The Creeper by Steve Ditko
In 1968, Steve Ditko defected from Marvel Comics, where he’d co-created Spider-Man, to join the competition at DC. Among the superheroes he created there was the Creeper, who came into being when a dying scientist gave TV reporter Jack Ryder the ability to transform himself into a super-strong, garishly garbed crimefighter. Although the Creeper’s superpowers were limited and his stories rather mundane (he generally fought run-of-the-mill thugs rather than exotic supervillains), his bright yellow skin, green fright wig, and long red rug for a cape were enough to make him memorable. But not a hit. His series ran to only seven issues, all of which are reprinted here, along with a handful of shorter stories published during the succeeding decade. Ditko’s idiosyncratic visuals and personal vision, anomalous in the era’s hidebound mainstream comics, are reminiscent of the similarly eccentric Fourth World saga that fellow Marvel refugee Jack Kirby created soon after for DC. Not popular enough to sustain a serial, the Creeper remains peripheral in the DC Universe. Colorful, though. --Gordon Flagg