We’re continuing our trek through the pages of CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE #2, a collection of material intended to be published by DC in the late 1970s but which got spiked from publication due to the DC Implosion that saw 40% of teh line cancelled. The two issues of this series were hand-copied and distributed to contributors as well as to the Library of Congress in order to preserve DC’s copyright to the material.
If I’m not mistaken, had it seen print, SHOWCASE #106 would have been the first time that a feature that had graduated to its own regular series after a SHOWCASE try-out returned to the book’s pages. After all, the first Creeper story had appeared in SHOWCASE #73 back in the late 1960s. And like this story, it too was crafted by the character’s originator, Steve Ditko.
The Creeper had been appearing during this time as a back-up strip in the pages of WORLD’S FINEST COMICS, but somebody apparently thought the hero held enough appeal to be worth giving a full-issue spotlight. Strangely enough, when this story was written off, it was never thereafter repurposed into material for that WORLD’S FINEST COMICS spot, and remained unpublished until 2010’s THE CREEPER BY STEVE DITKO hardcover.
The dialogue here is credited to Ditko, but a lot of it really doesn’t sound like his voice. So I suspect that editor Jack C. Harris edited his copy heavily.
Strangely enough, Ditko includes a cameo appearance by another of his creations, the Odd Man. But the context is peculiar. Here, he’s simply a character in a pilot that’s being shot in the broadcast studios where Jack Ryder’s news show originates.
