Welcome to the fourth issue of RazorFine Presents Comic Spotlight as we take a look at comic heroes, villains, and everything in between. This week, with their glorious return to the pages of DC Comics in a brand-new mini-series, we examine DC’s furriest team – Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew. Long before Eastman and Larid’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles roamed New York streets a band of anthropomorphic heroes kept an entire world safe from harm.
Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew
Zoo Crew Members: Captain Carrot, Ally-Kat-Abra, Pig-Iron, Rubberduck, Yankee Poodle, Fastback, and Little Cheese.
1st Appearance: New Teen Titans issue #16 (February, 1982)
Currently appearing: Captain Carrot and the Final Ark (three-issue mini-series)
DC’s Multiverse (pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths) contained countless worlds and alternate realities and parallel Earths. One of these was Earth-C, a planet much like ours except filled with walking, talking, sentient animals instead of humans. The world was also notable for its puntastic nature (Los Antelopes, Califurnia and Gnu York for example). The greatest heroes of this world, who were inadvertently granted super-human powers when Superman sent a meteor towards their planet which fragments gave off strange radiation, banded together to form the Zoo Crew.
The team is led by their fearless leader Captain Carrot who powers up by ingesting cosmic carrots which grant him super-strength, speed, stamina, invulnerability, vision, and flight for 24 hours (not unlike another hero’s famous energy pills). Other team members included Pig-Iron (the “Swine of Steel”) whose body was made of living steel, the mystical Alley-Kat-Abra with her wand and spells, Rubberduck who had the power to stretch his body (like Mr. Fantastic or the Elongated Man), Yankee Poodle (with the ability to shoot stars and strips from he hands), Fastback (a turtle with super-speed, and Little Cheese (a mouse with the ability to shrink like The Atom and Ant-Man).
After appearing in Teen Titans the crew were granted their own series which lasted for 20 issues as they saved their wold from the likes of Dr. Hoot, Jailhouse Roc, Digger O’ Doom, Frogzilla, Feline Faust, Armordillo, King Kone, and A.C.R.O.S.T.I.C. (A Cabal Recently Organized Solely To Instigate Crimes).
Although DC hoped to turn the property into an animated series the comic’s short run ended those plans before they had ever begun. The heroes did return three years later for a three-part mini-series The Oz-Wonderland War, and then vanished again until they appeared once again in The Teen Titans in late 2005 and early 2006. Currently the group is back on the comic racks with their new three-issue mini-series Captain Carrot and the Final Ark.
Created by the team of Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw the group has a small but vocal following which includes Carole Curtis, Geoff Johns and yours truly. For more on the characters check out this CBR Interview with Scott Shaw and the humorous The Annotated (and certainly Not Addlepated) Captain Carrot with plenty o’ trivia, notes, remembrances and tons of links.