Category: Secret Origins Podcast
Last article published: 8 September 2020
This is the 9th post under this label
Premise: Ryan Daly and a rotating selection of guests read and review issues of SECRET ORIGINS, an anthology series published by DC Comics in the 1980s.
Available: Fire and Water Network
Number of episodes to date: 61
The first was I was on was about... Secret Origins #5: The Crimson Avenger, released June 29th, 2015.
Hey, Siskoid, this isn't one of yours!
No, but I appeared on 8 episodes and produced one (more on this under Life After Death), and at a time when I wasn't making podcasts, I felt it deserved its own label on this blog. And Secret Origins is seminal to the birth of the Fire and Water Podcast Network. See, in the halcyon days of 7+ years ago, the Fire and Water guys - Rob and Shag - spun the Who's Who Podcast out of their usual ramblings and it became immensely popular (as far as these things go), spawning giant comment sections filled with (putting on nasal voice) "uhm, actually" corrections and nostalgic remembrances. If the original Who's Who could make claim to having a sister series, it would have been Secret Origins. This, too, celebrated DC's 50-year history, going more in depth into various DC stars from the far past to the present. And Ryan Daly was there for it. His equally popular show made an episode of each issue, and its great strength was the matching of each character with a guest. Simply put, it's Ryan who developed our larger circle of podcasting friends by offering a platform where future podcasters could "get the bug" and already established podcasters could turn into FW's first pool of recurring guests. Not that there was an FW Network yet, you understand. But when Rob and Shag decided to form a network with like-minded producers, Ryan was one of their first phone calls. It made sense historically, and it made sense in terms of the quality the boys wanted to attain.
And me? I believe Ryan advertised his first show in the Who's Who comments section and I probably reached out then to say I was interested in participating, if Ryan ever needed me. As it turns out, he did for the 5th issue because no one cares about the Crimson Avenger. I would become Ryan's go-to guy for obscure Golden Age characters (a specialty), though my second assignment, Sandman, isn't a no-name (but the story WAS connected to the Crimson's), nor was the Golden Age Flash. Midnight and the Gay Ghost though. I also got to talk about my beloved Legion of Substitute-Heroes, and accompanied a couple of members of the Hot Squad (which at the time was doing the Hot or Not feature at the Legion of Super-Bloggers' site) on Bouncing Boy's short tale. And then the series came to its natural close in 2016 after two years of bi-weekly release. An interview with Roy Thomas would appear 8 months later and that was that. Or was it?
Life After Death
When Secret Origins closed, Ryan was beset with requests to keep going. The original Secret Origins series reprinted a lot of origins, and the New52 spawned its own model. There were all the origins Roy Thomas couldn't put in SO and instead published in All-Star Squadron while the title was on its last legs. Specials like The Legend of Aquaman. And really, ANY TIME a DC character got its origin told, why couldn't that be part of the format? Indeed, why stop with DC? Ryan was having none of it. He'd done what he'd set out to do, said what he wanted to say with the format, and was totally within his rights to close up shop. It hadn't been an easy show to produce, and he was ready for other challenges.
But people kept begging. I know I made an appeal myself. And when the Network was looking for Patreon stretch goals in 2020, I suggested we let patrons bring back a favorite series from the past, namely, Secret Origins. Ryan was open to the idea so long as he didn't have to produce an episode. So instead, the Network All-Stars devised "Secret Origins Redux", a mini-series of 5 new episodes, taking stories from various sources, in the original show's style, but with different hosts. For my own chapter, I covered Robotman's origin from All-Star Squadron #63. And hey, Ryan actually did produce one of the episodes, and it was a whopper.
Now, I've always been a proponent of sharing shows on FW. I would never force myself on anyone, but I've often told my partners that they can borrow my feeds to do shows on "my" topics. FW Team-Up was devised as a shared show, as was Let's Roll. I don't think I'd particularly mind someone doing a Gimme That Star Trek, or a Panel by Panel, or even a Lonely Hearts. No one's ever taken the bait, naturally preferring to feed their own programs, or dumping odd topics under the FW Presents heading. And that's fine. I can certainly see the arguments for it. But since we broke the seal on Secret Origins, does it mean Ryan would let new episodes slip in from other hosts in the future? Who knows. But someday, it could happen. Or it might not.
For now, there's plenty of quality content there and we're pretty content to let it stand as a completed maxi-series.
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