On 1989's Secret Origins #44

As you're probably already well aware, one of the next movies based on a DC Comics character is going to be Clayface, currently scheduled for an October release. It doesn't strike me as a very good idea, as a solo film starring a C-list villain of an A-list superhero suggests 2022's Morbius to me. But then, no one asked me...and I think it's safe to assume that James Gunn knows more about making movies than I do. 

Now, movies based on Big Two comics characters tend to influence the publishers in two ways. First, it generally gooses them to collect comics starring that character to release in trade to potential new readers inspired to seek out said characters' comics origins. Second, it can lead to the publisher commissioning new comics starring that character. 

I was thinking the other day about the former in regards to Clayface, a character—well, a whole group of characters who share the same name—who doesn't really have all that many classic storylines for DC mine for trade paperback fodder. 

In fact, they've already published two comics for the mainstream, beyond-the-comics-shop market, 2017's Batman Arkham: Clayface, a collection of 14 stories published between 1940 and 2013 starring at least a half-dozen different Clayfaces, and 2023's Batman—One Bad Day: Clayface, a Killing Joke-inspired original graphic novel starring what has become the most popular and default version of the character, actor Basil Karlo-with-Matt Hagen's-powers. (In what I think is probably telling regarding the Clayface character/s status in Batman's rogues galleries, these books aren't unique to him; a whole bunch of Batman villains have their own Batman Arkham anthology collections and Batman—One Bad Day OGNs.)

When thinking of Clayface comics DC could collect in the hopes of the existence of Clayface-curious demand this fall, the one story arc that came to mind was 1989's "The Mud Pack", a four-part Detective Comics epic by the creative team of Alan Grant, Norm Breyfogle and Steve Mitchell (One of the best creative teams to ever tackle the Dark Knight).

Here, let's look at the covers:

This is basically the ultimate Clayface story, starring all four of the Batman villains to bear that name up until that point kinda sorta teaming up: Clayface Basil Karlo, a horror actor turned murderer who wore a clay mask; Clayface II Matt Hagen, a thief who discovered a radioactive pool in a pool that gave him the ability to change shape; Clayface III Preston Payne, a madman whose body would melt away like candle wax if not encased in a special suit and whose deadly, burning touch can reduce his victims to formless protoplasm; and Lady Clayface Sondra Fuller, who was given shape-changing powers similar to Hagen by Kobra in an issue of The Outsiders. (I say "kinda sorta" only because Hagen is, at that point, dead, and didn't have much choice over whether Karlo propped his remains up at the meeting table or not). 

In the end, Karlo manages to turn himself into the ultimate Clayface, assuming the powers of all of the other Clayfaces for his own, while the other living Clayfaces are kinda sorta written off.

I don't recall seeing a whole lot of any of the Clayfaces between this story's publication and the 2011 New 52 relaunch, an issue or two appearance aside. In the new New 52 continuity, thatwhole history and legacy of the Clayfaces was done away with, and DC basically just smooshed Karlo and Hagen into a single character, following the lead of Batman: The Animated Series, in which the sole Clayface had Hagen's comic book powers, but was, like Karlo, an actor. (That episode, by the way, aired in 1992, and I suppose therefore owes something to Grant's "Mud Pack", which first blended the actor Clayface with the shape-shifting Clayface). 

Batman: The Animated Series is probably the most influential Clayface story; for most comic book appearances of a Clayface to follow, he resembled the design seen in the cartoon. 

Anyway, if DC Comics wanted to publish a trade featuring a big Clayface story, "The Mud Pack" is pretty much all they've got, if you ask me (Do correct me if you have other suggestions, though!). Of course, they have published "The Mud Pack" in collected form before, in 2015's Legends of The Dark Knight: Norm Breyfogle Vol. 1 and 2021's Batman: The Dark Knight Detective Vol. 4, but not as a standalone story, one that would be visibly a Clayface story rather than a Batman one, you know?

Of course, "The Mud Pack" is only 88-pages along...is that maybe not enough for a trade? Well, luckily, there is a tie-in that could help fill out some trade paperback pages, 1989's Secret Origins #44, a special, all-Clayface issue published in conjunction with Detective's "Mud Pack" storyline. (Other candidates? In 1994, Grant checked back in with Clayface III and Lady Clayface in a Bret Blevins-drawn two-parter in Shadow of the Bat #26 and #27, and then in 1998 Grant and pencil artist Mark Buckingham had "Ultimate" Clayface Basil Karlo return for the first time since "The Mud Pack" in Shadow of The Bat #75).

I didn't expect to be able to find Secret Origins #44. I've been fairly fascinated with that series lately (as you may have noticed from my posts on stories from it featuring Detective Chimp and company, Rex the Wonder Dog and the Justice League of America), and have found myself increasingly wishing DC would collect (I think a couple of DC Finest collections would be perfect, DC). 

But to my surprise, DC did actually already collect issue #44 though, in the pages of the aforementioned Batman Arkham: Clayface. "Mud Pack" proper isn't in there—I assumed due to its length, as the Arkham collections obviously favor shorter stories, although they do include the four-part "The Shape of Things to Come" from Batman: Gotham Knights circa 2005, starring Clayface V—but the Secret Origins issue is.

I was particularly surprised to see this was the case, as it retold the origins of Clayfaces I-III...and the original origins are also collected in the Arkham trade. Still, I'm not complaining! Not only did it finally allow me to read a tie-in to "The Mud Pack" (although it's tangential at best, and totally unnecessary to understanding and enjoying the arc), but it features some extremely interesting artwork, from Keith Giffen and Bernie Mireault (!!!), plus Tom Grummet, who's not exactly a slouch.

So, after like 14 paragraphs of preface, let's take a look at the actual issue, shall we...?

The first fourteen pages are devoted to the origin of Basil Karlo, as retold by writer Mike Barr, pencil artist Giffen and inker Al Gordon.

The shape-changing Lady Clayface uses her powers to infiltrate Arkham Asylum, where the now elderly Karlo is in a hospital style bed with IVs and other medical apparatus all around him. 

"You're the one they call 'Clayface'--the first one, aren't you!"  she demands. "Why do you care?" he replies, and she responds, "I'll tell you--if you first tell me why they call you 'Clayface.'"

He then launches into his story, a 12-page retelling of 1940's "The Murders of Clayface" by Bill Finger, Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson, which, as I said, is also included in this Arkham collection (At least, that's what the credits in the table of contents say! I can't personally vouch for how much Kane actually drew of it!).

Barr and Giffen stick fairly close to the original, although it's quite a bit of fun to flip back and forth, and to compare and contrast various aspects of a Batman story in 1940 vs. 1989, where the plot is so similar, and you can see things like, say, how Kane/Robinson might have drawn Robin leaping feet-first at the murderer, or how Golden Age Batman varies from late-eighties Batman or just how different Julie Madison looks between the two eras:

Aside from the one-page prologue and epilogue set in the present and the opening splash, the entire story is broken into strict, six-panel grids, and it's quite fun to see Giffen's post-Dark Knight Returns take on Batman here. He's a big, boxy, perpetually shadowed shape of a man, the only details emerging from the blackness that seems to always fall across him are his furrowed brows, narrow white eyes and a bright yellow bat-symbol (Even when he's out of costume and presenting as Bruce Wayne, he's huge and boxy, sort of like a Dick Sprang Batman/Bruce Wayne as filtered through Frank Miller's style). 

