Back Issue #124 by TwoMorrows Publishing

HORRIFIC HEROES ISSUE 2020

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Man-Thing • The Creeper • Atlas/Seaboard’s Grim Ghost and creepy crimefighters • Ghost Rider (Danny Ketch) Rides Again • featuring BRENNERT, BRUNNER, CONWAY, MACKIE, MAYERIK, THOMAS & more

THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE magazine celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments like “Pro2Pro” (dialogue between professionals), “BackStage Pass” (behind-the-scenes of comicsbased media), “Greatest Stories Never Told” (spotlighting unrealized comics series or stories), and more!

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SCI-FI SUPERHEROES! In-depth looks at JIM STARLIN’s Dreadstar and Company, and the dystopian lawman Judge Dredd. Also: Nova, GERRY CONWAY & MIKE VOSBURG’s Starman, PAUL LEVITZ & STEVE DITKO’s Starman, WALTER SIMONSON’s Justice Peace (from the pages of Thor), and GREG POTTER & GENE COLAN’s Jemm, Son of Saturn! With a Dreadstar and Company cover by STARLIN and ALAN WEISS!

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SUPERHERO STAND-INS! John Stewart as Green Lantern, James Rhodes as Iron Man, Beta Ray Bill as Thor, Captain America substitute U.S. Agent, new Batman Azrael, and Superman’s Hollywood proxy Gregory Reed! Featuring NEAL ADAMS, CARY BATES, DAVE GIBBONS, RON MARZ, DAVID MICHELINIE, DENNIS O’NEIL, WALTER SIMONSON, ROY THOMAS, and more, under a cover by SIMONSON.

GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD! ALEX ROSS’ unrealized Fantastic Four reboot, DC: The Lost 1970s, FRANK THORNE’s unpublished Red Sonja, Fury Force, VON EEDEN’s Batman, GRELL’s Batman/Jon Sable, CLAREMONT and SIM’s X-Men/Cerebus, SWAN and HANNIGAN’s Skull and Bones, AUGUSTYN and PAROBECK’s Target, PAUL KUPPERBERG’s Impact reboot, abandoned Swamp Thing storylines, & more! ROSS cover.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY ISSUE! A galaxy of comics stars discuss Marvel’s whitehot space team in the Guardians Interviews, including TOM DeFALCO, KEITH GIFFEN, ROB LIEFELD, AL MILGROM, MARY SKRENES, ROGER STERN, JIM VALENTINO, and more. Plus: Star-Lord and Rocket Raccoon before the Guardians, with CHRIS CLAREMONT and MIKE MIGNOLA. Cover by JIM VALENTINO with inks by CHRIS IVY.

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Volume 1, Number 124 December 2020 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Rudy Nebres (commissioned illustration from the collection of Ryan Bunn) COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Mark Arnold Howard Mackie Roger Ash Marvel Comics Alan Brennert Val Mayerik Frank Brunner Edwin Nebres Ryan Bunn Rudy Nebres Marc Buxton Luigi Novi KC Carlson Jeff Rovin Gerry Conway Jack Ryder Jon B. Cooke Jim Shooter Steve Englehart Mary Skrenes Carl Gafford Bryan D. Stroud Grand Comics Roy Thomas Database Sean Wasielewski Jack C. Harris Alan Weiss Karl Heitmueller, Jr. John Wells Heritage Comics Bob Wiacek Auctions Peter Young Vincent Holt Tony Isabella Sid Jacobson George Khoury Alan Light

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BACKSEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 BEYOND CAPES: Whatever Knows Fear: The Birth of the Man-Thing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Slogging through the muck-monster’s creation and Bronze Age appearances PRINCE STREET NEWS: If Monster Heroes Wore Costumes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 A cartoon by Karl Heitmueller, Jr. FLASHBACK: Jack Be Nimble: The Creeper in the Bronze Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 Steve Ditko’s freaky crimefighter and his scattershot ’70s and ’80s appearances WHAT THE--?!: Harvey Horror… But Not the Kind You Think . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 The relaxation of the Comics Code led Casper, Richie Rich, and friends into chilling directions FLASHBACK: Atlas/Seaboard’s Horrific Heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44 From the Brute to the Tarantula, these Marvel clones pushed the envelope BEYOND CAPES: The Return of Man-Thing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 Marvel’s swamp beast gets another shot of stardom in 1979 FLASHBACK: Ghost Rider Rides Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68 Howard Mackie’s 1990 high-octane Marvel hit BACK TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78 Reader reactions

BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 112 Fairmount Way, New Bern, NC 28562. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Eight-issue subscriptions: $89 Economy US, $135 International, $36 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Rudy Nebres. Man-Thing TM & © Marvel. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2020 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows, except Prince Street News © 2020 Karl Heitmueller, Jr. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

