Secret Origins #10

“Tarry Till I Come Again” “…And Men Shall Call Him Stranger” “Revelations” “Footsteps”

Cover Price: $1.25
Bargain Price: $0.50
Cover Date: January 1987

I’ll be honest, The Phantom Strange is one of those characters I love, but whose origin I couldn’t care less about. What makes him interesting is the enigma, a stranger to reader and character alike. Editor Robert Greenberger apparently felt the same way as, when tasked to dedicate an issue of Secret Origins to the Phantom Stranger, he commissioned four unrelated stories, each telling a distinct origin without ever confirming which, if any, was the true one. It’s an intriguing idea from the get go and one that benefits from a dazzling array of talent, including Jim Aparo, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Paul Levitz, and Alan Moore. Each story is really solid, with at least three of the four interestingly rooted in Judeo/Christian mythology, including portrayals of the Stranger as both a Lot analog and the Wandering Jew of folklore. Unsurprisingly, though, Moore’s is the most intriguing, thanks to a parallel story in which the Stranger watches a modern Street Angel vigilante fail to choose sides between warring factions of his own association. The segments set in the celestial city are the most interesting, though, particularly a glimpse of the angel Etrigan and a fascinating, even probable explanation for the deformed forms of the fallen angels. The best part, though, is that the story wisely embraces the tone of the whole issue, with Moore only ever implying that the Stranger and the half-fallen angel are one and the same, never stating so explicitly and leaving the story open to interpretation.