(Among my favorite images are a long-shot of the Dynamic Duo swinging on their bat-ropes in front of a big, full moon, where they look more like talking capes than human beings.)

On the final page, Karlo raves a bit about his intention to avenge himself against Batman, and his visitor reveals herself: "My real name doesn't matter! You can call me the new Clayface!" She spends two panels relaying her origins, an asterisk telling us she is referring to Outsiders #22. Karlo asks her to free him, she refuses and departs, and, left alone in the dark again, Karlo tells himself, "The Batman has not seen the last of me...nor have you."

I guess it's the exchange here that most directly ties into "The Mud Pack"...although I guess knowing the origins of all the players would have been helpful going into Grant's story arc.

A turn of the page takes us to "The Tragic Though Amusing History of Clayface II", written by Dan Raspler, penciled by "BEM 89" and inked by Dennis Roider. 

It was this story that most interested me in checking this issue of Secret Origins out, as I was eager to see Mireault playing in the DC Universe again (Mireault is the creator of The Jam, collaborated with Mike Allred on Madman comics and Matt Wagner on Grendel comics, and also illustrated the "When Is a Door?' story in Secret Origins Special #1; written by Neil Gaiman*, it was a great last, ultimate Riddler story, and though obviously the character has been in fairly constant circulation since, I think it would have been a fine story to retire him after). 

Raspler and Mireault's story is played as a comedy, something helped tremendously by Mirelaut's cartooning, which gives this technically-still-a-superhero story the look and feel of an underground comic.

"Lucky" Matt Hagen seeks out sunken treasure, and finds a chest full of little pots of "oily, mucus-like stuff". When he departs for the surface, he accidentally swims into a rocky out-cropping, only to discover, with a "SPURB!!" sound effect, that he has been irrevocably changed!

It takes him about three pages and a failed suicide attempt, but he soon realizes he can regenerate his own head, he is now bullet-proof, and he can change shape. 

Naturally, he turns to a life crime in Gotham City and thus begins his career as a Batman villain. The World's Greatest Detective often catches him, but Hagen's powers and ability to survive pretty much anything keeps him coming back again and again.

Then comes Crisis on Infinite Earths, which Mireault draws like this—

—where Hagen finally meets his end, when a Shadow Demon flies through him, killing him with a "BLOOOSH!". (This story has some pretty great sound effects). 

And that's pretty much the end of Hagen...although, in the final panels, we see Karlo collecting Hagen's remains, which will be integral to the plot of "The Mud Pack".

Finally, we get to "His Name is Clayface III", by writer Len Wein (who had created this Clayface in a 1978 issue of Detective Comics) and artists Tom Grummett and Gary Martin.  While I never read Wein's original story starring Preston Payne (although it is collected in this Arkham book), I was fairly familiar with this particular Clayface's powers, look and particular brand of madness (talking to a mannequin, with which he seems to have a romantic relationship), as he was a fairly frequent cameo in Batman comics that featured scenes in Arkham Asylum in the 1980s.

Here, he sits in an Arkham cell in an easy chair with his mannequin, holding a copy of TV Guide and watching the television in front of him. They watch an episode of the show The Notorious, hosted by Jack Ryder, which is apparently a documentary series featuring criminals. 

This episode features him, but, unimpressed with the five-panels detailing his criminal career, he then tells his mannequin mate his origin in his own words. A genius scientist who suffers from acromegaly, he seeks a cure via Matt Hagen's blood. It works, allowing him to reform his deformed face into that of a very handsome man...but its efficacy is short-lived.

Soon his face starts to melt, and when he grabs his screaming date, she too melts away. Going forward, a burning pain will build up in his body, and the only way to temporarily relieve it is by touching and thus melting a victim. While Batman doesn't appear beyond a single-panel cameo, the serial-killing obviously made him an enemy of Batman's, and the whole experience seemed to drive him mad.

Aside from constantly ranting to a mannequin, the last panel reveals that there's not actually anything playing on his TV set, just static, and everything else seems to be in his head.

I really like Grummett's art, and his is like a Platonic ideal of superhero comic art, although in the context of this particular issue, it seems a little plain and even bland, given how distinct Giffen and Mireault's contributions are.

***************************

Ironically, the Clayfaces relatively minor position in the hierarchy of Batman villains make them well-suited to a collection like Batman Arkham: Clayface, which featured a cover by artist Guillem March (Which originally appeared on 2013's Batman: The Dark Knight #23.3; though it features The New 52 Basil Karlo Clayface, note that the design is clearly inspired by that of Batman: The Animated Series' Matt Hagen). 

I didn't read the whole collection, just the new stories that interested me (a few of the stories within are ones that I had read elsewhere before). As I said before, it features the first appearances of most of the Clayfaces, and there's a handful of really great artists whose work appears here. 

What then will you find, beyond Secret Origins #40...? 

•The first Clayface story from 1940, which I mentioned above.

•1961's "The Challenge of Clay-Face" by Bill Finger, Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris, introducing Matt Hagen (and, through him, the concept of the shape-changing Clayfaces).

•1978's Detective Comics #478 and #479 by Len Wein, Marshall Rogers and Dick Giordano, introducing Clayface III.

•1987's Outsiders #21 by Mike Barr and Jim Aparo, introducing Lady Clayface and some even goofier villains, sicced on Batman, Metamorpho, Black Lightning and the goofballs that filled out the ranks of the Outsiders by the supervillain Kobra.

•1998's Batman #550 by writer Doug Moench, with pencil art divided between then regular Batman artist Kelley Jones and J.H. Williams III. This issue's Clayface was Clayface IV, Cassisus, the son of Clayface III and Lady Clayface. Jones was obviously well-suited to the body horror aspects of a Clayface (in the scene above, this Clayface uses the people-melting power inherited from his father to melt a policeman) and as for Williams' presence, well, he was drawing the upcoming Chase ongoing series, which this issue was a lead-in for. In fact, this issue is the first appearance of Cameron Chase and the Department of Extranormal Operations.

•2002's Catwoman #4 by Ed Brubaker, Darwyn Cooke and Mike Allred, pitting the Feline Fatale against an all-new Clayface, this one created in a military experiment. I think this would be Clayface V...unless you count Lady Clayface as Clayface IV, in which case he's Clayface VI...? At this point, I think it's safe to say there are officially too many Clayfaces.

•"If a Man be Clay!", a story by Steve Purcell, Mike Mignola and Kevin Nowlan, that was originally published in 2005's Batman Villains Secret Files and Origins #1 and featured Batman and the original Robin taking on Matt Hagen for the first time. From what I understand, this one was sitting in a drawer for a while, but was rescued to be published here...and why wouldn't DC rescue it...? It was Mignola drawing the shape-changing Hagen! Though it follows the plot of "The Challenge of Clay-Face" closely, and contains much of the same imagery, it's great fun to see those scenes drawn in Mignola's moody style, particularly with Nowlan's evocative inking.

•The aforementioned "The Shape of Things to Come" from Gotham Knights, by A.J. Lieberman, Al Barrionuevo and Bit. I didn't read this one, either when it was originally published (I had dropped Gotham Knights by that point) nor in this collection, but it apparently features the Johnny Williams Clayface, the one previously seen in Catwoman.  Also, Hush is in this one. 

•2013's "Not Just Another Pretty Face" by John Layman and Cliff Richards, from Batman: The Dark Knight #23.3, the previously mentioned comic from which the collection's cover is taken. It seems to star the New 52 Basil Karlo.