Horrific Heroes issue • BACK ISSUE • 1

by M

I’ve heard of Christmas in July. But this is the first time I’ve seen Halloween at Thanksgiving. Our “Horrific Heroes” theme was envisioned as a Halloween edition, on sale in September. Then a horror of a different type, COVID-19, reared its ugly head. Amid pandemic-forced shutdowns came the closure of the main distribution network for comic books as well as most comic shops. 2020 became the Year the Earth Stood Still. Comic publishers were hit hard by these closures, especially small ones like TwoMorrows, since there’s no corporate parent to prop up the company. Our publisher, John Morrow, made a social media appeal to readers to buy our products online and to subscribe to keep the company alive during the economic downturn. The following message about TwoMorrows’ appeal was sent to me by reader Vincent Holt and is presented here with his permission… I would like to tell you how much I enjoy reading BACK ISSUE magazine. I received a text message about the current situation TwoMorrows is in. It’s been a really difficult time for all of us. I hope that you guys will be able to get through these tough times. I’ve often found comics to be a way to get away from the grind of everyday life. This genre with its vast group of characters and its many different universes is truly magical in the way it can unite us and spark moments of hope. Especially in these dark times. I would like to thank you and commend you for the great job that all of you do in providing us with great stories about the creators and other people behind the scenes. That brings the comic-book world to life. I too am having to adjust my monthly spending, making sure I’m spending wisely. That being said, I just placed an order from TwoMorrows. And I hope that it will help this great magazine that you and others have built, that has brought me and a lot of people joy to read throughout the years. Thank you and be safe. Thank you, Vincent, for standing up for BACK ISSUE and TwoMorrows during these challenging financial times. And to the rest of you who also bought TwoMorrows publications to help support the company—thank you. This deepens my resolve to do my best to make BI and my other TwoMorrows mag, RetroFan, the best they can be. 2 • BACK ISSUE • Horrific Heroes issue

ichael Eury

Before I turn over our pages to its shambling and shriek-inducing subjects, please indulge me as my inner child shares a story. Each of us has a handful of specific issues of comics that called out to us when we were kids. We remember the moment we first saw them on the stands. One such comic book for me was Showcase #73, which introduced one of the horrific heroes you’ll read about this issue, the Creeper. I was barely ten years old in January 1968 when my family was visiting my mother’s family in her hometown of New Bern, North Carolina, a cross-state trip we made one weekend per month from my hometown of Concord, NC. During a trip to the Eckerd Drugs on Glenburnie Road I was lured—as always—to the comic spinrack. Normally my “funnybook” purchases involved Batman and Superman, although by that time I had recently discovered Spider-Man and FF comics thanks to their Saturday morning cartoons. But on this particular visit my young eye was captivated by… well, the freakiest, but coolest, character I’d ever seen (and that was saying a lot, since I knew who Metamorpho and the Thing were!). A garish human hyena with yellow skin and green hair. A cackling mockery of a superhero—or was he a villain, because he, like Spidey, was wanted by the police?—with a tuft of crimson… what was that, fur?, splaying from his shoulders. On that fateful day I did not beware the Creeper. Instead, I embraced him, and my dad picked up the 12-cent tab while I dove into its contents. By this “mature” age I was finally able to understand the art of Steve Ditko, which had puzzled me beyond belief when, two years earlier, a neighbor showed me his stack of Ditko’s Amazing Spider-Mans and I simply couldn’t fathom their wonky artwork and TM & © DC Comics. storytelling. My reading of this initial Creeper episode began to expand my tastes. So here’s to the late, great Steve Ditko, for being the first comic-book artist to stretch my horizons. Funny how a simple comic cover can invite a flood of memories. Hopefully the articles you’re about to read will do the same for you. One last thing: the Etrigan the Demon article originally planned for this issue was delayed and will appear late in 2021, with expanded content. Our apologies. Stay healthy, everyone!

by R o g e r

Ash

It’s common knowledge that 4F Steve Rogers so desperately wanted to be a solider that he volunteered to be injected with the experimental Super-Soldier serum, turning him into the Star-Spangled Avenger, Captain America. But did you know that the Super-Soldier serum also turned scientist Ted Sallis into Marvel’s muck monster, the macabre Man-Thing? Government scientist Ted Sallis and his girlfriend Ellen were hidden away in the Florida Everglades, where Ted was attempting to recreate the Super-Soldier serum. When his contact, Hamilton, misses their rendezvous, he and Ellen go to find out what’s happened. They discover Hamilton is dead, a couple of thugs, and a smug Ellen who’s sold the formula to the highest bidder. Sallis escapes, but his car skids into the swamp. To keep the sole vial of the serum out of enemy hands, Sallis injects it into himself. The serum reacts with the waters of the swamp, turning him into Man-Thing. As Man-Thing, he easily dispatches of the goons and burns Ellen’s face with a touch. He is left mindless, wandering the swamp, with no idea of what just happened or who he is. You can find the story in Marvel’s blackand-white magazine Savage Tales #1 (May 1971) by Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, and Gray Morrow. Being in a black-and-white magazine meant that the story didn’t have to conform to the rules of the Comics Code Authority (CCA), which, for years, dictated what could and couldn’t be done in newsstand comics. The Code came about after Dr. Fredric Wertham in his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent charged comics with causing juvenile delinquency. The resulting governmental trials and public outcry resulted in the formation of the CCA to assure parents that what their kids were reading was appropriate.

A HEAPING HELPING OF CREATOR BACKSTORY

So now you know Man-Thing’s origin, but what about the origin of his origin? “When Stan Lee got the idea for Savage Tales, he started going over what the various stories in it would be and he decided that one of the features would be Man-Thing,” recalls Roy Thomas. “He came up with the name. He called me in to talk about it. He didn’t want to write it, and he didn’t care if I wrote it or got somebody else to write it. roy thomas He had in mind a general idea that we kicked around. As I recall, the general © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. idea was just that guy, through interaction with the swamp, becomes a creature. I suppose it was partly inspired by the old Heap character that was in comics from the early ’40s through the early ’50s, which Stan said elsewhere that he liked.

Sumpthing in the Way He Moves Frank Brunner’s 2008 recreation of his cover art for the Bronze Age classic, Man-Thing #1. Also signed by Roy Thomas. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). Man-Thing TM & © Marvel.

Horrific Heroes issue • BACK ISSUE • 3

Horrific Hitchhiker Moody Gray Morrow original art, from Manny’s first appearance in the B&W mag Savage Tales #1 (May 1971). Courtesy of Heritage. TM & © Marvel.

