Creeper

Creeper
General Information
Real name:	Jack Ryder
First Appearance:	Showcase #73 (March-April 1968)
Created by:	Steve Ditko
Affiliations:	Batman family Justice League of America Justice League of Anarchy Shadow Fighters Secret Society of Super Villains
Abilities:	Superhuman Strength, Speed, Endurance, and Agility; Regeneration

Jack Ryder is an investigative reporter turned controversial talk show host, well-known for his aggressive manner and determination to get to the truth. What his viewers don't realize is that he's also The Creeper, a garishly-covered vigilante who Ryder can, with effort, turn into at will--although at that point, the Creeper's somewhat maniac personality takes over. The Creeper is usually on the side of good and just barely on the side of sanity.

History

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Jack Ryder

Jack Ryder was originally a television news reporter who was demoted due to his outspoken nature. Relegated to network security, he protected a scientist (Doctor Yatz) who gave him two devices. One enabled him to instantly heal from any wound and gave enhanced strength and agility, but at the cost of somewhat unbalanced personality. The other enabled him to instantly change into the costume of a green-haired, yellow-skinned, and red-furred wildman; the costume, "imprinted" on the device and thus capable of being summoned and dispelled at will, was originally adopted by Ryder while rescuing the scientist from kidnappers.

It was later revealed that the scientist surgically implanted the devices (or device, since some accounts claim that it is a single device that can both enhance physical ability and re-create any object whose "imprint" is stored in its circuitry) in order to save Ryder's life after he was attacked and drugged by the criminals he was investigating; because the scientist was unaware of the drugs in Ryder's system, he inadvertently recorded the "imprint" of the drugs at the same time he recorded the "imprint" of the costume. Thus the same device that re-creates Ryder's costume when he becomes the Creeper also re-creates the drugs in his system, explaining the Creeper's odd personality.

Beware the Creeper!

Apparently, the drugs were so overwhelming that it was impossible to completely cleanse their effect from the Creeper's system, and the Creeper gradually descended into ever more intense irrationality, while Jack Ryder, instantly free of the drugs' influence the second he changed back to normal, suffered no such condition.

Eventually, Ryder came to believe that he and the Creeper were two entirely different people instead of two character roles played by the same man; he also held this belief in his Creeper persona, which became increasingly disdainful of "Jack Ryder." The Creeper once regained his rationality while bound by Wonder Woman's magic lasso, but the implications of this have never been explored.

The Creeper was tricked into taking up one of Eclipso's dark crystals, putting him under Eclipso's control. He was later freed by Bruce Gordon along with all the other enslaved superheroes. The Creeper and Gordon teamed up again to try and defeat Eclipso (The Creeper was chosen to join the Shadow Fighters team because of his dislike for Eclipso following his possession and also because he was mad enough to agree). Despite being caught and escaping once, the Creeper was eventually killed by Eclipso, when the team re-invaded the country Eclipso was ruling. The manner of his death was ironic as he was torn to shreds by laughing Eclipsed hyenas in the building in which the chemicals he was created by were manufactured.

The remains were recovered and there must have been enough left to regenerate, when it was strongly indicated that the convoluted Dr. Yatz origin of the Creeper was an implanted memory (or otherwise false), and that the Creeper's actual origins were somehow related to his longtime villain, Proteus.

Jack Ryder recently took over the demoted Clark Kent's beat.

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Criminals fear the Creeper even more than Batman.

He also shows up as a reporter for a Gotham City television station. Ryder is the anchorman of a show in which he deliberately antagonizes his guests to raise attentions on controversial topics, like stem cells theraphy and medical nanotech. While searching a scoop on the revolutionary "nanocells" therapy of Doctor Vincent Yatz, a mixture of nanotech and stem cell therapy able to enhance the body regenation at the point of giving a new skin to a badly scarred burn victim, he was an inadvertant witness to an attempt to steal Yatz's newly discovered tech. Unable to escape, Yatz injected into his body the last sample of nanocells, still unstable, in an attempt to keep it safe from the villains. This was a timely act for, when the robbers shot Ryder into his head, the regenerative substance interacted with his body chemistry resurrecting him as the Creeper. Ryder dispatched his opponents, discovering that now he's able to call forth his bestial alter-ego at will.