So, to review, this collection features art by Bernie Mireault, Kelly Jones, Darwyn Cooke and Mike Mignola, plus Sheldon Moldoff, Marshall Rogers, Jim Aparo, Keith Giffen and Tom Grummett. That's not bad company to spend time in...!

*Yeah, him again. This then is another comic now more or less ruined by the presence of Gaiman's credit, his recently revealed actions tainting all of the quality work he helped produce over the decades of his comics career. 

The Justice Society vs. Hitler and The Spear of Destiny, post-Crisis: On 1988's Secret Origins #31

In 1988's Secret Origins #32, the creative team retold a previous comic story, keeping the plot basically intact, the only changes being those made to realign it with then-current, post-Crisis continuity and to use more modern storytelling techniques. Well, that, and the changes that are natural when different writers and artists tackle the same story, as their various styles inevitably affect the result. 

In that particular case, it was Keith Giffen, Peter David and Eric Shanower retelling the Justice League's origin story from the pages of 1962's Justice League of America #9. (I wrote about that story in this recent post.)

The previous issue, Secret Origins #31, did the same, only for the Justice Society's origin story. In this case, the creative team consisted of Roy Thomas, Michael Bair and Bob Downs, and they were retelling a story of much more recent vintage: Paul Levitz, Joe Staton and Bob Layton's "Untold Origin of The Justice Society" from 1977's DC Special #29 (The subject of the previous post).

As with the Secret Origins retelling of the Silver Age JLoA story, it's interesting, even fascinating to read the comics back-to-back, as doing so accentuates the stylistic decisions the creators make, including how to present the events, how to stage them, how to design the characters and otherwise tweak them. I was able to do so because DC Special #29 was collected in 2006's Justice Society Vol. 1, while Thomas and company's Secret Origins #31 was collected in 2017's Last Days of the Justice Society of America, both of which my local library system still have on their shelves. 

Now, Levitz's "Untold Origin" was published pre-Crisis, and was thus set on Earth-2, and included the Golden Age Superman and Golden Age Batman in the adventure alongside the eight original members of the Justice Society. Thomas' was post-Crisis and thus set on the then still new-ish Earth with its new history. 

The most immediately apparent change then is that Superman and Batman have been eliminated from the proceedings. Batman doesn't do a whole hell of a lot in the original story, and so Thomas doesn't replace him with anyone else; instead, rather than having The Flash, Green Lantern and Batman embark on a mission to Scotland to take out the advance men for a Nazi invasion of England, Thomas simply has the first two go.

As for Superman, he has less panel-time than the Dark Knight in Levitz's story but plays a bigger role overall. He shows up at the climax to destroy a Nazi bomber before it can drop its payload on Washington, D.C. and he then grabs a Valkyrie who has targeted President Franklin Roosevelt, at which point she disappears. It is also Superman who rejects the idea of the heroes forming some kind of battalion within the U.S. armed forces and comes up with the name "Justice Society of America."

Here, Thomas has Green Lantern using his ring to destroy the bomber. The bit with the Valkyrie menacing Roosevelt goes quite differently without Superman there, which we will get to in a moment. And as for the decision to form the Justice Society, here it is The Spectre who rejects Hawkman's proposal of a "super-battalion" ("battalion" is here spelled correctly, in contrast to the same scene from DC Special #29) and then comes up with the team's name. 

Thomas also explains a few things that didn't really make sense in Levitz's story. He explains why Green Lantern and The Flash aren't able to use their powers to escape their bonds after being captured by the Nazis during their mission ("Still dizzy--from the drugs Streicher gave us--couldn't use my ring before!" Green lantern says as Doctor Fate and Hourman arrive to rescue them). He explains why Fate doesn't immediately take down Hitler upon his arrival ("For all my power, I cannot attack Hitler while he holds The Spear of Destiny--", Fate tells the others). And he explains how it is that the Nazi long-range bomber seems to get all the way across the Atlantic and over D.C. so quickly; in the original story, Levitz seemed to suggest that the superheroes battled the Valkyries the entirety of the trip, whereas here that trip is almost instantaneous, with Green Lantern remarking that the journey was made supernaturally shorter ("Hitler's spear did it!" he cries. "That's the only answer!)

The biggest change comes at the end, which the creators add several pages to. Without Superman there to stop the Valkyrie who had targeted Roosevelt—who Thomas gives a name to, Gudra—she is free to continue her attack after zapping The Atom. In fact, she succeeds in killing Roosevelt.

The heroes mourn for a panel or two, with Fate saying that even his great power has never been able "to bring a man back from the far side of death", but The Spectre says he's going to try anyway. He disappears from the White House and journeys like a humanoid comet through bizarre backgrounds, finally declaring "I have pierced the veil!"

And The Spectre finds Roosevelt in a line of humans wearing pink-ish purple robes, "wandering toward a vision of blinding light," and The Spectre then announces, "I must speak with the one who decreed that JIM CORRIGAN should walk the world, an undead SPECTRE!"

Who, exactly, was that...? Thomas was equivocal here, as was the case at that point in The Spectre's history. This is, presumably, the mysterious entity referred to as "The Voice." Indeed, The Spectre is answered by a voice, communicating with him in big, bold, red, disembodied letters that emanate red rings.

This is, presumably, God himself, although Thomas, like creators before him, doesn't come out and say this exactly, as heavily as it is implied.

The Spectre and Voice argue a bit, and when the latter refuses to allow Roosevelt to return to life, The Spectre raises his hands against The Voice. The Spectre is powerless against The Voice, of course, but, noting The Spectre's tears, The Voice proceeds to show The Spectre the future, in which Roosevelt is destined to die soon anyway, after a few years of the world at war. Giving The Spectre the choice of whether it is worth resurrecting the president or not knowing all of this, The Spectre says that is still his wish, and so Roosevelt is restored to life, everyone but The Spectre a little confused as to what just happened.

The other changes to the story are more-or-less matters of style. Thomas is, perhaps unsurprisingly, much more wordy here than Levitz was, and he fills his narration and dialogue with references to real-world history, more closely tying the events of this superhero adventure to those of 1940. He also offers quite a bit more characterization, allowing us to see more of the heroes' thoughts and to hear them engaged in more revealing dialogue, seemingly noting the momentous nature of this story, as it involves the first meetings of the various heroes who would go on to spend so much of their careers together. 

Bair and Downs' art is much more realistic than that of Staton and Layton. I'm not sure which approach I prefer, but, if pressed, I think I would choose the latter team's, as it looks so much more "comic book-y." Bair and Downs' work is much more appropriate for this version of the story, though; certainly their Roosevelt, for example, looks more like the guy I've seen picture of than Staton and Layton's more cartoony take. 

Interestingly, the artists hew quite closely to one of the previous art team's designs, like that of the big green robot in the Nazi castle that Flash and Green Lantern battle (Here Thomas gives it a German name, the "mordmaschine--or, as you Americans would say-- --THE MURDER MACHINE!"), while doing their own thing with other elements, like the Valkyries, which here wear armor and winged helmets, looking more opera than Staton's more superheroic looking versions.

Bair also draws a lot of cooler magical effects when it comes to The Spectre and Fate, and I prefer the energy orbs the latter sends to scoop up Hawkman, The Atom and The Sandman to the energy tendrils that Staton drew in the earlier story. 