But the name Heap or anything like that never came up until it popped up a few years ago. It’s been reprinted in conversation. a time or two. Turned out it was several pages, just for “I didn’t like the name Man-Thing because we had a a ten-or-so-page story. Since I didn’t want to write it, character called the Thing,” Thomas continues. “I didn’t I gave the synopsis to Gerry Conway, who had started feel we should have a character also called the Man-Thing, working for us. He was about 18 or 19 years old. And but Stan was the boss… so if he wanted it, he got it. to Gray Morrow to draw.” Man-Thing’s look of reeds and vines and Also, I had, just a couple of months before, done a brow and nose of roots was, according to in The Hulk with Herb Trimpe a very similar character also based on the Heap, who Thomas, mainly designed by artist Gray was called the Glob, which was a name Morrow. “I made it real plain that I Stan gave him. That was a character thought it was basically the Heap. That’s very much like this character; a guy basically telling him to draw it like the who interacts with the swamp and Heap, which he very much did. The becomes this creature. Stan was kind character even has the little carroty nose of aware of that, since he had approved that the Heap had. The Heap was such Hulk cover and named the character. a great-looking character, and by that Maybe he had forgotten it in the stage was public domain, so we may as well take it and make a character out meantime, but I didn’t bring that up, either. I figured, ‘Okay, this’ll be a more of it. He didn’t have to be slavishly major character, where the Glob was imitative of it. There are more man-like gerry conway just a minor character.’ They’re really features that we could see on Manalmost the same character. Thing, where the Heap sometimes “I remember we went over several different ideas looked like so much vegetation. You could hardly tell he for the story. I don’t remember what any of them were had legs. We were quite happy with his interpretation except for the general outline of the one that actually of the character. I think it was really excellent.” appeared. After we’d settled on it verbally, I wrote out According to Gerry Conway, once the story was a synopsis. I didn’t remember how detailed it was drawn, he “dialoged and created the character voices and the character names for the supporting characters and the lead character.” One of the characters looked very familiar to Thomas. “When Gray drew various gun-toting hoodlums in the story, one of them was a drawn from photos of a mutual acquaintance of ours named Chester Grabowski. He worked for another guy (whose first name was ‘Ruby’) who had a comic store or dealership. I met them both because they were part of a poker game I played in for several years at the late Phil Seuling’s place at Coney Island. Every time I read that story, I’m looking at this guy I was sitting across from at a poker table every Friday night.”

AN ASTONISHING COMEBACK

A Man-Thing story by writer Len Wein and artist Neal Adams was completed for the second issue of Savage Tales, but the magazine was cancelled by publisher Martin Goodman prior to its publication. “Martin Goodman didn’t really like the idea of doing black-and-white magazines,” Roy Thomas tells BACK ISSUE. “I don’t know why, because he was always happy to make money and you could charge more for a black-and-white magazine than you could for a regular comic. I always wondered if it was partly because he got grief from DC, Archie, and Harvey for doing a non-Code magazine when they weren’t. “It was just something Goodman wasn’t especially comfortable with. He kept cancelling [the magazines]. There was that one issue of The Spectacular Spider-Man that was black and white. He forced it to go to color, and then cancelled that. And Savage Tales, he cancelled before anyone knew much anything about sales. I know Stan was quite unhappy about both of those cancellations. He sort of bided his time until he became publisher a couple of years later, so he could bring [magazines] back onto the schedule, which he promptly did.” But cancelling Savage Tales #2 didn’t stop the Man-Thing story from being published, as Thomas used it as part of a two-issue Ka-Zar story in Astonishing Tales #12–13 (June–Aug. 1972). “The only reason we had to run it in Ka-Zar was because I didn’t want to leave it sitting around,” Roy remarks. “Who knew if we’d ever bring back Savage Tales? If I had known we were going to be able to bring it back in short order, I probably 4 • BACK ISSUE • Horrific Heroes issue

would have saved it. As it was, it seemed best to simply run it in the color comic.” In this story, we meet other scientists who were working with Sallis and discover that the group after their work is the evil organization, A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics). When the scientists are threatened, Man-Thing comes to their aid, but is not able to prevent Dr. Wilma Calvin, an elderly African-American woman, from being shot. Two of the scientists from the Man-Thing story bring Ka-Zar to the Everglades to help find Ted Sallis, if he’s still alive. This leads to a confrontation with Man-Thing, a double cross, and a battle against A.I.M. Len Wein added something that would help define Man-Thing’s character: Whatever knows fear, burns at the Man-Thing’s touch. Wein related in the book Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers (TwoMorrows, 2014), “In the original story, anything he touched, burned, so I surmised, ‘You know, you can never do an ongoing character who can never interact with anything without setting it on fire.’ So I came up with the idea that you had to be afraid of Man-Thing to suffer the chemical reaction.” In a few stories, the burns are caused by a reaction between the chemicals released by the person who’s afraid interacting with the chemicals in Man-Thing’s body. While this does provide some logic as to why it occurs, the explanation was quickly dropped. It was enough to know that fear caused his touch to burn.” The irony of having Wein write this story is not lost on Thomas. “It’s kind of funny because Len, at around the same time, was working on Swamp Thing.”

Swampy Smackdowns (top left) Ol’ Greenskin goes at it with the Heap-inspired Glob, in Incredible Hulk #121 (Nov. 1969). Cover by Herb Trimpe. (top right) Bernie Wrightson, artist of DC’s Swamp Thing, was the cover artist for Hulk #197 (Mar. 1976), co-starring Man-Thing. (bottom) A Man of Two Swamps: Swamp Thing co-creator Len Wein was also involved with Man-Thing in the Marvel muck monster’s early days. Hulk and Man-Thing TM & © Marvel. Len Wein photo © DC Comics.