Abilities and Attributes

• Determined Reporter
• Known for his aggressive pursuit of stories
• Famous for his controversial talk show
• Secret identity as his alter ego, the Creeper.
• Creeper Form: The Creeper's powers are physical in nature, as a result of Yatz's invention. Jack Ryder can transform into the Creeper virtually instantaneously, and vice versa.
• Superhuman Agility: This enables him to perform amazing feats of acrobatics and leaping. He also seems able to climb walls with little or no difficulty.
• Superhuman Stamina
• Superhuman Strength: His strength is enough to enable him to throw grown men several feet or jump several feet in the air.
• Enhanced Speed
• Enhanced Reflexes
• Superhuman Healing Factor: Enables him to heal from virtually any wound. Indeed, gunshots and stab wounds have healed in a matter of minutes. It even allowed him to return from death when his body regenerated after being torn apart by Eclipsed hyenas.
• Hypnotic Intimidation: Apparent intimidation/hypnosis ability as one of the thugs seems to be mesmerized after an encounter with the Creeper.
• Pain Inducing Laugh: His laugh is depicted as being physically painful to the ears of his victims.
• Expert Combatant: These combined abilities make Creeper a formidable fighter, incorporating brawling techniques with his physical prowess. A signature move is jumping onto the backs of his opponents and throwing them off balance.

Notes

Following his debut in Showcase, the Creeper was given his own series Beware the Creeper, written by Dennis O'Neil (and plotted by Ditko for the first issue only), which lasted only six issues. (The storyline begun would be concluded in Super-Team Family #2 in 1975/76). Apart from issue #7 of First Issue Special (in 1975), and back-up series in Adventure Comics #445-447 (in 1976), World's Finest Comics #249-55 (in 1978-79) and The Flash #318-323 (in 1983), all the Creeper's subsequent appearances have been guest roles. Over the years, the Creeper's personality underwent changes by different writers; at times his deranged behavior was depicted as only an act to frighten criminals, while at other times he seemed genuinely psychotic. DC gave the Creeper another chance in a solo entitled The Creeper, lasting 12 issues including the one millionth, Len Kamisnki focused on the break down of Jack Ryder's sanity as influenced by the Creeper and making many references to the previous continuity. It was recently announced that a new 6-issue Creeper mini-series, written by Steve Niles and drawn by Justiniano, will begin in August 2006. The series will reboot the Creeper's history, with Niles saying "I’m retelling the origin, but it is very close to the original so that The Creeper still fits into the DC Universe in the same way he has for years..." The preview in DCU: Brave New World showed Jack Ryder as the host of a controversial show "You are Wrong!", promising $1,000,000 to the person who catches the Creeper.

Alternate versions

• The Creeper found a new guise in the early 20th century when the Beware The Creeper series (written by Jason Hall and illustrated by Cliff Chiang) was released under the Vertigo brand. Set in 1920s Paris, and featuring a female Creeper, it was somewhat different to its predecessor.
• The Creeper also makes a nigh non-existent appearance in Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again wherein he has already been struck fatally when we see him.
• In the DC One Million crossover the year is 85,271. On the planet IAI, a being known as "Insanitation" lands on the planet, drawn to a raw force known as "the Creeper". The trail leads to Jack Ryder, who was tired of being a super-hero. Jack and the Creeper became separate parts of each other, actual living beings. After the Creeper side got injured by Insanitation, Jack realized that whether he liked it or not, the Creeper was a part of him. Insanitation could live with this and had the two bodies separte back together, and the Creeper was reborn.

In Amalgam Comics the Creeper is combined with the X-Men character Nightcrawler as the Nightcreeper in JLX. Jack Ryder appears as a Daily Bugle reporter in Spider-Boy and it is hinted in the (fictional) lettercolumn there is a connection between them. Spider-Boy himself uses Professor Yatz' matter transformer to take on the identity of "Pete Ross".

• The Bouncing Beatnik and Jack-in-the-Box in Kurt Busiek's Astro City series are partly based on the Creeper.

In Other Media

• In Batman: The Animated Series, the Creeper was created by the Joker when he got pushed into the same vat of acid that created the Joker, but as an addition, the Joker had hit Ryder with his laughing gas/Venom. The resulting interaction between the two substances had the effect of creating a benign psychosis in Ryder, who still maintained a sense of right and wrong.

Batman: Arkham Asylum & Batman: Arkham City

Main article: Jack Ryder (Batman: Arkham City)

Trivia

• The Creeper was featured in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, Beware the Creeper, and also made numerous non-speaking appearances in Justice League Unlimited. The Creeper's origin in DCAU differed notably from any of the comic origins.
• In Earth-97 continuity, the Creeper was a human occultist and member of a coven known as, The Dark Circle.