The latter hero had just debuted and this comic came out between issues #2 and 3 (and according to Mike’s Amazing World, seemed to be a “skip month” of some sort). I don’t really want to talk about the story because of the writer who wrote it (whom shall go unnamed), but I will say that Mike Parobeck did the artwork and it was great to see. Parobeck was one of those artists who was underappreciated at the time these books were coming out, at least in the Wizard-driven world of Nineties fanboys, and he was gone way too soon. So to see any of his work is a delight.

The Blackhawk story, though, is great. I’d collected and read Howard Chaykin’s prestige miniseries and was blown away by how good it was, especially since Blackhawk as a comic was a book I had only a little bit of experience with. I know that there’s an Action Comics Weekly story that comes after the miniseries and is part of the revival of the character as well, so I’ll have to find that. Anyway, Chaykin, Martin Pasko and Grant Miehm pick up where the series left off and fully establish the core group of characters that would be part of the long-running war comic. From there, Pasko and then Doug Moench would write a 16-issue series (plus an annual and a special) with art primarily by Rick Burchett (another solid artist from this era). I might want to grab that. And I realize that I didn’t talk much about the issue of Secret Origins itself, but I will say it’s my favorite because it has the feel of the Chaykin miniseries and also makes me want to read some more of this post-Crisis iteration of the character. Action Comics Weekly can be a pain in the ass to track down sometimes (I’ve got several issues with Nightwing and issue #614 is proving to be elusive. I may just try and grab all 41 of them if I see them on the very cheap at a con or something), and while I’m sure that I can get the 1989-1990 Blackhawk for reasonable prices, I have a feeling it’s another “luck of the draw” back issue bin book.

In all, I’m glad I was able to find these issues and complete this series. Much like Who’s Who and The History of the DC Universe, Secret Origins is a fun dive into the world of these comics and characters that I’ve loved reading for a long time and the 50 issues all have some real gems.

Keep, Sell, Donate, or Trash?

Keep the entire series.