Horrific Heroes issue • BACK ISSUE • 5

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by J o h n

Wells

He wore a crimson shag rug as a cape and green-andblack-striped bikini briefs over a bright yellow body stocking. On spinner racks filled with colorful characters, he still stood out. Was this the future of superheroes, one might have asked in 1968, or should they beware… the Creeper? In November of 1965, Marvel Comics star Steve Ditko had walked away from Marvel Comics on a matter of principle. The Spider-Man co-creator had no problem finding work elsewhere, but those venues were struggling two years later. Supported by Charlton Comics editor Dick Giordano, Ditko had revitalized Captain Atom and created a new incarnation of the Blue Beetle, but the publisher opted to cancel its entire “Action Hero” line in 1967. National (DC) Comics’ newly installed art director Carmine Infantino saw this as welcome news. It’s unclear who made the first move, but Steve Ditko soon had a deal to develop new features for DC. Although he excelled at high fantasy on the order of his signature “Dr. Strange” run [in Marvel’s Strange Tales—ed.], the cartoonist leaned toward more grounded situations. He’d replaced Charlton’s Superman-esque Blue Beetle with an athletic-but-mortal character who supplemented his heroics with technology. And Ditko’s Mister A and the Question were each stylishly outfitted men who ruthlessly focused on crimes perpetrated by human villains. “I prefer conflicts that are based on reality rather than based on fantasy,” Steve Ditko explained in the 1968 fanzine Marvel Main #4. “When you get wound up with super villains, super fantastic gadgets and super incredible action, everything has to be made so deliberately that it all becomes senseless. It boils down to what you want a story to stand for.”

THE COMING—AND GOING— OF THE CREEPER

Talk show host Jack Ryder was also determined to stand for something, and it cost him his job two pages into “The Coming of the Creeper” (Showcase steve ditko #73, on sale in January 1968). Unable to hold his tongue when his guest Dr. Clayton Wetley issued a blanket condemnation of the police as symbols of violence, Ryder drew the wrath of the show’s sponsor—and a pal of the pacifist. Ryder had been fired for only minutes when the TV network’s security chief, Bill Brane, hired him back as an investigator. (Ditko may have chosen that job as a way of distinguishing his hero from news photographer

One-Hit Wonder Chief among the Creeper’s many, and scattered, Bronze Age appearances was this solo shot in 1st Issue Special #7 (Oct. 1975). Cover by Steve Ditko and Al Milgrom. Unless otherwise noted, all art scans accompanying this article are courtesy of John Wells. TM & © DC Comics.

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Peter [Spider-Man] Parker and TV reporter Vic [Question] Sage.) His first mission was to infiltrate a social gala where gangland forces led by “Angel” Devlin intended to deliver a Russian defector to Soviet handlers. Jack was up for the job, even with his last-minute discovery that it was a costume party and he had nothing to wear. Cannibalizing a box of remnants, Ryder arrived in a garish yellow, green, and red outfit and sustained a nasty knife wound before sequestering himself in a room with the pivotal Professor Yatz. Looking at his would-be rescuer, the scientist saw a means of hiding the creations that had made him a target of the Communist forces. First, he injected Jack with a serum that would enable him to heal almost instantly from any injury along with enhancing his strength and stamina. Yatz also implanted a disc in the investigator’s open wound, detailing that “it would rearrange the molecular structure of matter, making it weightless and invisible.” For Ryder’s purpose, it rendered his costume invisible and intangible whenever he pressed a matching disc in his palm. Yatz, inevitably, was gunned down in the melee that followed, but Ryder—dubbed “The Creeper” by a policeman—brought Devlin and many of his partners to justice. Improvising during the chaos, Jack ran with the gangsters’ reaction to his bizarre looks, adding a maniacal laugh to his act and making them question whether he was human or a demon. The performance was so good that the police wanted the Creeper almost as badly as the underworld by page 23. Following the obligatory appearance in the Showcase tryout title, Beware the Creeper (BTC) #1 went on sale in March 1968 and added new names to the credit box. The pilot had been edited by Murray Boltinoff and dialogued by Don Segall, but Ditko hoped to find a place for an old Charlton colleague. On the cartoonist’s recommendation, Dick Giordano was hired as a DC editor and succeeded Boltinoff with BTC #1. Also joining the team was Denny O’Neil, who began plotting and scripting the feature (initially under the pseudonym of “Sergius O’Shaughnessy”) after dialoging Ditko’s story for issue #1. On O’Neil’s watch, a recurring villain joined the series in the form of Proteus. A variation on Ditko’s earlier Chameleon in Amazing Spider-Man, the character sported a featureless snow-white head that he could reshape to resemble anyone he wished. Among those was the Creeper himself, whom Proteus framed for murder at the front of issue #2. In BTC #3, O’Neil also expanded Ditko’s small supporting cast of Bill Brane and social-climbing weathergirl Vera Sweet with the addition of Remington Percival Cord. A co-worker at WHAM-TV, Rip—as he was called— became fast friends with Jack and they were soon roommates. Once Proteus returned in issue #4, things went south for the relationship. The climactic issue #6 revealed that Cord was Proteus, a mad refugee from the island nation of Offalia, who’d stolen its “single state

The Creeper Faces Off (top) From the late Silver Age, Ditko’s dynamic splash to the Creeper’s premiere in Showcase #73 (Mar.–Apr. 1968). Original art scan courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com). (inset) Proteus vs. the Creeper! The Ditko-drawn cover of Beware the Creeper #5 (bottom left) Chameleon vs. Spidey! Splash page from Amazing Spider-Man #1. Creeper TM & © DC Comics. Spider-Man and Fantastic Four TM & © Marvel.

