By Ditko, Don Segall, Denny O’Neil, Michael Fleisher, Mike Peppe, Jack Sparling & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2592-6 (HB)
Steve Ditko was one of our industry’s greatest and most influential talents and, during his lifetime, amongst America’s least lauded. Always reclusive and reticent by inclination, his fervent desire was always just get on with his job, tell stories the best way he can and let his work speak for him.
Whilst the noblest of aspirations, that attitude was usually a minor consideration – and even an actual stumbling block – for the commercial interests which for so long controlled all comics production and still exert an overwhelming influence upon the mainstream bulk of the comic industry’s output.
After Ditko’s legendary disagreements with Stan Lee led to his quitting Marvel – where his groundbreaking efforts made the reclusive genius (at least in comicbook terms) a household name – he found work at Warren Comics and resumed his long association with Charlton Comics.
That company’s laissez faire editorial attitudes had always offered him the most creative freedom, if not greatest financial reward, but in 1968 their wünderkind editor Dick Giordano was poached by the rapidly-slipping industry leader and he took some of his bullpen of key creators with him to DC Comics. Whilst Jim Aparo, Steve Skeates, Frank McLaughlin and Denny O’Neil found a new and regular home, Ditko began only a sporadic – if phenomenally productive – association with DC.
It was during this heady if unsettled period that the first strips derived from Ditko’s interpretation of the Objectivist philosophy of novelist Ayn Rand began appearing in fanzines and independent press publications like Witzend and The Collector, whilst for the “over-ground†publishing colossus he devised a brace of cult classics with The Hawk and the Dove and the superbly captivating concept re-presented here: Beware The Creeper. Later efforts would include Shade, the Changing Man, Stalker and The Odd Man, plus truly unique interpretations of Man-Bat, the Legion of Super-Heroes and many more…
The auteur’s comings and goings also allowed him to revisit past triumphs and none more so than with The Creeper who kept periodically popping up like a mad, bad penny. This superb hardcover compilation – still tragically and inexplicably languishing with other classics DC still hasn’t got around to making available in digital formats – gleefully gathers every Ditko-drafted and delineated Creeper classic from a delirious decade for your delight. It curates tales from Showcase #73, Beware the Creeper #1-6, 1st Issue Special #7, World’s Finest Comics #249-255 and Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2/Showcase #106 (collectively spanning March/April 1968 to February/March 1979), and the spooky superhero spectacle kicks off with an effusive Introduction from appreciative fan Steve (30 Days of Night) Niles.
Like so many brilliant ideas before it, Ditko’s bizarre DC visions first exploded off the newsstands in try-out title Showcase. Issue #73 heralded ‘The Coming of the Creeper!!’ with veteran comics and TV scripter Don Segall putting the words to Ditko’s plot and illustrations.
The moodily macabre tale introduces suicidally-outspoken TV host Jack Ryder, whose attitude to his show’s sponsors and cronies loses him his cushy job. His brazen attitude does, however, impress network security chief Bill Brane and the gruff oldster offers him a job as an investigator and occasional bodyguard.
Jack’s first case involves tracking down recent Soviet defector Professor Yatz who has gone missing. The CIA suspect has been abducted by gangster Angel Devilin and sold to Red agent Major Smej…
Displaying a natural affinity for detective work, Ryder tracks a lead to Devilin’s grand house and interrupts a costume party designed as a cover to make the trade. Promptly kicked out by thugs, Ryder heads for a costume shop but can only find a box of garish odds and ends… and lots of makeup.
Kitted out in strange melange of psychedelic attire, he breaks back in but is caught and stabbed before being thrown into a cell with the missing Yatz. The scientist – also grievously wounded – is determined to keep his inventions out of the hands of evil men. These creations comprise an instant healing serum and a Molecular Transmuter, able to shunt whatever a person is wearing or carrying into and out of our universe. A fully equipped army could enter a country as harmless tourists and materialise a complete armoury before launching sneak attacks…
To preserve them, Yatz buries the Transmuter inside Ryder’s knife wound before injecting him with the untested serum. The effect is instantaneous and doesn’t even leave a scar. The investigator is also suddenly faster, stronger and more agile…
When Jack presses a handheld activator, he is instantly naked and experimentation shows that he can make his motley costume appear and disappear just by pushing a button. Of course, now, whenever it is activated, neither makeup nor wig, bodystocking, boots or gloves will come off. It’s like the crazy outfit has become a second skin…
When the gangsters come for their captives, Yatz is burning his notes and in the fracas that follows catches a fatal bullet. Furious, guilt-ridden and strangely euphoric, Ryder goes after the thugs and spies, but by the time the cops arrive finds himself – or at least his canary yellow alter ego – blamed by Devilin for the chaos and even burglary.
