I like all 4 of the Phantom Stranger's origins and I don't see a reason why they have to be narrowed down to one. The character works without his origin being revealed. He's the guy that comes in and explains things and sets all the other characters on the right, or sometimes wrong, path. He's mysterious like that. Kinda like a stranger ya think? They don't call him The Phantom Friend do they?

This was a nice overview of characters that work without origins. I'll have to see if I can think of some more.
Shane | Email | Homepage | 10.24.05 - 1:48 pm | #

I've always enjoyed that the Joker doesn't have much backstory; he's a homicidal clown, and that's all I need. He contrasts nicely with Batman himself, who's defined by his dead parents (as the captions remind us in pretty much every third issue of every DC comic book).

I just enjoy the fact that all the unlikely elements of Batman are laboriously explained (like in Batman Begins, which devoted screentime to "why Batman's gloves have those spiky bits on them") but the Joker just gets to be an unjustified crackpot. Good times!
Monty | Email | Homepage | 10.24.05 - 2:34 pm | #

I'm sure there's a literary critic who's spent much thought on the importance of origin story to the superhero genre, but sometimes it's darned refreshing to have a character whose past just isn't all that terribly relevant to the work he does in the story, plotwise or symbolically.
Sarah | Email | 10.24.05 - 2:56 pm | #

Y'know, it's funny, I can honestly say that until this moment I had never even considered that the Joker had a "real name", much less what it was.
Doug | Email | 10.24.05 - 3:40 pm | #

Gadget from "Chip'n'Dale Rescue Rangers" has never had a full official
origin, besides our being told her father is dead.
Stavner | Email | 10.24.05 - 4:17 pm | #

"Superman, whose home planet of Krypton is constantly brought up"

Or is that constantly blown up?
Mark H. | Homepage | 10.24.05 - 5:19 pm | #

Wasn't Mystique from "X-Men" supposed to have a full origin or at least a partial origin revealed, but plans were disrupted by the cancellation of the "Ms. Marvel" series? At any rate, her backstory has been kept pretty obscure, even when she got her own (brief) series - as far as I know, the only things that have been revealed is that she is definitely a mutant, was the mother of Nightcrawler, is very old, is from Germany, had an abusive father, and fell in with Destiny sometime at the turn of the nineteenth century?
Chad | Email | Homepage | 10.24.05 - 6:35 pm | #

I think you're right about the Penguin. I remember a Golden Age story where it was revealed that he was raised by his aunt, but the whole 'he carries umbrellas because his insane aunt, who happened to own a jewelery store, forced him to carry an umbrella all the time out of fear he'd catch pneumonia from the rain' thing came much later. (What issue did reveal that? Was it the one you mentioned?)
Chad | Email | Homepage | 10.24.05 - 6:37 pm | #

Sarah - Yeah, the one time Joker's backstory had any thematic importance was in Killing Joke (as opposed to what simply appears to be plot importance, as in Gotham Knights). But for the most part, I agree that the Joker works better when they're dealing with what he's doing now, instead of then.

Chad - Mystique is one of those characters I haven't read a lot about, though it seems to me that her backstory was the result of the usual X-Men storytelling technique of setting up situations, but never resolving them.

And yes, that Batman digest I mentioned is, as far as I know, the very first time that info about the Penguin was ever revealed.
Mikester | Homepage | 10.24.05 - 11:22 pm | #

There was a mini-series called 'It's Joker Time' which had a daytime-television crazed Joker telling different versions of his past on a talk show. There was a nightmarish version of the story we know, a more straight version of it and a totally genius Ancient Egyptian riff on the Joker's past. It's actually one of my favourite Joker stories, but doesn't seem to get much love or notice.
JP | Homepage | 10.25.05 - 12:36 am | #

To paraphrase what the clown says in Arkham Asylum, "Joker" is his real name.
Rasselas | 10.25.05 - 8:49 am | #