Oh, and speaking of Hawkman, Bair gives him the appropriate helmet here, the one with the weird screaming bird face, with the open beak and tongue obscuring his human face.

As for the Spear of Destiny, the reason I got interested in these stories in the first place...? 

Well, as noted, Thomas has Fate explain that he can't attack Hitler while he holds the spear and, on the following page, after Hitler inadvertently summons the Valkyries, Green Lantern seems to make a move toward Hitler, but the Fuhrer shouts "Keep back, Amerikanen!", and the tip of the spear glows with pink energy and Kirby dots, a barrier of fire appearing between Hitler and the heroes.

The exact nature of its effect on the superheroes isn't delineated here then, but it is at least clear that it protects Hitler from them while he's holding it. I suppose future stories will further explain how it kept the Justice Society off the frontlines, even though here we see Doctor Fate, at least, able to enter Berlin itself, with Hourman in tow.

The particular trade I found this story in, the aforementioned Last Days of the Justice Society of America, is also filled with the title comic, and stories from the pages of Secret Origins devoted to new tellings of the origins of Golden Age heroes The Sandman, The Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, The Flash, Hawkman, Johnny Thunder, The Spectre, Hourman, Green Lantern, Doctor Mid-Nite, Doctor Fate and The Atom, all written by Thomas. We'll take a look at those stories in the near-ish future.

Two Justice League stories of note from the pages of Secret Origins

I wish DC Comics would get around to collecting the 50-issue, 1986-1990 Secret Origins series, perhaps in an omnibus or two, or a couple of DC Finest collections. And I hope they do so before I manage to track down all of the issues of interest to me before I find them in back-issue bins or on Comixology. (Oh, and I just found that a bunch of the stories featuring Golden Age heroes collected in 2017's Last Days of the Justice Society of America trade.)

I recently read two issues, 1988's Secret Origins #32 and 1989's Secret Origins #46, both of which feature stories starring the founding members of the Justice League of America...or at least the post-Crisis founders, meaning that Black Canary had replaced Wonder Woman in the line-up (This version of the team is the one that starred in Mark Waid, Brian Augustyn and Barry Kitson's 1998 maxi-series JLA: Year One; it was the canonical original line-up between 1985-1986's Crisis On Infinite Earths, which removed Wonder Woman as a founder during the publisher's first major continuity rejiggering, and 2005-2006's Infinite Crisis, which restored her status as a founder). 

Now, one of the things that fascinates me about this volume of Secret Origins is the covers, which more often than not depict the characters whose origins are featured within interacting in some way, even though they do not actually do so within. This often means the covers suggest unlikely team-ups, like Adam Strange and Doctor Occult or Black Lightning and Miss America, or unlikely match-ups, like Green Lantern and Poison Ivy or Animal Man and Man-Bat. My favorite is, of course, is Ty Templeton's cover for Secret Origins #30, depicting a Plastic Man/Elongated Man meeting of sorts.

Because of this, I expected Secret Origins #32 to contain origin stories for both the original Justice League of America and the Justice League International, given that both teams were on the cover. As it turns out, however, the entirety of the issue is filled with a 38-page origin for the JLoA, and the JLI is limited to the cover appearance*. 

The story, entitled "All Together Now", is the work of Keith Giffen, Peter David and Eric Shanower, providing the plot, the dialogue and the art, respectively. Gardner Fox also gets a credit for "Story", as this story is a retelling of he and Mike Sekowsky's 1962 Justice League of America #9. 

In Gardner's original, Snapper Carr arrives at the Happy Harbor headquarters to find the Leaguers preparing for a party to celebrate the anniversary of the team's founding, and they relate their first case to him, in which they faced off against bizarre alien creatures from the planet Apellax, each of which was wildly different from the next, and had the strange ability to transform victims into the same material as them (stone, wood, mercury, yellow bird, etc.)

In the Secret Origins version, this adventure isn't presented as a story within a story, but simply as a story. It opens on Apellax with the same basic backstory, although in this version the Apellaxians are all more-or-less identical, and the strange shapes they take on Earth are presented as special "battle forms." 

Each of these end up encountering a different superhero, the five on the monitor on the cover. These five heroes all convene at the site of a sixth Apellaxian, and work together to defeat it. There is a seventh one that Superman deals with, although he does so off panel, and he himself is barely in the story.

The main difference here is that Black Canary has replaced Wonder Woman, of course, and that Batman, who only plays a very minor role in Fox's story, is completely MIA. Giffen also switches the alien battle forms around a bit. Here Aquaman fights a mercury creature rather than a glass one, while Canary fights the glass creature rather that the mercury one that Wonder Woman had originally fought. This is presumably because Black Canary's canary cry power is a good fit for fighting a shatter-able glass creature.

Interestingly, David's script, most of which involves the heroes thinking or talking to themselves, has each character express the desire for allies of some kind at one point or another. 

"It would be so nice to have friends, comrades, who I know would accept me as I am," Martian Manhunter thinks while assuming his green-skinned form and flying away from the police station he works at in his disguise as human being John Jones. 

"Speaking as a newcomer, I'd love the idea of working with more experienced people," Black Canary tells the others on the penultimate page. (This adventure apparently occurs during her very first patrol as the new Black Canary; that's a heck of a first day on the job.)

Aside from the way the story rewrites a classic one from decades prior, this story is mostly of interest because of Shanower's superior artwork. It's as stately as that of Sekowsky, but much more realistic while also being a great deal more dynamic.

Shanower shows a particular facility for expressions, and there are several panels I lingered over just to admire the way he showed, say, Hal Jordan reaction when he realizes his opponent is yellow, or J'onn J'onnz pondering the reaction of civilians who lay eyes on him in his Martian form, or Flash slapping himself on the forehead when he realizes something. 

It's really some of the best Justice League art I've ever seen.

A few more things seem worth noting. In the original, after they defeat the wood Apellaxian, the heroes all travel to Greenland, where Superman and Batman are fighting a diamond Apellaxian. There, Batman suggests they form "a club or society", to which Flash responds, "A league against evil! Our purpose will be to uphold justice against whatever danger threatens it!"

Here, the heroes learn that there is a final Apellaxian in Antarctica, and arrive to find Superman dusting off his hands while standing above what looks like a pile of ashes, having apparently just defeated the alien. As they approach the Man of Steel though, he takes off without ever even acknowledging them. David's thought balloons let us know what's going on inside his Kryptonian noggin:

Just my luck! Lois was about to give poor Clark a tumble--and suddenly I had to make excuses and fly off!

If I hurry, I might still be able to salvage this--

I guess the implication is that he is so distracted thinking about Lois that he doesn't notice the other superheroes over his shoulder, but I'm not sure I buy that. How does a guy with super-hearing and super-vision not notice the big green guy, Green Lantern, and three other colorfully dressed characters being towed in a big, glowing green orb...?

"He didn't even notice us!" Flash says in the panel after Superman departs. "Bet the 'S' stands for 'Snob.'" Aquaman defends Superman, though: "Oh ease off," he says. "He probably had something really cosmic on his mind."

Nope. He's just thinking about his work crush. 

The scene reads a bit awkwardly, and I imagine the story would be improved had Giffen just left Superman out of it entirely, given that the Man of Steel wasn't going to end up joining the others in forming the Justice League.

