Category: Origin Stories

ORIGIN STORIES: THE GARDEN STATE

May 23, 2023 /

CONTENT WARNING

domestic abuse • eugenics


1928

Lilian Rose, brilliant chemist, botanist, and scientist, and the director of business operations (a stupid title that her father granted her; she was, for all practical purposes, the CEO of Rose Botanichemical!) never knew exactly how to deal with Harriet, and the little annoyance would be back here in just a couple of days.

It was bad enough when her father foisted the girl onto her, asking if she could tag along when Lily quite obviously had plans. It was worse when Lily thought about how Harriet was certainly old enough to have made friends of her own. Why was she even coming to live in Gotham? Why wasn’t father just going to Oxford?

Lily didn’t need to have a relationship with Harriet.

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ORIGIN STORIES: رأس الغول

September 19, 2022 /

How did I get here? How long have we been marching? The ground is firm, like midwinter on half of my steps; the other half my boot sinks into marshy grass, though it hasn’t rained in days. Mud created from the still-warm blood of fallen soldiers? I can’t think about it, I keep moving, ever northward.

❧

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ORIGIN STORIES: THE FLYING GRAYSONS

January 9, 2022 /

The Very Edge of Sherwood Forest, Nottingham, England 1322 

(Oak Point Park, Midway City, Michigan, 1922)

The Sheriff of Nottingham was right behind him.

“I’m right behind you, scoundrel!”

And he would stop at nothing to make his arrest.

“I’ll stop at nothing to make my arrest, you fiendish outlaw!”

 And so it was that the outlaw was running for his life. 

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ORIGIN STORIES: MARIO FALCONE

October 14, 2021 /

CONTENT WARNING
suicide

Labor Day (September 5), 1927

“Louisa, give me a name or I can’t help you!” 

Occasionally, Mario Falcone heard his father and mother argue, but what made this scary, was how rare it was to hear his father – who people called “Little Caesar” – raise his voice.

“What would you have me do? Be excommunicated for murder?” Mario didn’t know what “excommunicated” meant, but his mother’s tone and his father’s shouting indicated that whatever it was was not good.

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ORIGIN STORIES: ELIAS CLAYTON

August 5, 2021 /

Elias Clayton liked to be up before the sun to help prepare breakfast and coffee. He’d been working for Martha Kent for almost a full week and had always managed to be in the kitchen before she was up. He enjoyed the conversations with the older widow, and Martha seemed to enjoy them in kind (she would tell the women in her Bible study group that “Elias radiated warmth and had a very kind smile…for a colored boy.”). 

On this particular morning, when Elias came down the stairs from washing up, he was surprised to see a tall and broad-shouldered man at the stove, frying sausage and eggs in the cast iron skillet. He wore a loose-fitting tee shirt and a pair of grey jersey pants, and turned to meet Elias’s eyes with a warm grin.

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ORIGIN STORIES: MARTHA & THOMAS WAYNE

June 24, 2021 /

Martha Wayne (née Martha Kane) was an heiress to the Kane Chemical family fortune. In her early years, she may have been described as a debutante, or, more charitably, as a socialite, but her sense of social justice became galvanized in college, where she helped organize a student government on campus at The Gotham Ladies Academy for Distinction.

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