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Doesn’t Play Well with Others Early Creeper appearances outside of his own series: (left) with Batman in The Brave and the Bold #80 (Oct.– Nov. 1968) and (right) with the JLA in Justice League of America #70 (Mar. 1969). Both covers by Neal Adams. TM & © DC Comics.

secret, a chemical that alters the molecular structure of flesh.” By the end of the story, Proteus was no more—killed in an explosion—and so was the series. Like most launches of the era, Beware the Creeper had failed to sell in the numbers that DC hoped, and it was cancelled. By that point, even Ditko had left the series, albeit for medical reasons rather than professional ones. A resurgence of the tuberculosis he’d suffered in 1954 forced the cartoonist to drop his assignments for the time being. He was able to pencil about half of BTC #6, but the story had to be completed by artists Jack Sparling and John Celardo. Even in a best-case scenario without illness or cancellation, Ditko would likely have made an early exit from the book. “Denny had written a script of Beware the Creeper,” Dick Giordano recalled in Comic Book Artist #1 (Spring 1998), “and he wrote something about this character who was described in the script as an ‘ex-criminal.’ Steve jotted down a very bold note on the script that ‘there was no such thing as an ‘ex-criminal.’ Once you’ve committed a crime, you’re a criminal for life.’ First of all, that wasn’t in the copy. There was no need for him to take that attitude, to take that harsh a view over what Denny had written. Basically, what it got down to at that point was that Denny and Steve couldn’t work together anymore.” “Steve, I think, probably very, very much disliked what I did to his character,” O’Neil conceded in an interview in Amazing Heroes #50 (July 1, 1984). “For one thing, I gave him a sense of humor [laughs]. And, I had no idea of what Steve’s feelings were when I wrote the Creeper initially. I might not have done some of those things if I had known, if I’d realized it was going so much against his grain. “On the other hand, I could never, never write anything he could conceive of as a hero. Because I think he writes monsters in the guise of heroes. Steve and I have virtually 180° different ideas of what constitutes a hero. For example, he recently did one of my Iron Man stories [1982’s Iron Man #160], in which it is acknowledged that Iron Man is an alcoholic. And Steve didn’t want to do that at all. Heroes are not alcoholics. My feeling is, of course, if you’re an alcoholic and you overcome it, you become twice a hero. But Steve doesn’t see it that way at all. Heroes have to be paragons. I find paragons generally dull.” O’Neil had also brought that sentiment to Justice League of America, where he added a bit of spice to the personalities of its heroic cast

when he began writing the book in 1968. Worlds collided in JLA #70 (drawn by Dick Dillin and Sid Greene) when the team decided to investigate whether the Creeper was a hero or villain. On sale just days after Beware the Creeper #6 in January 1969, the story ended with the team still conflicted. Superman, at least, was convinced that the guy with the sheepskin cape was one of the good guys. Batman felt the same, having instigated the Creeper query after meeting him in 1968’s The Brave and the Bold #80 (on sale between BTC #3 and 4). Despite the personality clash of the stoic Caped Crusader and his manic partner (rendered by Neal Adams), the villainous Hellgrammite was no match for the duo. The story’s significance is less its plot than its details. True to his reputation for playing fast and loose with continuity in his B&B scripts, writer Bob Haney portrayed Jack Ryder as an over-the-top TV reporter rather than an investigator although an editorial patch explained it away as a temporary assignment. Moreover, the story suggested that Jack’s WHAM-TV was based in Gotham City. Both aberrant points would become canon in the 1970s.

THE CREEPER RETURNS

Before that happened, however, Jack Ryder’s life almost took a thoroughly unexpected direction. In Newfangles #28 (Nov. 1969), Don and Maggie Thompson reported that then-fans “Tony Isabella and Klaus Janson have received permission from [DC publisher Carmine] Infantino to publish Beware the Creeper (with their own script and art and such). Work has been going on for some time now.” Speaking with Jon B. Knutson in Comic Book Artist #13 (2001), Isabella explained, “That came about because I really loved the character and wanted his adventures to continue after his book was canceled. So, I wrote DC publisher Carmine Infantino and asked if I could publish a Creeper fan magazine featuring new stories of the character. Much to my surprise, he said yes. “I wrote a 26-page story that picked up after the last issue of the actual Beware the Creeper comic book. It was supposed to be drawn by a fan artist by the name of Klaus Janson—I wonder if he ever amounted to anything—but he never turned in even a single page of artwork. As this was about the same time I was working my way out of college and starting to work for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, I was too busy to pursue the project further.” Horrific Heroes issue • BACK ISSUE • 23

Creeper persona. A loose retelling of Showcase #73 in 1987’s Secret Origins #18 (co-plotted and penciled by Giffen) cemented the characterization.

Beware… Giffen, with writer Steve Englehart, finally got his chance to draw the Creeper in this Superman team-up in DC Comics Presents #88 (Dec. 1985). Cover inks by Giordano, interior inks by Karl Kesel. TM & © DC Comics.

younger than the Batman boys, a little hipper; I saw him as able to pass a lot of his lunacy off as just attitude. The Creeper was nuts, but Jack Ryder was just considered ‘colorful.’ When Keith translated that into art, the Creeper was pretty scary, so our combination conjured up a very nice character. To that point, I think, the Creeper had been a little too brightly lit and more ‘pretend’ crazy.” Reflecting on the character’s original run, Englehart adds, “[I] love Ditko. As I say, he didn’t go for actually ‘scary,’ but his run had that off-kilter vibe Ditko had when left to his own devices. The stories sometimes didn’t fully cohere but the character was always fun to spend time with.” A few months later, the Crisis ostensibly rebooted the DC Universe, albeit more for some characters than others. For all intents and purposes, though, the post-Crisis Creeper had premiered in DC Comics Presents #88. Going forward in titles like the 1987 Justice League relaunch (including Keith Giffen among its creative team), Jack Ryder became an infamous tabloid TV journalist who was genuinely crazy in his