Instead, Green Lantern flies them back to a city, and Flash proposes they form a team, during which David makes what seems like a rather customary Peter David groaner of a joke:

On the final page, a splash, they settle on Justice League of America, and a broadly smiling Hal Jordan asks, "Do you think anyone else will join?" That's the image at the top of the post.

If you've never read this story before, do take a moment to scrutinize the heroes floating in the sky above, their presence apparently meant to answer Hal's question.

In addition to Batman, Green Arrow, The Atom and Snapper Car, we see the heroes who will join during the "Satellite Era" (Hawkman and Hawkgirl, Elongated Man, Zatanna, Red Tornado and Firestorm) and the "Detroit Era" (Steel, Vixen, Gypsy and Vibe). Even The Phantom Stranger, whose membership status has always been a bit equivocal, is pictured. 

As no one from the post-Legends League is up there, it seems clear that the creators have drawn a bright line between the Justice League of America and the Justice League International (Even if the JLI first appeared in a book called Justice League, before the book changed its name to Justice League International...and then changed it again to Justice League America).

There are two pretty notable characters missing: Superman and Wonder Woman. 

Given that Crisis changed continuity so that Diana didn't come to Man's World until right then, in the late 1980s, it of course makes sense that she's not there (I guess in the post-Crisis, pre-Infinite Crisis continuity, Wonder Woman didn't join the Justice League until 1989's JLI #24, after which she was on Justice League Europe for, what, one issue...? She would rejoin the League around 1993, though, and stick with the team until the JLA relaunch, during which she was of course a member).

And Superman? Well, I never read John Byrne's Superman comics, but based on this comic, it would appear Superman was never on the Justice League of America, at least in the post-Crisis, pre-Infinite Crisis continuity, and thus I guess he didn't actually join any incarnation of the Justice League until Dan Jurgens took over Justice League America in 1992...?

Oh, and if you're wondering what the current status of the Apellaxian invasion/founding of the Justice League is today, in 2026, after more continuity reboots than I can easily recall, well, according to Mark Waid's New History of the DC Universe, sometime after the events of Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's 2011-2012 Justice League #1-6, "The Justice League wasn't formalized as a team until a subsequent alien invasion from the planet Appellax caused J'onn J'onnz, a.k.a. Martian Manhunter, to step into the limelight and brought Dinah Lance, the Black Canary into play when she assumed the costumed identity of her mother." (The timeline in the back of the collection also places JLA: Year One in continuity, saying that Wonder Woman, like Batman and Superman, would rejoin the team sometime later, after its "formalized" founding).

This story has only been collected once, and so long ago that finding that collection probably isn't any easier than finding this issue. That collection was 1990's Secret Origins of the World's Greatest Super-Heroes trade paperback, with the extremely fun Brian Bolland cover showing Superman, Batman, The Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter, posing in the background in their heroic identities, while their civilian secret identities interact in the foreground. 

That trade, by the way, was 150 pages and sold for just $4.95, if you need a good reminder of how much things have changed since 1990. 

As for the JLoA story from Secret Origins #46, it is one of three from an interestingly thematic issue of the series, telling the origins of various superhero headquarters: The League's original Happy Harbor base, the Titans' T-shaped Titans Tower, and the Legion of Super-Heroes' original crashed rocket ship-looking base. 

I'm only going to address the Justice League story here, as that's the only one I've read so far (I have a hard time working up any interest at all in the Legion or this iteration of the Titans, even though I know the Marv Wolfman/George Perez run on the team is widely regarded as the best; I will point out that the Titans story features artwork by Vince Giarrano, which is in an entirely different style than that he employed during the '90s on Manhunter, various Batman comics and other works, more David Mazzucchelli than Rob Liefeld or Erik Larsen. Oh, and the LOSH story is the first appearance of Arm-Fall-Off-Boy, by the way). 

The thing that most interested me in this story was that it was written by Grant Morrison, and was thus Morrison's first Justice League story, written eight years before JLA. Prior to this, Morrison's only DC work was the earlier issues of Animal Man and Doom Patrol and Arkham Asylum. Members of the JLI made appearances in Animal Man and Doom Patrol (Buddy Baker was briefly in Justice League Europe, remember, and Blue Beetle and Booster Gold show up in Doom Patrol #28, with more heroes appearing in #29, cover dated after this issue of Secret Origins), but this was Morrison's first story in which the League were the featured characters. 

Morrison could hardly have asked for a better collaborator, as the artist for the story was the legendary Curt Swan, here inked and colored by George Freeman. The art is thus, unsurprisingly, gorgeous, and the Justice League has rarely looked better (Stylistically, Swan and Freeman's Justice League art is fairly similar to that of Shanower in the first Justice League story discussed in this post). 

The 14-page story opens with a splash page depicting a bizarre milieu: The Justice League battling their own costumes. The scene recalls classic, Silver Age DC Comics, like the team battling their own weapons on the cover of JLoA #53 or, more directly still, "The Battle Against the Bodiless Uniforms from JLoA #35 (The empty costumes also reminded me of The Invisible Destroyer from 1959's Showcase Presents #23).

After the title page's splash, we open in Central City, "Some years ago," where Barry Allen is literally pushing a particularly hot-looking Iris West out of his apartment while making a lame excuse; in reality, he's running late for "the first real meeting of the Justice League of America." 

Once his Flash costume pops out of his ring, however, it displays a quite creepy life of its own, pausing long enough to laugh "HA HA HA" and then streaking away at super-speed; Barry dons a spare costume and gives chase, following it to Rhode Island, where the rest of the nascent League is assembled, their similarly animated empty costumes encased in a green force bubble created by Green Lantern (All had spare costumes save Aquaman, who is there naked, except for a pair of black swim trunks; "This was the best I could manage," he shrugs. Hell, it works for Namor!).

The others fill Flash in on what's they have found out so far—namely that the costumes seem to be inhabited by alien minds that want something in the mountain—which saves time, as this is a rather short story. 

To find out what's going on inside the mountain that the aliens may be interested in, Flash plans to vibrate into it, but just before he can do so, the costumes break free of the force bubble, the Flash costume's yellow boots apparently kicking through it at super-speed.

Meanwhile, no sooner does Flash vibrate into the mountain than a mysterious voice, the same one that appears in sketchy blue boxes like the one that said "But first...tell me your story" on the opening splash, greets Flash and starts telling him its story.

This unfolds over eight horizontal panels across two pages, and the voice is apparently that of the mountain itself, speaking in purple, poetic dialogue of its origins in the Pre-Cambrian, and what followed over the millennia, a highlight of which is a strange alien vessel that disgorges even stranger aliens during dinosaur times.

Finally breaking free, Flash relays that the mountain is a sort of giant stone computer storing information that can be released via vibration, and he does so in what reads exactly like the sort of dialogue one could expect from the Morrison of the late-'90s. Morrison had apparently already found a distinct, even signature voice. 

The mystery solved, the team uses their powers to unlock visual memories of the aliens landing all those millions of years ago, the possessed costumes abandoning the fight to silently watch the images of their long-dead people. ("They've come here to pay their respects to their dead," Flash explains). 

As to why the aliens chose to inhabit the Leaguers' costumes, well, Morrison never gets to that. Nor is it explained why the Flash's costume has his super-speed powers.

The team obviously decides to make this mountain their headquarters, though, and the mountain again narrates, this time flashing forward to the League's time there, and noting that now, whenever "some small creature" passes through it, the animal will "unlock the lattice memory" within it, temporarily generating ghosts of the Justice League, the mountain's memories of their time within it replaying themselves.

