Desperate parents send their child away

from a dying world, raised by humble American farmers,

the boy grows up to be a symbol of truth and justice.

A mugger shoots and kills two wealthy

industrialists in a dark alley, in front of their son.

He dedicates his life to stopping the criminals

who prey on the innocent.

A bullied teen gets bitten by a radioactive spider

and learns the hard way that with great power,

comes great responsibility.

Why are we so fascinated with origin stories?

(rock guitar music)

Welcome to comic misconceptions,

the show that takes you into detail about the things

you think you know about comics, I'm the host,

Scott Niswander.

That was the very first episode of

the show you're watching right now.

This is the very first logo I made for the channel.

Atrocious, and this is a screen shot

of the very first time I ever wrote the word, NerdSync.

These are all little fragments

from the origin of this channel,

and as next week will be our 100th episode,

I thought it would be kind of interesting

to take a quick look at how this all started.

But why, why do origins even matter?

Comic books are littered with origin stories.

They're constantly telling, and retelling origins,

Tweaking little details, showing it

from another perspective.

Rebooting it altogether or simply

refreshing the reader's mind.

The origin of a superhero is important, to say the least.

But what is an origin story?

Clinical psychologist, Dr. Robin S. Rosenberg,

who literally wrote the book on superhero origins,

says quote,

"Origin stories are often tales about transformation,

"stories in which a pivotal event

"or set of events

"sets us on a particular path in life."

They explain who someone is

and what makes them the way they are.

And a superhero origin features

two types of transformation.

There's the super part, which centers around

how a character receives, discovers,

or develops special powers or abilities,

and the hero part, which, as you can probably guess,

focuses on the transformation of the character

into a hero, where they decide

how to use their new powers and abilities.

And for the sake of this video,

we're going to address all comic book heroes

as superheroes, even though

you might personally argue that

someone like Batman, for example,

isn't a superhero, but just a hero.

We'll discuss this topic in a future video, I promise.

Just hang in there.

Another distinguishing feature of an origin story

is that it's followed by subsequent stories.

Take Jurassic Park, you could argue that

the first movie in the franchise is the origin story.

It shows how the dinosaurs were grown

and the beginning of the proposed theme park.

It showcases the transformation

from an exotic island resort and amusement park

to a terrifying landscape of certain death

and a very scary place to use the bathroom.

But, if there were never any sequels,

then we might not consider it to be an origin story.

It would simply be

a story, the existence of accounts that take place

after the first movie, in effect, turn it into

an origin story.

Okay, that sounds simple enough,

but a great comic book origin is deceptively complex.

In reality, it has to cover a lot of ground

in a very short amount of time.

Comic book writer and editor, Tom DeFalco,

laid out a blueprint for crafting the

perfect superhero origin stories.

First, and most obviously,

we need to be introduced to the protagonist,

but it can't just be anybody.

The main character has to already be interesting

before they become a hero.

Whether that's Barry Allen being a forensic scientist

obsessed with solving his mom's murder

and proving his father's innocence,

or Scott Lang, being an ex-convict

who would do anything for his daughter.

These are people you can get invested in immediately.

Then, something happens.

There's some kind of accident or inciting event

that changes the character.

A radioactive spider bite,

the death of a loved one,

getting bitten by a snake and then injected

with mongoose blood until you have super-speed.

Then the death of a loved one.

And it doesn't even have to give them powers or abilities

right then and there.

It can simply inspire them to become a hero

through their own needs.

Bruce Wayne didn't become Batman and start beating

up thugs as soon as the trigger was pulled.

Instead, he used that moment as motivation

to train, and learn, and become the Dark Knight

years down the line.

But remember, that's just the super part of superhero.

A good origin also needs to explain the hero part.

Spiderman used his powers initially

as a means to make money,

but when Uncle Ben died,

Peter did not hesitate for using his special skillset

to catch the murderer.

Imagine, though, if that was the end of the story.

Pete caught his uncle's killer.

Good job.

Now what?

There's no reason for him to continue

fighting crime.

Why not just go back to making money on TV?

Ah, because of that famous twist.

That criminal wasn't some random guy,

it was the same thief Spiderman intentionally

failed to stop earlier that day.

Because of this revelation,

Spidey learned a lesson to use his powers responsibly.

