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!