It came from OUTERSPACE ...Owlman!

A rare meteorite that looks like a human owl goes up for auction..

Looks like a mask.

Owlman and the Mask of Power!

Owlman...he'd been called worse. But that's all he'd been known as after he was bitten by that cursed radioactive Japanese owl. Damn Japs and their nuclear power! Still, he'd learned to live with his new powers; able to fly like an owl; see like an owl (he'd thrown his glasses away); scream like an owl; eat mice like an owl; look like an owl. But in spite of these new abilities, he hadn't been able to see how to apply them to crime fighting as every other radioactively bitten transformed human he'd ever read about had.

Maybe he was just a loser. Hell, Batman hadn't even been scratched by a radioactive bat, had no superpowers at all, and look what he had accomplished. He had to find a way! Maybe he could just use his weird owls appearance to scare the pants off crooks. That or make a living in a freak show. No! He wasn't going down that path. That left only one choice; build a lab and invent super owl gear to enhance his powers!

That's when he'd invented the OwlMask. Made of iron (or so it would appear to ordinary eyes) it gave him super powers of unbelievable scope. It even allowed him to travel into space and come back through the atmosphere. And that's when it hit him. He would pose as an alien! Then he might get some respect. No longer a freak, he would be the representative of another planet. First he would use his new mask-power of memory wiping to make his neighbors forget him (only a few people on his street knew of his change in appearance and called him owl-face (not even "Owlman"!)

But on his flight back to earth, the mask had fallen and dropped who knows where (some primitive tribal country from what he could make out). Luckily he was low enough to fly home with his owl wings, but he had lost his most valuable possession, the mighty OwlMask! Until he could make another, he'd have to scare people for a living. Thank goodness it was October and Halloween time.