I can't imagine what readers in 1989 might have thought of the story. Were they happy to see the "real" League again, after years of first the Detroit League and then the JLI? Were they irritated about the retconned version of the League, now absent Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman? Did they think Morrison's story clever and smartly written...or pretentious?

I don't know. I liked it. It essentially reads like a sci-fi ghost story tied to deep Justice League history, one that, as I noted, evokes the Silver Age while being told in a modern, more sophisticated style (itself a very Morrisonian thing). And, again, it's obviously gorgeous looking. 

Somewhat surprisingly, this story doesn't seem to have ever been collected anywhere, which is another good argument for DC to work on some sort of Secret Origins collection. 

*The founding of the JLI iteration of the Justice League the previous year was probably still new enough that there was no real reason to re-present its origins in this title. Notably though, the three issues that followed this issue were devoted to individual heroes from the JLI, three origins per issue. So, Mister Miracle, Green Flame (not yet Fire), Icemaiden (not yet Ice), Captain Atom, Rocket Red, G'Nort, Martian Manhunter, Max Lord and Booster Gold's origins were all told in Secret Origins #33-35, all of which featured connecting covers by pencil artist Jerry Ordway and inker Ty Templeton. As for JLI regulars Blue Beetle and Guy Garnder, their origins had already been told in Secret Origins #2 and #7, respectively.

The suspiciously familiar secret origin of Rex the Wonder Dog (From 1990's Secret Origins #48)

Rex the Wonder Dog first appeared in 1952's The Adventures of Rex The Wonder Dog #1. The cover featured the title character dragging an unconscious woman by the collar of her shirt, while an injured man grips a tree, urging him to get her to safety. Flames and smoke fill the background. In the lower right corner, there's a yellow box full of the following words: "Introducing a new hero--Rex the Wonder Dog in exciting stories of danger and courage!"

Was one of those exciting stories of danger and courage an origin for the wondrous dog? I don't know, as I have never read that comic. Nor have I read any of the Rex stories from the 45 issues of the title that followed before it was finally cancelled in 1959. That's not because I'm not interested in them, of course. I mean, look at those covers! Who wouldn't be interested? Rather, it's because DC has yet to see fit to collect and republish them, although I continue to hold out hope that they will do so before I die. 

If Rex never received an origin story in his own book—and he might not have, given that he seems to be a relatively normal dog, rather than masked and costumed person with superpowers—he did get one in 1990's Secret Origins #48, which the publisher might have greenlit because Rex was making a rather unexpected guest appearance in the pages of The Flash around then. 

The eight-page story was the work of writer Gerard Jones*, pencil artist Paris Cullins and inker Gary Martin, and it is entitled "The Birth of Rex the Wonder Dog." When it was originally published, it would have sounded awfully familiar to any comics readers familiar with Captain America. Read today, some 15 years after the release of Captain America: The First Avenger, it will likely sound awfully familiar with far more people (Although, having been written by Jones, chances are it won't be read today or at any point in the future, not unless you can find a copy of this comic in a back issue bin).

Jones isn't a bit shy about writing a Captain America parody for Rex's origin story, referring to the fact fairly directly at a few points, as in the panel above. (And, notably, Jones uses the word "wonder-soldier" repeatedly and interchangeably with what likely would have sounded more natural in either the 1940s of the setting or today—"Super-soldier".)

The mode is thus quite comedic, Jones and, one imagines, many of his readers finding the idea of a heroic dog with as many amazing feats to his name as Rex inherently funny...even if amazing dogs like Rin Tin Tin, Lassie or Green Lantern's pal Streak (who eventually earned top-billing over Alan Scott off the cover of All-American Comics# 99 in 1948) were a relatively prevalent in pop culture in the early- to mid-20th century. 

Cullins follows suit with highly cartoony art. As you can see in the first page of the story, at the top of the post, Cullins seems to both homage and lightly parody Golden Age comics, and his human characters after that first page are cartoonier still. 

Rex, for example, often thinks in terms of pictograms here (not unlike Mark Waid would have his Impulse regularly do later that decade), and when the scientist who developed the super-soldier serum, er, wonder-soldier serum is murdered, Cullins lets us know he's definitely dead by drawing crosses for his eyes (this, despite all the blood from his chest wound pretty clearly communicating that he wouldn't live to see the end of the strip).

Cullins' Rex also appears with a degree of heroic exaggeration in one panel, with his expressive black eyebrows and a toothy smile of white, human-looking cartoon teeth.

Lieutenant Dennis of Libertyville leaves his son Danny playing with his little white puppy Rex to attend a meeting at what he announces is "the secret lab" about "some new super-soldier project." 

There, a Dr. Anabolus explains with drawings how he has developed a wonder-serum that can turn 97-pound weaklings into Charles Atlas-like wonder-soldiers, which, once they made enough of them, would allow the Allies to wrap up the war quickly. The only catch is that the serum is untested, and he can't find an animal subject to test it on, as the U.S.O. is drafting and training "all the animals it can find" to entertain soldiers overseas. 

And obviously they can't go straight to human testing, as "Only a lunatic would test this on a human being fist."

Dennis volunteers his son's puppy, and soon he returns to the lab with Danny and Rex, passing an obvious Nazi spy posing as a guard on the way in ("Oh...oh, Ja ja! I am der new guard.") 

The puppy gets the shot, and he suddenly becomes a full-grown dog, one who Cullins gives bulging dog muscles. 

Also, Rex's thought balloons have now progressed from containing just pictures and symbols to sentences of dialogue. 

(While the story is obviously a comedy, I wonder if it's telling of where superhero comics were at that point that Jones seems to feel the need to explain Rex's wondrousness at all, here with a Captain America-like super-serum giving him enhanced physical and mental abilities, rather than just allowing for the fact that maybe Rex is just a particularly great dog capable of doing things like swinging on vines, riding horses, operating parachutes, fighting dinosaurs and the other feats seen on the covers of his book from the 1950s).

The Nazi who was posing as a guard then appears, replacing his American-style helmet with a German-style one, and he then shoots the doctor dead, next aiming his Luger at Danny. Rex leaps to the boy's defense, savagely but bloodlessly taking down the enemy agent. As with Timely/Marvel's Captain America then, here the special serum results in only one unique hero, rather than an entire army of them.

As Dennis, Dany and Rex walk off, the lieutenant makes an oddly specific prediction for what the future will hold for them:

Danny says that's a bunch of "hooey", but Rex, like the readers, knows better, and the last panel shows him winking at the reader like Clark Kent, the words "The Beginning" beneath it. 

*****************************

As long as I've got my hands on a copy of Secret Origins #48, I might as well discuss the rest of the comic, too. 

As you can see from the cover, Rex's secret origin was just one of four that were included in this issue, the others being those of Ambush Bug, Stanley and His Monster and The Trigger Twins (And, as a note about as big as the logos and credits for any of the characters within says, Batman and Robin do not appear anywhere within the comic; they're only on artist Kevin Maguire's cover as props in an Ambush Bug gag). 

Like the Rex story, three of the other features are comedies, while one is a pretty straightforward melodrama. You can probably guess what's what from the characters included.

