10 Comic Book Heroes Whose Origins Are A Mystery
7. Rip Hunter
When he premiered in Showcase #20, Rip Hunter jumped into his time machine with his friend Jeff Smith, his girlfriend Bonnie Baxter, and her kid brother Corky, and had adventures like the early days' Fantastic Four. There was never any explanation of where Hunter came from or how he created his time bubble.
After Hunter and his team fell into relative obscurity with the rise of costumed superheroes, Rip was recruited into a group called the “Forgotten Heroes” by the Immortal Man. During the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Time Master aided the strongest heroes of the five remaining Earths to travel to the dawn of time to battle the Anti-Monitor. After the Crisis, Rip found himself a man out of time with a doppelganger now running his team of Time Masters.
The Pre-Crisis Hunter joined the Linear Men to help preserve the timeline but he was just bidding his time. In the Kingdom miniseries, Rip Hunter sided with the superheroes to defeat the time-traveling villain named Gog. Their battle broke the Hypertime barrier and opened the possibility to all timelines. However, Hunter and all the Linear Men were destroyed during the Imperiex invasion.
Rip’s actions had the far-reaching consequences of allowing Superboy-Prime to escape from his “Heaven” dimension and wreak havoc.