1st Issue Special #6

History

According to inker Mike Royer, Kirby developed the Dingbats of Danger Street as a fully-intended ongoing series, and he completed pencils and scripts for at least three issues during his final stretch at DC — likely shortly after Mister Miracle and The Demon were cancelled, while he was still producing Kamandi and OMAC. DC shelved the planned series without explanation and eventually repurposed the debut issue as the sixth entry in its short-lived anthology 1st Issue Special, which publisher Carmine Infantino had conceived as a monthly string of perpetual first issues. The issue was edited by Kirby himself alongside associate editor E. Nelson Bridwell and assistant editor Bob Rozakis, went on sale June 24, 1975, and bore a September 1975 cover date; Tatjana Wood colored the interiors while Mike Royer handled both inks and lettering. The two completed but unpublished follow-up issues sat in storage for decades until TwoMorrows Publishing finally released them in the 2019 hardcover Jack Kirby's Dingbat Love, alongside other lost Kirby projects.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First and sole Bronze Age appearance of the Dingbats of Danger Street: Good Looks (leader), Krunch (strongman), Non-Fat, and Bananas — all written, penciled, and edited by Jack Kirby.
• The Dingbats are Kirby's last original 'kid gang' team, the culmination of a tradition he began with Joe Simon in the 1940s with the Newsboy Legion and the Boy Commandos.
• Inker Mike Royer confirmed the issue was originally planned as the first installment of a standalone Dingbats of Danger Street ongoing series; DC cancelled the series and folded the debut into 1st Issue Special instead.
• Kirby completed scripts and art for at least two additional issues (which would have been #2 and #3); these remained unpublished until TwoMorrows' 2019 hardcover Jack Kirby's Dingbat Love, which also collected Kirby's unproduced romance projects True-Life Divorce and Soul Love.
• Inker Mike Royer confirmed that the character Non-Fat was intended by Kirby to be African-American, but was mis-colored as Caucasian in the published issue — a coloring error corrected in the 2022 Danger Street adaptation.
• The story's plot has the four orphaned Dingbats accidentally helping police Lieutenant Terry Mullins apprehend the costumed criminals Jumpin' Jack and the Gasser, who had hidden stolen film inside Non-Fat's hot dog.
• The Dingbats' first appearance was reprinted in the Jack Kirby Omnibus Vol. 2 (May 2013), alongside other Kirby 1st Issue Special entries; the entire 1st Issue Special run was also collected in DC's 1st Issue Specials hardcover (2020).
• All 13 characters from 1st Issue Special — including the Dingbats — were united in Tom King and Jorge Fornés's 12-issue DC Black Label series Danger Street (December 2022–2023), which served as the characters' most prominent mainstream revival to date.

Full credits

Key issues in 1st Issue Special

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#2 1st appearance — Abdul Smith

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#5 1st appearance — Mark Shaw

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#8 1st appearance — Travis Morgan