Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Tuesday Team-Up: Wildcat and the Creeper

Here's a titanic team-up of the truly bananas kind, Groove-ophiles! Beginning with the second issue of DC's Super-Team Family, the mag started mixing in brand new team-ups to the mostly reprint mag (the all-new teamings would take over the entire mag beginning with ish #11). There were some supremely strange ones (and we'll get to all of them, eventually), but the strangest just might be the Creeper/Wildcat team-up in ish #2 (September 1975). Never mind the Creeper stalked the streets of Earth-1 and Wildcat was a member of Earth-2's Justice Society--these were the good old days when DC never let continuity get in the way of a cracking-good (or even mediocre) tale. For "Showdown in San Lorenzo!", editor Gerry Conway, writer Denny O'Neil, and artists Ric Estrada and Bill Draut tossed caution--and continuity--to the wind to deliver a fun tale featuring two unlikely partners-against-crime. It's also interesting to note that this ish came out the same month as the Dr. Fate ish of First Issue Special--the month before the JSA would return to brand-new action in All-Star Comics' revival. Ya think All-Star writer/editor Conway (and perhaps even penciler Estrada) might've been trying to get fandom behind the JSA revival? Coincidence? I think not! Anyway...here come da comics!

4 comments:

  1. They later excused Wildcat's presence in this and the Brave and Bold stories to an Earth-One version of the character. Which made sense since he was a washed out version of the good old "Ben Grimm" like original.

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  2. I didn't know there even was an Earth-1 Wildcat. Sounds like a cop-out, to me. I always thought there was a separate "Bob Haney-verse" that Brave and the Bold, World's Finest, and mags like this fell into. I know, Denny O'Neil wrote this, not Haney, but it's the same universe to me...

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  3. Wow. Bill Draut. Been a long time for him since the Mainline S&K studio days. Surprised to see his credit turn up in the Days o' Groove -- and, at the same time, surprised someone of his talent couldn't get more work than inking a fourth-rate "experimental" book.

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  4. LOVED this story! One of my all-time favorites!

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