Beware The Creeper Comes Back!

In 1975 the mavens at DC Comics decided to give The Creeper another try-out on the newsstands and to that end the seventh issue of 1st Issue Special was pressed into service. This featured a story drawn by the Creeper's creator Steve Ditko. One curious detail about the cover above is the tiny detail of the dog and fire hydrant. (You can almost see them.) This cover was designed by Carmine Infantino and handed to Ditko to finish and to show his displeasure with such an arrangement he has that pup show its disrepect to that hydrant in the natural and time proven fashion. 

In this singular issue Creeper finds himself battling the Human Firefly, a hood just busted out of prison and aching to remake his reputation. The Firefly was a vintage Batman villain first and last seen in Detective Comics #184 from 1952, about the time Ditko was first breaking into comics. The script for the story was by Michael Fleisher, and Mike Royer inked Dikto's pencils. But Ditko wasn't done with his creation, he had more Creeper stories to tell. 

The try-out sparked a revival in the back pages of World's Finest beginning with issue #249. 

The Creeper was rarely featured on the covers, though his smiling yellow mug and lustrous green motop was nestled alongside the logo with the other back-up features face in this densely packed dollar comic. All the stories were written and drawn by his creator Ditko. 

The stories in these issues have a much broader comic feel than the original series had shown nearly a decade before. The Creeper is working for Cosmic Broadcasting as part of a security team. 

Joining his cast are his boss Sam Hagen along with spry blonde dame named Fran Daye and a galoot named Dump. One odd detail is that a fly always seems to be hovering around Dump's head. 

The Creeper comes up against new baddies like The Disruptor and a lug called simply the Monster. He also has to deal with the return of Angel Devlin who was instrumental in the origin of The Creeper in his very first story. 

Apparently there was some thought to busting the Creeper out into his own comic again, but the infamous DC Implosion put the skids to that idea. The issue of Showcase #107 would have allowed The Creeper to return to his place of birth but it was only seen in the Cancelled Comic Cavalcade #2 for many years. Creeper does rate an appearance on both of the CCC covers though. 

This is a wild wild issue with two double-page splashes and a cameo by Ditko's Odd Man. (The Odd Man was touted to have a back-up feature, but the implosion ended that aspiration.) 

And that's a wrap on The Creeper, at least as produced by his maker Steve Ditko. The Creeper did prove somewhat popular and did get around for some time by dint of other talents. That's tomorrow's subject. 

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