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Further explorations of the Creeper seemed to be an ongoing game of oneupsmanship. According to the 1997–1998 Creeper series, Jack was bipolar, and his origin linked to Proteus. The animated New Batman Adventures (1997–1999) offered an unhinged Creeper born in a variation of the accident that created the Joker. A 2006 miniseries claimed that the Creeper was an entity created through “smartskin” technology who could switch places with the separate Ryder. Once merely being crazy became passé, Reign in Hell #1 (Sept. 2008) claimed that the Creeper was a demon bonded to Ryder, while the New 52’s Katana #3–6 (June–Sept. 2013) declared the character was an ancient Japanese oni who lived to sow chaos. Most recently, the Rebirth incarnation of the Creeper was an ally of villains like Black Adam and Giganta in issues of Doomsday Clock (2019–2020). None of them bear more than a superficial resemblance to the colorful creation of Steve Ditko and his Bronze Age successors, but their continued presence ensures that readers are still able to beware… the Creeper. JOHN WELLS is a comics historian specializing in DC Comics who has served as resource for projects ranging from Kurt Busiek’s The Power Company to Greg Weisman’s Young Justice animated series. He is the author of the TwoMorrows books American Comic Book Chronicles: 1960–1964 and 1965–1969, and co-author (with Keith Dallas) of the book Comic Book Implosion.

by M

ark Arnold

In the 1950s, prior to Harvey Comics acquiring the Paramount Pictures Famous Studios license which gave them permission to publish such characters as Baby Huey, Little Audrey, and Casper the Friendly Ghost, Harvey was publishing a line of horror comics that historians now agree are some of the best ever published, next to EC Comics. In fact, Harvey published the very first horror comic: Front Page Comic Book in 1945, which predated the EC line by five years. Unfortunately, it was a one-shot. When the Comics Code Authority started cracking down on publishers, Harvey transitioned its titles from the likes of Tomb of Terror, Witches Tales, Black Cat Mystery, and Chamber of Chills to more newspaper-comic-strip reprint titles like Blondie, Joe Palooka, Mutt & Jeff, and Dick Tracy, and the aforementioned children’s line. Eventually, the newspaper reprint titles also fell by the wayside as Harvey acquired the complete rights to the Famous Studios characters, and, by 1965, Harvey was only publishing titles featuring Casper and the rest of the Harveytoons. Harvey was also publishing titles featuring new characters inspired by the Harveytoons like Richie Rich, Little Dot, and Little Lotta. Harvey didn’t forget its horror roots. Amazingly, by Harvey publishing books with Casper, Wendy, Spooky, Nightmare, the Ghostly Trio, Hot Stuff, and a few others, the company was able to skirt the 1954 Comics Code Authority rules that stated: “All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted,” and “Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited,” because these characters hid behind a cute design and humor, and were geared toward small children. When the Comics Code Authority loosened its guidelines in 1972, every publisher took advantage of the relaxed rules. Marvel started long-running titles such as Tomb of Dracula and Werewolf by Night. DC converted House of Mystery and House of Secrets into horror anthologies and added many new titles featuring witches and ghosts. Charlton started The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves and a few other series of chillers. Some of these even predated the relaxed rules of the Code as the comic-book companies kept pushing the envelope. Even Archie Comics got on the bandwagon by converting their long-running Madhouse title into a serious horror anthology rather than the silly comic book that premiered Sabrina, the Teen-Age Witch. Sabrina also headed up her own anthology title that was more serious in nature called Chilling Tales of Sorcery. This was 40 years before true Archie horror titles such as Afterlife with Archie. One reason for the more relaxed rules surely had to do with the wild success of non-Code-approved comic magazines like Warren’s Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella; the various horror publications produced by Eerie Publications with titles such as Horror Tales, Terror Tales, and Tales from the Tomb; and Skywald with its Psycho, Scream, and Nightmare titles.

Bronze Age BOOs! Your favorite Harvey Comics heroes hopped aboard the horror bandwagon in the early ’70s! TM & © Classic Media, LLC.

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So, you want to hunt monsters? You want to protect the innocent from things that lurk in dark alleys, in primordial forests, in fetid swamps? You want to protect the innocent from flying, crouching, hungry beasts? You want to shine a light in the dark places to expose the fanged, clawed unthinkable? Well, then, if you are going to be a monster-hunter, you brave soul, then you must know your monsters. Because here, there be monsters. That’s true in today’s comic-book world and it was true in every age of comic publishing. But in the Bronze Age, oh, my dear dwellers of darkness, it was truer than ever. Marvel Comics had its pantheon of beasts that was designed to strike fear into the hearts of all who encountered them. DC Comics had its fair share of shambling, tooth-gnashing beasties that would make one’s short hairs stand at attention. Even the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Atlas/Seaboard Comics had a pantheon of creatures that deserve recognition. So get out your silver bullets, your stakes and crosses, and most importantly, your courage, as we bravely peer into the abyss at the horrific heroes of Atlas/Seaboard and uncover true terrors that have almost been forgotten. [Editor’s note: Atlas Comics was the short-lived, mid-1970s comics imprint from Seaboard Periodicals of New York City, created by former Marvel Comics publisher Martin Goodman, who left Marvel in 1972. Herewith the company will be referred to as Atlas. The Atlas roster of characters is currently under development for movies.]

