1st Issue Special #2
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join free1st Issue Special #2 (May 1975) marks the first and only Bronze Age appearance of the Green Team: Boy Millionaires, a concept that planted a surprisingly prescient satirical flag — boy plutocrats financing a brain-stimulation pleasure machine, with costumed heroes and ordinary entertainers alike marching against them — years before 'wealth as superpower' became a mainstream comics trope. Created by Joe Simon, the co-creator of Captain America and the Newsboy Legion, the issue represents one of his last major character-creation efforts at DC, channeling his long history with kid-gang adventure comics into a distinctly 1970s capitalist satire. Although the Green Team never received an ongoing series in the original Bronze Age run, their debut proved durable enough that DC revived them in the New 52 era as 'Teen Trillionaires,' and Tom King drew on this very issue — alongside the rest of the 1st Issue Special run — as the direct inspiration for his 2022–2023 DC Black Label maxiseries Danger Street. The issue also carries the distinction of having been rescued from complete obscurity twice: once via the infamous in-house photocopied Cancelled Comic Cavalcade (which published the completed-but-unpublished follow-up stories), and again in DC's 2020 hardcover collection of the full 1st Issue Special run.
In "Chapter Two: The Green Room," Abdul Smith hits the jackpot and joins the Green Team, marking a pivotal moment in their story. With a bold new investment, Professor Apple unveils his Great American Pleasure Machine, setting the stage for something unexpected. Written by Joe Simon and illustrated by Jerry Grandenetti, with inks by Grandenetti and Win Mortimer, the issue’s cover by Grandenetti and Flessel captures the era’s vibrant energy — a 25-cent comic in 1975 that blends ambition, invention, and the promise of something bigger.
In "Chapter Two: The Green Room," Abdul Smith—fresh from making his first million—joins the Green Team, a group of idealistic innovators with a taste for bold ideas. When Professor Apple unveils his wild concept, the Great American Pleasure Machine, the team doesn’t hesitate: they’re in, ready to back the project with their resources and vision.
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The story behind this issue begins before 1st Issue Special even existed: the Green Team tale was originally prepared for a standalone Green Team #1 that DC never published, and was redirected into the new anthology series. The 1st Issue Special line itself was the brainchild of DC publisher Carmine Infantino, who observed that first issues consistently outsold subsequent ones and conceived of a monthly title consisting of nothing but debut issues — a concept writer Gerry Conway, in a later introduction, described as sounding 'like a joke, but he was dead serious.' Joe Simon, who had co-created the Newsboy Legion and Boy Commandos with Jack Kirby decades earlier, brought that same kid-gang DNA to the Green Team but filtered it through a satirical, comedic lens; his collaborator Jerry Grandenetti, a veteran DC war-comics artist and former Will Eisner Spirit ghost-penciler, had already worked with Simon on the short-lived Prez series, making them a natural pairing. Two further Green Team stories were fully completed for issues #2 and #3 of a projected ongoing, but the DC Implosion of 1978 killed the series before it reached newsstands, and those stories only saw any form of publication in the photocopied, copyright-securing Cancelled Comic Cavalcade #1 (Fall 1978).
Trivia · 8 facts
- First and only Bronze Age appearance of the Green Team (subtitled 'Boy Millionaires'), consisting of members Commodore Murphy (shipping magnate), J.P. Houston (oil tycoon), Cecil Sunbeam (Hollywood producer), and Abdul Smith (a shoeshine boy who parlays a bank error into millionaire status).
- Written and illustrated by Joe Simon and Jerry Grandenetti — Simon being the Golden Age co-creator of Captain America and the Newsboy Legion; Grandenetti being a celebrated DC war-comics artist and former Will Eisner Spirit collaborator.
- The story was originally produced for a standalone Green Team #1 that DC never published; it was redirected into the 1st Issue Special anthology format.
- The issue's central plot involves the Green Team financing the 'Great American Pleasure Machine,' a computer-driven sensory-stimulation dome; the villain (a Broadway producer who fears it will destroy live entertainment) sneaks inside and is driven permanently insane by it.
- Membership requirement for the Green Team is a minimum net worth of one million dollars; team uniforms are green jumpsuits loaded with money-filled pockets, ticker-tape wristwatches, and keys to worldwide vaults.
- Two completed follow-up Green Team stories (for a projected ongoing series) were never commercially published due to the 1978 DC Implosion; they appeared only in Cancelled Comic Cavalcade #1, a photocopied in-house publication DC produced to secure copyrights on unpublished material.
- The issue is reprinted in DC's 1st Issue Specials, a 2020 hardcover collection of the entire run.
- The Green Team are among the characters featured in Tom King and Jorge Fornés's 12-issue DC Black Label maxiseries Danger Street (2022–2023), which drew on the full 1st Issue Special catalog as its inspiration.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Comic Reader #115 (1975), DC's 1st Issue Specials #[nn] (2020)
Key issues in 1st Issue Special
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