The mobster has even given him a name… The Creeper…
As soon as the furore dies down the vengeful Ryder returns to exact justice for the professor and discovers his uncanny physical prowess and macabre, incessant unnerving laughter give him an unbeatable edge and win him a supernatural reputation…
After that single issue the haunting hero hurtled straight into his own bimonthly series. Beware the Creeper #1 debuted with a May/June cover-date. Behind one of the most evocative covers of the decade – or indeed, ever – ‘Where Lurks the Menace?’ (scripted by Denny O’Neil under his occasional pen-name Sergius O’Shaughnessy) finds Ryder and the Creeper hunting an acrobatic killer beating to death a number of shady types in a savage effort to take over the city’s gangs.
Jack’s relentless pursuit of the terror and careful piecing together of many disparate clues to his identity is only hindered by the introduction of publicity-hungry, obnoxious glamour-puss ‘Vera Sweet’. The TV weathergirl thinks she has the right to monopolise Ryder’s time and attention even when he’s ducking fists and bullets…
The remainder of the far-too-brief run featured a classic duel of opposites as a chameleonic criminal mastermind insinuated himself into the lives of Jack and the Brane bunch. It all began with ‘The Many Faces of Proteus!’ in issue #2 (by Ditko & O’Shaughnessy) as a pompous do-gooder’s TV campaign against The Creeper is curtailed when the Golden Grotesque shows up at the studio throwing bombs.
Caught in the blast is the baffled and battered Jack Ryder, and he’s even more bewildered when Brane informs him that a tip has come in confirming the Creeper is working for gambler gangboss Legs Larsen…
Dodging Vera, whose latest scheme involves a fake engagement, the real Creeper reaches Larsen’s gaming house in time to see a faceless man put a bullet into the prime suspect. In the ensuing panic the Laughing Terror transforms back into Ryder and strolls out carrying Larsen’s files, unaware that the faceless man is watching him leave and putting a few clues together himself…
The documents reveal a lone player has been slowly consolidating a hold on the city’s underworld but discloses no concrete information, so the Creeper goes on a very public rampage against assorted criminals in hopes of drawing Proteus out. The gambit works perfectly as a number of close friends try to kill Ryder, but only after he frantically fends off a flamethrower-wielding Vera in his own apartment does the Creeper realise that Proteus is far more than a madman with a makeup kit. A spectacular rooftop duel ends in a collapsed building and the apparent end of the protean plunderer, but there’s no body to be found in the rubble…
Beware the Creeper #3 has our outré hero tearing the city’s thugs apart looking for Proteus, but his one-man spook-show is curtailed when Brane sends Ryder to find Vera. Little Miss Wonderful is determined to be the first to interview an island society cut off from the world for over a century, but all contact has been lost since she arrived. Tracking her to ‘The Isle of Fear’ Jack finds her in the hands of a death cult.
More important to Ryder, however, is the fact that the Supreme One who leads the maniacs is actually a top criminal offering sanctuary to the Proteus flunkies he’s been scouring the city for…
Back in civilisation again, ‘Which Face Hides My Enemy?’ sees Ryder expose High Society guru and criminal mesmerist Yogi Birzerk‘s unsuspected connection to Proteus. The cops drive Creeper away before he can get anything from the charlatan, and when he dejectedly returns home Jack walks into an explosive booby trap in his new apartment.
The “warning†from Proteus heralds the arrival of Asian troubleshooters Bulldog Bird and Sumo who claim to be also pursuing the faceless villain. They reveal he was a high-ranking member of the government of Offalia who stole a chemical which alters the molecular composition of flesh before suggesting they all team up. Heading back to Bizerk’s place, it soon becomes clear that they are actually working for Proteus and that the faceless fiend knows Ryder’s other identity…
With #5, inker Mike Peppe joined Ditko and O’Neil as the epic swung into high gear with ‘The Color of Rain is Death!’ Proteus makes his closing moves, attacking many of Jack’s associates and framing him again whilst preparing for the criminal masterstroke which will win him much of the city’s wealth.
