Solar vs. Miracleman

[gynta]

I always thought that the Valiant origin of Solar was pretty unique, a superhero who based his appearance on older comic books and through that explaining the somewhat silly and colorful costume. That was something new for me and pretty clever, I thought.

But now I'm reading the Marvelman/Miracleman reprints from Marvel and find pretty much the same there, published at least 5 years earlier. Here it's the "villain" who creates the "hero" for his own purposes, based on old Captain Marvel/Shazam comic books. This reflects the real world origin of the Marvelman comic book, and that's even more clever.

I also found the origin of many of the Ultraverse heroes (crashed alien spaceship) in the Miracleman reprints as well as the basis for the gallery of weapons from a Thor-like characters from an early issue of Planetary (lined up floating in another dimension).

Moore's Marvelman/Miracleman was really influential (everybody said so) and 30 years later is still a great read.

[rkjock1]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the first use of that trope that I'm aware of was Barry Allen Flash basing his identity on Jay Garrick. That was the 1950s.

[gynta]

You're right. I had to look it up in my german edition of the Flash Archive Edition, and there it was: Barry Allen reading an old Flash comic book right before he was hit by lightning and chemicals, and before he decides to become a Superhero. Thank you for that information.