Welcome back, nerd squad.
In today's list we are going to take a closer look at characters who don't play by the rules
of comics.
Most comic book characters have a story, a place they came from, where they grew up.
They have an explanation revolving around why they do what they do, that established
their philosophy on life.
All that good stuff.
Sometimes these origins also revolve around how they got their powers, often times that
event is what inspires our characters to perform heroic deeds or turn to a life of crime.
But not all characters come with this insight, this explanation.
Some characters are surrounded by more mystery, we don't know who they are or why they do
what they do.
We just know they do it.
Today we will be looking more closely as these mysterious characters in comic books as we
count down the top 10 comic book characters with no origins stories.
Alright, get ready to delve through some best kept secrets as we get counting.
10 Power Girl
So the interesting thing about Power Girl is we both know a lot about her character
and backstory but also nothing as it keeps evolving and changing and getting retconned.
She has been presented with a bunch of different backstories, none of which have seemed to
be able to stick, from an ancestor of Superman's and Supergirl's, to the Earth-Two version
of Supergirl, to being related to Atlantean sorcerer, Arion.
The comics even make fun of this scenario when Psycho-Pirate shows all of Power Girls
different origins to her, in an effort to make her insane.
9 Phantom Stranger
We know almost nothing about this heroes origins.
And I mean with a name like Phantom Stranger.
What would expect?
All of his suspected origins are pretty much tied to religion with one even presenting
him as a fallen angel refusing to take a side between heaven and hell and as such being
forced to chill on Earth for eternity.
Yet there is also one that poses that he is the last entity left at the end of the universe.
Scientists study this death of the universe and the Phantom Stranger comes to them, warning
them not to interfere.
He gives a part of himself to a scientist, causing a new universe to be born and he himself
to live on in the scientist who becomes the new Phantom Stranger.
The classic debate of science vs religion lives on in his mysterious origins.
8 Runner
You might start to notice a theme here, the older a character is, the more likely the
history of their origins are lost to time.
The same can be said for Runner.
He comes to us from Marvel and is said to belong to the Elders of the Universe.
If you are unfamiliar with the Elders of the Universe they are basically all heroes who
rumoured to have been around since the Big Bang and are virtually immortal.
They are survivors from other races who has lived an insanely long time.
Which is what makes controversy out of what we do know of Runner.
We know he is a member of the Elders, meaning he must be very old.
But he has also claimed that he is 5 billion years old.
That is pretty old but the Big Bang is said to have happened 13.7 billion years ago...
Which either means that Runner is a surprisingly young Elder or that he perhaps isn't one at
all.
7 Faora
Faora Hu-UI is a character we were first introduced to in Action Comics issue 471.
Created in the 70s, she is a villain who would later disappear from DC in the 80s after dying
but then almost immediately be reintroduced to us.
Every iteration of her since her first has had a more flushed out backstory but when
she was originally introduced she was a villain with no motive.
All we knew was the she was a criminal from the Phantom Zone was a "man-hater" that had
killed over 23 people and ran a concentration camp filled with Kryptonian slaves.
Why she felt this way about male Kyprtonians and created the concentration camp were reasons
that were never explored in her initial introduction.
Nor was much of her motive delved into for why she attacked metropolis.
6 Morg
One of the heralds of Galactus, Morg was a court executioner from an unknown planet.
Nothing is known of his life before he met Galactus but we know whatever it entailed
it made him very indifferent to the death of his planet.
He shows an air of defiance to Galactus in regards to his own personal demise that impresses
Galactus who makes him a his herald after suspecting Morg might be just what needs being
so amoral, after so many of his former heralds had suffered from a crisis of conscious in
serving him.
The Power Cosmic that Morg received from serving Galactus was the cause of his death three
times over.
5 Sky-Walker
This is a character who we get a brief glimpse of in Daredevil vol 1, issue 128.
Known only as Sky-Walker or Starron, a mysterious fellow who absorbs some cosmic energy so that
he can create star-steps and walk to his homeworld.