The feature story is a 15-pager by Ambush Bug's creator Keith Giffen (handling the plot and pencils), Giffen's frequent collaborator Robert Loren Fleming (handling the script) and inker Bob Lewis, with Cynicalman creator Matt Feazell contributing one page (and getting a "special thanks" credit). 

I wonder if Giffen were reluctant to tell this story or not. At any rate, Ambush Bug is presented as reluctant to star in it, or at least to reveal any kind of origin, as the plot, as loose as it is, essentially revolves around the character trying to avoid being in an origin story of any kind, while under pressure from the National Bureau of Origins to do just that.

To that end, the story is full of several suggested origins and feints toward origins, although the true origin of Ambush Bug is probably that revealed in the title for the story, and it is basically the same origin of every comic book superhero: "We Thought Him Up."

An NBO agent visits Ambush Bug in his room/cell at the Roscoe P. Sweeny Memorial Home for Forgotten Cartoon Characters, and he tells our hero that he is "required by law to declare a credible origin story... ...or one will be provided for you!" 

To pressure him, the agent holds up a picture of Mr. Bug's missing child/sidekick, his doll Cheeks. This sets Ambush Bug off on a journey to find Cheeks, a more-or-less random, meandering story that includes an encounter with a Lord of Order, a trip to Heaven, the Feazell-drawn interlude that seems to suggest Ambush Bug's origin as a doodle in young student Irwin's algebra notebook, an appearance by Vril Dox from Giffen and company's L.E.G.I.O.N. series and parodies of  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Batman's "I shall become a bat!" origin.

Note the words "Big Fat Freakin' Frogs" in the style of the TMNT cartoon logo; does that make this the very first iteration of that one meme based on this installment of xkcd, decades early, or nah?

This is then followed by the Stanley and His Monster story by writer/artist Phil Foglio and inker Keith Wilson, telling the story of how little boy Stanley Dover met the big, pink, furry creature with tusks that Arnold Drake and Win Mortimer created as a back-up strip in The Fox and Crow in the 1960s. This being 1990, this short eight-page story is Foglio's first Stanley and His Monster story; he would go on to write and pencil a four-issue mini-series in 1993.

In this short story, Stanley's monster, who, as was the case in the late 1960s, still looks like something that Jim Henson and his friends might have created, is "one of the nameless lords of the sixth circle" in Hell. As a demon, though, he has seemingly lost his way, no longer being cruel and pitiless, but rather showing mercy to the condemned and generally trying to make Hell a nicer place to spend eternity (He is "responsible for those loathsome 'Have A Nice Day' stickers appearing everywhere," a demon tells Lucifer Morningstar).

Yes, Lucifer. Interestingly, Foglio's two pages set in Hell feature the realm's rulers "the Triumverate", introduced in Neil Gaiman's** Sandman #4 from the previous year. If you recall, the Triumverate consisted of Lucifer, Beelzebub and Azazel the Abomination; artist Sam Kieth drawing them as a handsome blonde man, a giant green fly monster and a discorporate field of eyes and teeth, respectively.

Foglio draws them about the same here, although his Lucifer wears a shirt and pants (He has to wear a shirt, as it will be revealed there's a "Have A Nice Day" sticker on his back) and Azazel looks a bit more solid and a bit more red. Oh, and while Beelzebub is portrayed as a big green fly, upon first mention Lucifer calls him "Belial"...although later he calls him "Lord of the Flies," and Foglio has him speaking with a buzzing lisp and, in one panel, drinking from a cup labeled "Guano Whip."

It certainly seems like the fly guy is meant to be Beelzebub and not Belial, then. What accounts for the mistake? Well, that same year, in the just-launched new volume of The Demon written by Alan Grant, Etrigan's father Belial replaced Azazel on the Triumverate, so it's possible in trying to keep consistent with other DC comics, either Foglio or an editor messed up the exact makeup of the Triumverate. 

Still, how strange to imagine DC once caring so much about book-to-book continuity that a silly, cartoony comedy short in an anthology like this would honor the goings-on of a horror/fantasy series for mature readers! 

Anyway, to punish the Monster, he is exiled from Hell to Earth, where Lucifer assures his co-rulers that the hateful, fearful humans would soon drive the goodness out of him. Indeed, the monster is immediately made miserable on Earth, as everyone runs and screams as soon as they see him...everyone, that is, except Stanley Dover, a lonely little kid looking for a playmate.

The two become friends, with the Monster moving into Stanley's house, when the boy asks his parents if he could keep the "giant red talking dog with tusks" that he had found. They of course say yes, assuming he was talking about an imaginary friend.

The final story in the issue seems like it might have given readers a bit of whiplash, after three comedic stories, two of which had highly cartoony art. This is writer William Messner-Loebs and artist Trevor Von Eeden's story of the Trigger Twins. 

Like Rex, the Twins were once-successful characters that had by 1990 become something of a DC Comics trivia question. Looking them up, I see that they appeared in All-Star Western between 1951 and 1961, which is obviously a damn healthy run (Interestingly, that book was previously All-Star Comics, home of the Justice Society, but became a Western as the popularity of superheroes waned in the years after World War II). They made the cover on a fairly regular basis, too.

The Twins were created by Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino and their schtick was that one of them was a sheriff and the other civilian, and it was the civilian who was the better gunfighter of the two. Being identical twins, though, the superior marksman would often impersonate his brother. 

They were apparently so little-seen after the end of their All-Star feature that I think this is the very first time I've actually read a story featuring them, although I suppose it's possible they cameoed in one of those comics where all of DC's Western heroes might have appeared, like, I don't know, 1994's Guy Gardner: Warrior #24 or 2006's Justice League Unlimited #19 or 2017's  Scooby-Doo Team-Up #28. By contrast, I've read a handful of comics featuring Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan's modern-day Trigger Twins, criminals who first showed up in a 1993 chapter of "KnightQuest" (They are prominently featured in 1997's Robin Annual #6, part of that year's winning "Pulp Hero" suite of annuals). 

In wordy but efficient fist-person narration, Messner-Loebs takes us from Wayne and Walt Triggers' birth until the point at which Wayne impersonates Walt for the first time. 

During the Civil War, the more shy and retiring Wayne discovers his phenomenal facility with firearms, killing nine members of a Confederate patrol that came upon the brothers before the rest of the patrol, seeing how quickly he took down their compatriots, "plumb gave up." 

The more outgoing Walt, took credit and, after the war, continued to coast on his unearned reputation as a quick-draw "gun hawk." When circumstances lead to him being made sheriff and having to face off against a whole gang of bandits, however, Wayne disguises himself as Walt and blasts through the bad guys, a pretty amusing sequence of panels in which Wayne's narration rattles off the colorful names of all the guys he kills, like Pegs the Swede, Mexican Luke Dagle and Stinky Porker and, eventually, "several whose names I do not know."

*A once prolific writer of comics (DC's Justice League and Green Lantern comics, Mailbu's Prime) and writer about comics (Men of Tomorrow), Gerard Jones pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography in 2018 and has since served a prison sentence for his crimes. I know I mentioned this the last time I had occasion to write about Jones, but it would seem wrong to not do so when discussing his work.

**While never confessing to nor being convicted of a crime like Gerard Jones was, Neil Gaiman was accused of sexually assaulting several women over a period of many years in a 2024 podcast. In 2025, New York magazine published a gut-wrenching article about the accusations against Gaiman that was posted online at Vulture.com. It's hard to read, and it is, in 2026, now impossible to write about Gaiman's comics work without an asterisk.

