I love the first two years of Arak because of that! But then the cramming became sort of obvious. “Oh, look, Sheherazade and Sinbad the sailor, barely disguised!”

A slightly more recent favorite origin of mine is Moondragon’s, which involves a training part sci-fi and part spiritual (Daredevil #105, November 1973):

My interpretation was the craft coincidentally saw Heather just after the crash, though I could still totally understand that interpretation.

Anyway, felt like mentioning the Vision, whose origin I find more interesting than the Silver Age Vision’s:

I think some details had changed, but what is usually said to have been Thanos’ past is that his mother was shocked with him and tried to kill him. He raises children of his own, but feel unfulfilled, and it’s when he develops a fascination with death and tries to impress the embodiment of Death that he kills them. He then gathers armies which leads to even more killings.

Moon Knight’s origin from Moon Knight #1 (November, 1980), which could be summed up as a combination of Batman and the Spectre, but perhaps that’s oversimplifying it, considering the Egyptian mythology and multiple identities and all.

Going back to the Spectre for a moment, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that while many 1940s hero origins could be accused of being too “of its time,” I think there’s probably a fair argument to be made that the Spectre’s origin is too ahead of its time, considering how it invokes concepts such as spirituality, divine intervention, God, and so on and so forth. It can seem pretty simple when one explains it like “a spirit comes back from the dead to avenge someone,” and Siegel himself probably thought of it in basic terms as well, but how he frames the entire thing could still definitely invoke more than what he might have originally intended like I mentioned, and that most writers of the time probably either couldn’t fully wrap their heads around it or flesh it out in such a way that they do it justice. In that respect, he’s probably more at home being better served post-crisis than he ever was pre-crisis.

In regards to cowboy characters, I find it interesting that Jonah Hex seems to widely be celebrated as a hero, even by respectable comic book fans, even though part of his origin involves him being a soldier for the slave-driving, greedy, selfish agenda-driven Confederacy. I suppose that’s a sign of good writing and character development (Weird Western Tales #29, July 1975).