Luring the Creeper into the sewers just as a major storm threatens to deluge the city, the face-shifter reveals a scheme to blow up the drainage system and cause catastrophic flooding. After a brutal battle, he also leaves The Creeper tied to a grating to drown…
The stunning saga closed with the final issue of Beware the Creeper #6 (March/April 1969), by which time Ditko had all but abandoned his creation. ‘A Time to Die’ saw tireless and reliable everyman artist Jack Sparling pencil most of the story as the Creeper escapes his death-trap, deciphers the wily villain’s true game-plan and delivers a crushing final defeat.
It was fun and thrilling and – unlike many series which folded at that troubled time – even provided an actual conclusion, but it somehow it wasn’t satisfactory and it wasn’t what we wanted.
This was a time when superheroes went into a steep decline with supernatural and genre material rapidly gaining prominence throughout the industry. With Fights ‘n’ Tights comics folding all over, Ditko concentrated again on Charlton’s mystery line, the occasional horror piece for Warren and his own projects…
In the years his own comic was dormant, the Creeper enjoyed many guest shots in other comics and it was established that the city he prowled was in fact Gotham. When Ditko returned to DC in the mid-1970s, tryout series 1st Issue Special was alternating new concepts with revivals of old characters.
Issue #7 (October 1975) gave the quirky crusader another shot at stardom in ‘Menace of the Human Firefly’ written by Michael Fleisher and inked by Mike Royer. It saw restored TV journalist Jack Ryder inspecting the fantastic felons in Gotham Penitentiary just as manic lifer Garfield Lynns breaks jail to resume his interrupted costumed career as the master of lighting effects. By the time the rogue’s brief but brilliant rampage is over the Creeper has discovered something extremely disturbing about his own ever-evolving abilities…
The story wasn’t enough to restart the rollercoaster, but a few years later DC instituted a policy of giant-sized anthologies and the extra page counts allowed a number of lesser lights to secure back-up slots and shine again.
For World’s Finest Comics #249-255 (February/March 1978-February/March 1979) Ditko was invited to produce a series of 8-page vignettes starring his most iconic DC creation. This time he wrote as well as illustrated and the results are pure eccentric excellence.
The sequence begins with ‘Moon Lady and the Monster’ as Ryder – once again a security operative for Cosmic Broadcasting Network – has to ferret out a grotesque brute stalking a late night horror-movie hostess, after which #250’s ‘Return of the Past’ reprises the origin as Angel Devilin gets out of jail and goes looking for revenge…
In WFC #251, ‘The Disruptor’ proves to be a blackmailer attempting to extort CBN by sabotaging programmes whilst ‘The Keeper of Secrets is Death!’ in the next issue follows the tragic murder of Dr. Joanne Russell who is accused on a sensationalistic TV of knowing the Creeper’s secret identity…
In #253, ‘The Wrecker’ is an actual grudge-bearing mad scientist who has built a most unconventional robot, whilst ‘Beware Mr. Wrinkles!’ in #254 debuts a villain with the power to age his victims. Neither, however, are a match for the tireless, spring-heeled Technicolor Tornado, and his too-short return culminates in a lethal duel with a knife-throwing jewel thief in #255’s ‘Furious Fran and the Dagger Lady’…
Until this volume, that was it for Ditko devotees and Creeper collectors, but as the final delight in this splendid compendium reveals, there was more. An ill-considered expansion was followed by the infamous “DC Implosion†in 1978 when a number of titles were shut down or cancelled before release. One of those was Showcase #106 which would have featured a new all-Ditko Creeper tale.
It was collected – with a number of other lost treasures – in a copyright-securing minimum print run, monochrome internal publication entitled Cancelled Comics Cavalcade. Here, from #2 (1978) and presented in stark black & white, fans can see the Garish Gallant’s last Ditko-devised hurrah as ‘Enter Dr. Storme’ pits the Creeper (and cameo crimebuster The Odd Man) against a deranged weatherman turned climactic conqueror with the power to manipulate the elements.
Fast, fight-filled, furiously fun and devastatingly dynamic, Beware the Creeper was a high-point in skewed superhero sagas and this is a compendium no lovers of the genre can do without.
© 1968, 1969, 1975, 1978, 1979, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved
y André Franquin, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