Look, it's a gorilla with a machine gun! (The origins of Gorilla City and Congorilla, from 1989's Secret Origins #40)

If one is interested in the origins of one of DC Comics' ape characters, it stands to reason that one might be interested in others, so I suppose it is well worthwhile to examine the two stories that preceded the Detective Chimp origin in 1989's Secret Origins #40. 

These are of Gorilla City (though the cover says Gorilla Grodd, who is of course featured in the tale) and Congorilla. While both stories are quite fantastical, perhaps even more so than that of Detective Chimp, they are presented in a much more straightforward and realistic art style and with a far more serious tone.

The first story under Bill Wray's iconic cover (the text of which the Grand Comics Database attributes to editor Mark Waid, who must be the "I" in "Because I Demanded It!") is the 19-page Gorilla City/Gorilla Grodd one, entitled "Gorillas in Our Midst: The Secret Origin of Gorilla City". It is written by Cary Bates and Gary Weisman, penciled by Carmine Infantino and inked by Mike DeCarlo. 

It opens with a six-page sequence in which a mysterious white ship crashes in a lush jungle and is immediately surrounded by variously colored gorillas. They make various gorilla noises "OOGA", "CHEE" and "AH", each of which appears as a sound effect, sans dialogue balloons, and these are among the many letterer Augustin Mas fills the sequence with, other sound effects including those related to the ship itself and a crystal it contains.

The gorillas also find a tiny humanoid in the fetal position within. This flesh-covered creature looks like a human baby crossed with a Hopkinsville goblin, and it attempts to speak when pulled from the vessel, although the alien language is as unintelligible to me as it would have been to the gorillas. It's a nice visual depiction of an alien language, though; not sure who gets credit for it, DeCarlo or Mas: 

Ass for that crystal, a group of apes surround it and lay their hands on it, and then it emits rays in every direction as the apes flee, one of them apparently learning to think in English as it does so, as a thought cloud appears above the ape, containing the words, "...Ruh...Ruh...Run away...!!"

The scene then shifts to 1873 London, where a man in what is apparently an insane asylum of some kind is restrained to a chair while a reporter interviews him (As for that date, I suppose it is worth mentioning that the gorilla was only discovered and described by white scientists a few decades previous to that year, and the mountain gorilla wouldn't be officially recognized until 1902). 

The restrained man, Albert, then shares his "remarkable story" with the journalist, one so strange that it seems to have gotten him branded a mad man and confined within a madhouse. 

That story is, of course, how he and his fellow explorer and adventurer Hughes were in Africa and stumbled upon "a glorious metropolis beside which our own London pales," which Infantino draws like the sort of high-tech, fantastical city he might have drawn for Marvel's Star Wars comics, here colored all golden yellow. It was, Albert says, "a city of beasts: A city of gorillas!!"

The gorillas take them to the little humanoid from the earlier scene, which resembles a wizened baby, and it talks to them telepathically, its dialogue punctuated by nouns with dual meanings, as when it refers to itself as a "prisoner/god" of the gorillas.

It explains the story we already saw unfold and could intuit ourselves, given that the DC Universe has included a secret civilization of super-gorillas called Gorilla City since 1959. The crystal "exploded/enhanced", making the gorillas smarter, and the little alien, referred to as Mentor, further instructed the apes. Because they destroyed Mentor's ship with rocks, it is now stuck here on Earth, worshipped by but also captive to the gorillas.

Mentor further explains that, before it exploded, the crystal emitted two beams, one "straight/pure" that struck Solovar, the other "warped/dangerous". It doesn't know which gorilla the second beam struck, but readers should be able to guess pretty easily.

Solovar tells the men he wants to soon reveal the gorillas' city to the rest of the world, and perhaps the two could serve as ambassadors between the two civilizations. Mentor, meanwhile, wants them to help it escape, and bathes all of them in invisibility to do so. 

A familiar-looking gorilla with a fringe of sideburns dangling from the sides of its head has other plans, too; said gorilla, putting his fingers to his temples, seems to psychically possesses Hughes, who draws his pistol, shoots Mentor dead, and then shouts, "Death to the Mentor!! Death to Solovar!!" 

The gorillas witness this last bit, and administer their own gorilla justice upon the killer:

Albert manages to escape, but no one believes his tale. Given this betrayal by the first human beings to see Gorilla City, Solovar decides to cloak the city and hide it away from humanity. 

I suppose Albert would be long, long dead before The Flash Barry Allen discovers Gorilla City anew, and before the long-lived Solovar decides to finally reveal Gorilla City to the rest of the world. 

That story is followed by the 10-page "The Legend of Congorilla", a retelling of the story from 1958's Action Comics # 247, which was republished in 2004's Weird Secret Origins one-shot and which I detailed in the first and, before now, only EDILW post all about Congorilla.

This newer, 1989 origin is the work of writer Tom Joyner and artists Fred Butler and Kez Wilson. It retains the basics of the original origin. Adventurer Congo Bill receives a magical ring from his African friend Kawolo which, when rubbed, allows him and a large golden gorilla to exchange minds, which proves quite convenient when Bill finds himself trapped in a cave by rubble. 

Despite that, the story is here more complex, and involves treachery and a big gun battle, which, of course, allows Butler and Wilson to draw that panel of Congorilla with a machinegun I posted above.

Here Kawolo is murdered, and the doctor tending him gives the magic ring to Congo Bill, who has heard the story about exchanging minds with the golden gorilla, the creature being the totem of Kawolo's tribe. He's heard it, but he doesn't believe it. 

Investigating the murder with an off-panel group that is apparently the CIA, although Bill refers to them more cryptically throughout, he tells Kawolo's nephew N'Solo that the bullet that killed him had apparently come from an old Russian army rifle, of the sort being regularly smuggled to local guerilla groups. 

While the pair set out to avenge Kawolo's death, Bill asks N'Solo why he didn't inherit the ring from his uncle. He responds:

I suppose I scoffed at him once too often. My years at Oxford anglicized me. Uncle didn't approve.

He used to say, "You are more white than Congo Bill!" Ha! Ha! Uncle saw you as...an elemental force, Bill. White but with Africa's blood in your veins. He was quite poetic about it.

As it turns out, it is N'Solo who killed his uncle and he then tries to kill Bill. In this version of the story, Bill is exploring a cave, tracking the killers, and N'Solo, waiting outside the cave mouth, tosses a grenade in. The explosion doesn't kill Bill outright, but it does cause a cave in, seemingly dooming him...unless that magic ring really does work.

And we already know that it does, right?

Bill-in-the-gorilla's-body heads towards the cave entrance to free the-gorilla-in-Bill's-body, but along the way he comes across an ambush set up by the gun smugglers and gives way to his gorilla instincts...although with Bill's ability to aim a machine gun and pull a trigger, I suppose. 

After the battle, Bill is able to use the gorilla's body to free himself.

The issue, which I found on Comixology, then contains the short Detective Chimp origin we discussed the other day. It also contains what the Grand Comics Database refers to as "4 explanatory articles", devoted to the "secrets behind" the cover and each of the three origin stories.

I kind of wish Comixology included not just the comics content, but also the letters column and other material then, as the cover asks a direct question, "Why Is This Chimp Crying?" in reference to Bobo, and beneath it says, "See Letters Page For Details."

Alas, I could not do so, and thus even after reading the issue, I still don't know why that chimp is crying...