Creepin' Creeps

"Meet the Men Behind the Creeper," a text piece from 1968’s Showcase #73, the issue that introduced DC’s jester of justice himself - the Creeper! As usual, Steve Ditko is ridiculously tight-lipped about his personal life, so instead we get an in-depth look at Creeper’s co-creator, Don Segall. So far as I have discerned, “The Coming of the Creeper" and a single Inferior Five story were Segall’s only work at DC, with the rest of his time in comics spent at Tower and Dell (where he wrote about half of Kona, Monarch of Monster Isle, and may have created Dell’s bizarre superheroic versions of Dracula and Frankenstein).

After the initial Creeper story, Segall apparently left comics for television writing. Sadly, he passed away in 1994, but master comics historian Mark Evanier has a lovely write-up on him here.

OTP Oddity

In 1956, Atlas Comics (precursor to Marvel) began publishing Dan DeCarlo's short-lived humor series Sherry the Showgirl. In 1964, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko introduced the villainous Kraven the Hunter in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man. In a storyline beginning in 2012, Stan Lee, his brother Larry Lieber, and Alex Saviuk paired the two up in the Spider-Man newspaper strip.

Stan Lee has the weirdest ships you guys seriously

(Cover scans courtesy of comics.org, newspaper strip courtesy Comics Curmudgeon.)

Sal's Sunday Punch #11

It's a special pugilistic Sal's Sunday Punch!  It's 1995, and Peter Parker is accused of murder most foul!  (Unsurprisingly, the murder was committed by one of Peter's clones.)  And even though he's Peter's friend, Bugle reporter Ben Urich has to look into Parker's past.  As written by Titanic Tom DeFalco, penciled by Our Pal Sal Buscema, and inked by...uh, Ginormous Jimmy Palmiotti in Spectacular Spider-Man #225, Ben interviews Peter's high school principal about a little boxing match between Parker and his nemesis Flash Thompson...

It's the eye of the spider, it's the thrill of the fight, rising up to the challenge of our rival...

What a jab!  Now, this is a flashback to Amazing Spider-Man #8, written by Stan "The Man" Lee and drawn by Sturdy Steve Ditko.  Let's see how the original stacks up...

Prediction: pain.

Well, Sal's rendition was more dynamic, but on the other hand, I love that goofy Ditko expression on Flash's face.  Let's call this one a draw.