Happy Birthday: The Creeper
Jack Ryder’s parentage certainly predicted his future—his father was the publisher of a successful union dispatch, while his mother suffered paranoid schizophrenia and died in an institution while Jack was still a child.
Growing up, Ryder followed in his father’s footsteps and became a television news reporter. Unfortunately, Ryder had a big mouth. Normally that would be an asset, but Ryder didn’t know when to shut up, and it cost him his job.
The network didn’t fire him, but they did demote him to working network security, a job Ryder found beneath him. He got his chance to prove himself again when mobsters kidnapped a scientist named Dr. Emil Yatz. Ryder guessed that Yatz would be held at the mob boss’ mansion. The boss was holding a masquerade party that night, so Ryder cobbled together a bizarre costume and snuck in.
He found Yatz, but was seriously injured in the process, and to save him Yatz injected Ryder with the serum he’d created. The scientist also hid the device the mobsters were after by concealing half of it inside Ryder’s wound, which then healed thanks to the serum’s effects.
The device can make matter appear and disappear instantly, allowing a soldier to walk into a place in civilian clothes and then have a uniform and full weapons with the touch of a button. In Ryder’s case it let him make his strange new costume appear and disappear. Ryder used his bizarre appearance, the strength and agility the serum granted him, his unhinged disregard for personal safety, and a disquieting laugh to bring the mobsters to justice.
They dubbed him "The Creeper," and so a new—and truly bizarre—superhero was born.

There’s no telling how long they’ll be available, but it looks like the crew at ComicNerd has posted a set of 33 "leaked" cast photos from the upcoming G.I. Joe film.
We start our 200th broadcast with the first round of a new survey asking who that final model might be… TV and comic writer Marc Guggenheim weighs in with his theory, and then we head over to the Battlestar set to ask co-executive producer Mark Verheiden what he picked up at his comic shop this week, plus:
Book of the Week: Nova #13 — A comic has to be pretty dang good to overcome a cover like the one at right, which seems to show Nova and Silver Surfer en flagrante as Galactus serves as an interstellar peeping tom.
It isn’t often that mainstream media picks up on toy collector news, but