by M a r c

If there was one thing that the co-founder of Atlas Comics, Martin Goodman, was good at, it was playing the hits. Back when Goodman ran Marvel Comics, before the rise of Kirby and Lee and the Marvel Age of superheroes, Goodman would chase trends. This statement is meant with no disrespect, because some truly fine comics from every conceivable genre were born because of Goodman’s propensity to follow the zeitgeist. So when monster comics became a go-to genre in the early to mid-1970s, Goodman did what he always did: he jumped on the monster train and filled it to bursting with more beasts than you can shake a stake at. The editor of the tragically short-lived Atlas line of comics, Jeff Rovin, recalls to BACK ISSUE the days the monsters competed with superheroes for the dominance of the Bronze Age comic racks: “There was a trend—the anthology titles at DC, Swamp Thing, Weird Western Tales, Weird War. At Marvel there was Brother Voodoo, Dracula, Son of Satan, Chamber of Chills, and so on.” But the trends of the day were not the main reason Rovin championed horror. “My background was horror comics: I was assistant editor on Nightmare and Psycho at Skywald, in 1971,” Rovin informs. [I was also] “Joe Orlando’s assistant on House of Mystery, House of Secrets, and others in 1972 (my first comic-book script was for Joe’s Dark Mansion), then assistant editor at Warren Publishing from 1973–1974.” With those horrific credentials, Rovin, along with legendary editor Larry Lieber, was the perfect ghoulish overseer for the coming Atlas monsters. And indeed, when it came to fanged and clawed protagonists, Atlas was ready to spring myriad freshly minted monster antiheroes on an unsuspecting comic-book public. Now, if you’re brave enough, let us learn of these monsters so we may begin our hunt, my valiant hunters of darkness. But beware, these Atlas creature features may not have been around for long, but they are not for the faint of heart.

NEW HORRORS AWAKEN

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Buxton

THE BRUTE

“Out of the past he came, a nightmarish beast-man from the very dawn of time. A murderous, blood-hungry monster caught somewhere in the evolutionary twilight between ape and man.” This very Bronze Age and wonderfully overwrought intro serves as the opening to Atlas’ man-monster: the Brute. And if you choose this creature for your hunt, my monster finders, know that you put yourself in grave peril of being savaged to pieces. Because this Brute has no fear. This overly muscled killing machine made his debut in The Brute #1 (Feb. 1975) at the dawn of the Atlas/ Seaboard era, where ideas sprung up like fungus on an ancient cave wall. The Brute was obviously Atlas’ answer to Marvel’s Incredible Hulk as the Brute was an overly muscled engine of raging destruction. As we mentioned, brave monster hunters, the Brute and his Atlas monster ilk were a huge part of the heroes that kicked off the Atlas wave. “I felt strongly that with DC and Marvel still primarily leaning heavily on classic and celestial superheroes, ‘the supernatural’ would be a strong, distinguishing ‘through-line’ for Atlas characters,” Rovin tells BACK ISSUE. “It was actually June 1974 when Atlas got underway. The TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker had been announced for debut in September. Assistant editor Ric Meyers and I were fans of the original TV movies and, with that on the horizon, the Goodmans [Martin and his son, Chip—ed.] agreed that the genre might be hot. So horror became our foundation.” If horror became the foundation, the Brute and his close character proximity to the Hulk would, at least in theory, become a pillar of that foundation. “He’s a hairy Hulk!” artist Alan Weiss quips recalling his time on The Brute. However, Weiss was not the first artist to bring Atlas’ engine of rage to life. The Brute #1 was penciled by longtime Justice League of America artist Mike Sekowsky, with a script by Michael Fleisher.

Edited by Rovin, the inaugural issue of Atlas’ prehistoric monstrosity sports an eye-popping cover by Dick Giordano. The Brute that appears on the cover of issue #1 was a crystalline blue creature that really jumped off the page. The cover Brute was not visually derivative of the Hulk at all, but was a uniquely colored giant that was a hellish sight to behold—even for the most seasoned monster hunter. While Sekowsky’s interior art is capable and memorable, the Brute in the comic is not of the same color or anatomical design that was featured on the cover. “We did the best we could to make it distinctive,” Rovin recollects. “The character wasn’t supposed to be solid blue, but more crystalline as on the first cover. Unfortunately, the coloring process didn’t allow that.” That’s not to say that The Brute series wasn’t a worthy attempt at creating a memorable comic-book monster… it just fell into the big criticism that all things Atlas suffered from—it was more of the same of what had already worked for other companies. One thing can be said for the first issue of The Brute, the titular character certainly lived up to its name.

Home of the Whopper Wow, that Brute’s a big’un! Original Sekowsky/Marcos art from The Brute #1 (Feb. 1975). TM & © SP Media Group.

After Atlas One-time Atlas Comics editor Jeff Rovin, with X-Files actress/author Gillian Anderson, from their book promotion for A Vision of Fire, written by Anderson with Rovin. Courtesy of Jeff Rovin. Horrific Heroes issue • BACK ISSUE • 45

Big Blue Behemoth Or should we say Crystalline Creature? (top) Cover to The Brute #1 (Feb. 1975), by Dick Giordano. (bottom) The Brute vs. Reptile Men in issue #2 (Apr. 1975). Main cover art by Giordano, with foreground characters by Larry Lieber and Frank Giacoia. TM & © SP Media Group.