An origin needs to clearly spell out

why someone would choose to be,

and remain, a hero.

The origin should also establish the rules of a character.

Green Lantern has to keep his Power Ring charged.

Deadpool can heal from almost anything.

And Wolverine must refer to everyone as Bub.

Has to, no way around it.

We need to understand how the heroes' powers work

and their limits.

Are their abilities strictly advantageous,

or are there downsides?

It doesn't have to be entirely laid out

like the excruciatingly detailed Bloodshot comic,

but just throw in some hints to the reader

as to establish some ground rules.

Lastly, the origin needs to set up a theme and structure

of the kinds of stories that you'll be

telling with that character.

Batman often fights ruthless, criminally insane adversaries.

Doctor Strange revolves around the mystical and magical.

The X-Men regularly struggle against

oppression in the eyes of the public.

It's fun to see Batman fight aliens occasionally

when he's with the Justice League,

but it'd feel really weird

if that's how his stories were all the time.

That's not the theme of his origin.

Batman's origin is about the loss of his parents

at the hands of an average street thug.

It's about the trauma he suffered as a child

and how he found meaning in it.

And trauma, as Rosenberg points out,

is one of three kinds of superhero origins.

She explains that all superheros are made in some way.

They can be born super, i.e. with powers,

but they're never born super heroes.

This leads back into the idea that

an origin story is a kind of transformation

that the character undergoes.

And the events that lead into these transformations

can fit in to one of three general categories.

The first one, as we mentioned,

is trauma, this one is super common in comic books

where the number of protagonists

with one or more dead parents

rivals that of Disney.

Batman seeing his parents gunned down

in front of him, Daredevil losing his sight

and his father, Wolverine enduring unimaginable

amounts of pain to become a living weapon.

These are characters who suffer

through physical and psychological pain,

which serves as the catalyst for their transformation.

The second type of origin is about destiny.

These are your quote unquote chosen ones.

Though I do feel like a clarification should be made here.

Being chosen for something isn't the same as

being a chosen one.

Steve Rogers, for example, was chosen for

the Super Soldier program, but he wasn't destined

from birth to become Captain America, at least

that wasn't explicitly stated that way in the comics.

You do whatever you want with your own head cannon.

A more accurate representation of the destiny origin

might be Hawkman and Hawkgirl

on Legends of Tomorrow, they keep dying

at the hands of Vandal Savage,

only to be reborn perpetually.

In each of their new lives, they are preordained

from birth to once again, become

Hawk-i-an.

Bird people.

As much as Kendra wants to, she can't fight it.

She can only embrace her destiny as Hawkgirl.

The 3rd and last category of origins

is chance, or luck, like the Fantastic Four

accidentally flying a spacecraft through a

storm of cosmic rays.

Or Barry Allen being randomly struck by lightening

and doused in a chemical bath to gain his super-speed

in the initial telling of his origin, at least.

We all know Flash's true origin

was at the hands of a magical imp.

If you're new here, you're not really going to get that one.

I understand that some of these might be

hard to distinguish.

Chance can sometimes feel like destiny

and sometimes traumatic events seem preordained,

especially as we view origin stories of one character

across many alternate universes.

The distinction is subtle, sure,

and we could have a really long, inslightful conversation

about it in the comments,

but the important thing here is that

these types of origins aren't mutually exclusive.

Superman's origin is traumatic, how he's one of the last

surviving members of his species,

but it's also pure chance

that he would end up being raised by two

small town farmers.

Spiderman's origin is also a blending of chance

with a radioactive spider bite and trauma

with Uncle Ben dying.

You could also argue that it was destiny,

with the whole spider totem thing,

but you shouldn't, you should just ignore that.

But none of this explains why we care,

why we invest so much into a character's origin story.

Rosenberg explains that it's because origins

satisfy your curiosity

and make a character more predictable.

Humans love predictability, our brains

are pattern recognition machines,

so learning why a character acts a certain way,

how they came to be, where they are now,

why they have a particular belief system,

it all helps fill in the gaps that we've

previously had to fill in ourselves

using our best guesses.

Origin stories help us make sense of other people

and see them as a little more predictable.

It's no surprise that many comic book movies

dedicate a large chunk of the film on the origin of the hero