Which seems like a pretty intense idea, especially since he declares that from Earth his homeworld
is but a tiny pinpoint of light in our nighttime sky.
Which means it's pretty far away.
I'm all for getting in my daily steps but that seems like it would take awhile to walk.
Even stranger, he says that he must get home to his love who is presumably on his homeworld
yet he also says he was born on Earth and has lived here for 600 years but that it is
not really his home.
And the planet he has never visited is more home to him than earth.
Unless his love is also his home planet and they are one in the same?
I don't know.
We never see this character again in the comics, leaving so many questions unanswered.
4 Stranger
I don't know exactly why but aliens plus Marvel usually equals mystery.
Such is again the case for this mysterious character, Stranger who is known as a Beyonder
in the comics.
Nothing is known of his backstory truly as nothing has been solidified in the comics.
Stranger mostly wanders around being an awesomely powerful cosmic being who consistently bumps
into other beings in the Marvelverse both on earth and in the cosmos, leading him to
pop in a quite few stories.
He has interacted with Thor, the X-Men, Adam Warlock and the Eternals.
More notably he created the living planet, Ego and was the person behind Battleworld
when he adopted the mantle Beyonder, pitting Marvel characters against one another and
making them fight.
3 The Skeleton
This DC villain was rumoured to be connected to Batman.
The Skeleton first appeared in Batman: Gotham City Secret Files and Origins issue #1.
Unfortunately the writer who created them left and this character was never able to
be fully developed.
All we knew about their backstory was that he was someone who claimed he had known Bruce
Wayne from a young age and under the guise of Skeleton was plotting to take him down.
The gender of the Skeleton was also never even confirmed as this villain could adopt
the identity any other villain they so choose, thereby keeping their true identity very secret.
We'll probably never get to know who this character is or why they were so determined
to defeat the Bat.
2 Deadpool
While we may have a pretty clear story when it comes to how Wade Wilson got his powers,
his origins beyond that is a little muddled.
Wade seems to struggle to actually know who his parents were or where he came from often
going back and forth between two stories.
One of his potential childhood origins involves a mother who was addicted to shopping channels
after his father left abandoned them.
Wade apparently ran away from home so his mother wouldn't have two spend her money on
him.
We are also shown a family home that he supposedly left in Canada with his parents still living
there and his room empty but it is unknown if this is even his real origins or not as
Wade seems unable to recognize it.
1 The Joker
Probably a character who has had the most origins stories ever.
The Joker has before expressed that if he has to have an origins story, he would prefer
it to be multiple choice.
He has been presented as a character who turned to villainy after one real bad day.
In the Killing Joke, he's presented as a failing comedian with a pregnant wife to support,
who helps a team of criminals in order to support his wife and their unborn child.
While the crime is taking place; however, he is told that his wife and child have died.
Distraught, he tries to get out of playing his part, which involves him standing in as
a mock version of supervillain Red Hood but it doesn't work.
When the Bat appears he panics and falls into a vat that leaves him disfigured with his
skin bleached white and his hair turned green and this bad drives him to madness and chaos.
Most of his origins involve him appearing as the Red Hood and falling into the vat but
beyond that his origins varies dramatically.
In House of Hush, he is a young foster boy who was kidnapped by a criminal gang after
his part in their criminal plot was put to an end by the Wayne Medical Research team.
He was kept abused and molested once he disappeared and later got revenge on the man behind his
abuse years later as the Joker.
And beyond that there are many many more origins story for the famed villain.
Thank you so much for watching, nerd squad.
I hope you learned as much as you could about the origins of these characters, mostly that
they don't formerly exist.
Or that they exist in too many forms for us to know which one is true.
Who is your favourite character of mystery in comics?
What origins stories would you give to some of the unknown characters on this list?
How do you feel about comicbook origins stories in general?
Do you think they are necessary?
Let us know in the comments below.
And while you are on your way down to the comments remember to subscribe, like, share
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This has been top 10 nerd and my name is Amanda McKnight, reminding you as always to stay
nerdy, YouTube.