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In the opening pages of the inaugural issue, a group of teenage cave explorers encounter the Brute—and the Brute kills two of them! Right there, in full color (even if it wasn’t the colors Rovin wanted), the Brute, Atlas’ new monster anti-hero, slaughters two children! Well, that escalated quickly. Even the Hulk did not indulge in full-scale child slaughter. The Brute was not horror-adjacent like the Hulk—he was the real deal. After the murders of the children, the issue delves into the Brute’s origins. It seems that the Brute was once a member of a prehistoric tribe that, as Fleisher writes, was “between ape and man.” This cave-dwelling warrior was frozen during a great ice age and remained in a state of suspended animation within a cavern located in Minnesota. In the present, Fleisher introduces readers to the supporting cast: the brilliant and empathic Dr. Ann Turner, who wants to study this reported cave monster; police chief Frazier, who takes on the “Chief Brody from Jaws” role; and the angry father of the murdered boys who swears to kill the Brute. There are parallels to not only Marvel’s Hulk but to Frankenstein and King Kong as well as the Brute is a childlike monster that is defending himself against a world that he does not understand. While a bit paint-by-numbers, the first issue of The Brute was certainly memorable and terrifying with multiple violent murders and a stranger-in-a-strange-land vibe that helped set this opening issue apart from your typical comic monster. So again, my brothers and sisters in monster hunting, if you decide to test your mettle against the Brute, leave your kids with a sitter. Because… yikes! The Brute #2 (Apr. 1975) features a satisfying monster mash as Brute takes on the Reptile Men. This issue starts off with the Brute murdering more innocent people. The prehistoric savage stows away on a small plane and kills the hapless pilots in mid-flight. The sequence features the Brute grabbing one of the pilots, crushing him into a fleshy, meaty ball, and tossing him 40,000 feet to his death. Eeeeshh. From there, the plane crashes and the Brute is abducted by an atypical mad scientist and his even more atypical hunchback assistant. The scientist is trying to create a race of amphibious reptile men and is able to implant a mind-control device in the Brute’s brain. The cackling evil scientist sends the Brute to attack the mad man’s colleges that mocked and rejected the whole idea of amphibious lizard people. Imagine? The Brute isn’t having any of it and busts up the whole operation by turning his primal rage on the reptile man in a creature feature worthy of Chiller Theatre. Alan Weiss came aboard The Brute with issue #3 (July 1975), along with writer Gary Friedrich. Friedrich had already guided the story paths for some of Marvel’s most renowned horror characters, so the blue cavemen savage was in good hands creatively for this third, and as fate would have it, final issue. Looking back on his time on The Brute, Weiss recalls how he started with Atlas: “Alan Kupperberg was working at Atlas in some capacity. He was a friend and wanted to get me to do some work for the company. Originally I was to draw one or more issues of their Conan parallel, IronJaw. For some reason, the Brute came up first instead. That was a disappointment, but I tried to find ways of having some fun with it.” Weiss was certainly up to the task of making the Brute more than just a Hulk derivative. All characters have potential, depending on their creative handling. The challenge for the Brute character was to raise him above being a mere Hulk rip-off.” Weiss gave it his best in an issue that saw the Brute shot by police—a lot—plus the introduction of the Brute’s first and only costumed foe. The Brute also goes an entire issue without slaughtering an innocent person! You see, after the Brute is shot in the head by overzealous police, he undergoes emergency surgery that saves the prehistoric man-beast’s life. When the Brute awakens, he is reunited with Ann Turner and learns to talk. Weiss may have wanted to move the Brute visually away from being a “Hulk rip-off,” but the monster’s infantile utterance made the Atlas monster even more Hulk-like. Turner wants to study the Brute, but of course, the monster escapes and is once again hunted and hounded by the puny humans. Arriving is a mysterious costumed figure named Doomstalker, a robotic masked cyborg controlled

by yet another mad scientist, and the Brute’s first classic DEMON HUNTER comic-book battle begins. Fear not, monster hunters, for you will not be alone as But never ends, because like the entire Atlas pantheon you track down the world’s most dangerous creatures, of heroes, monsters, space swashbucklers, soldiers, for there are hearty souls that will hunt with you! cowboys, and teen heartthrobs, the Brute’s story comes One of those heroic monster slayers is Atlas’ Demon to an abrupt conclusion with the impotent implosion Hunter, a little-known horror protagonist that made of the Bronze Age Atlas Comics. Weiss did his one blink-and-you’ll-miss-him appearance. level best to make his time on The Brute However, this hunter of darkness lived on something special, but the artist was not under the auspices of none other than fully satisfied with the result. Weiss tells Marvel Comics! Intrigued, my monsterBACK ISSUE, “…my main memory is hunter brethren? Well, then, read on for the brief spark and flame that was how disappointed I was with that issue Demon Hunter! of The Brute. I was not at all happy with the inking especially. I knew [inker] Jack Editor Jeff Rovin had always been Abel well. Loved the guy. But it was fascinated by demonic myth and not a good match. Whether directed pulpish tales of macabre. Rovin tells editorially or not, most, if not all, of the BACK ISSUE, “My first job out of high anatomy on the Brute was changed or school was proofreading H. P. left out, as were attempts at somewhat Lovecraft for Beagle Books in New York. I was 19 and was mesmerized more human, sympathetic, or more alan weiss by the stories. I had always wanted realistically lit facial expressions in all DC Database. but a few cases.” to do something like the Cthulhu The Brute could have and should have been so much Mythos (I was hardly alone in that), and in November more. What started as an attempt to mirror The Incredible of 1974 made the first notes for a character who Hulk became a book that, at times, took daring chances would be the sentinel protecting us from ancient and even embraced the horror genre more than the demons: Demon Hunter.” Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones Bronze Age Hulk stories ever did. So if you encounter and tales of demonic possession were certainly in the this prehistoric terror in the wilds of northern Minnesota, zeitgeist in 1975, so Demon Hunter #1 (Sept. 1975) my brave monster hunters, tread carefully, because this certainly looked like it belonged alongside the other blue-skinned Brute is not afraid to get blood on his hands. demonic heroes of the mid-Bronze Age. Rich Buckler And in his teeth. And on his loincloth. was credited with the “concept, plot, and art,” while

I Will Survive You have to look closely under Jack Abel’s heavy inks to find traces of penciler Alan Weiss’ distinctive style. From The Brute #3 (July 1975), the final issue. TM & © SP Media Group.

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