Secret Origins (1986) 10
Jan 1987
…And Men Shall Call Him Stranger
by Paul Levitz, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Gaspar Saladino, Tatjana Wood, Robert Greenberger
10 pages
This is the second of four possible Secret Origins of the Phantom Stranger.
In biblical times, presumably well before the birth of Christ, a man agonizes. Crime is rampant, his own son calls him out as being silly and foolish. A flood of supernatural origins ravages the city in which the man and his family live. Most are killed but the man survives.
He is visited by an angel who offers to take him alone out of the devastated city. The man refuses unless the city can also be saved. The angel refuses and so the man plunges a knife into his stomach. The angel does not allow the man to die. Instead he restores him and grants him eternal life. The man saves his family but they no longer recognize him. The man leaves the city.
Thoughts
This doesn’t feel terribly different from the first story. The story is a pre-Christian story (where the first one is an early Christian story) but it rhymes with the first story. I like it a little better but it (like the first one) only explains the early days of the Phantom Stranger. It explains how he gained immortality but not from where his other superpowers originate.
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