Showcase #15
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeShowcase #15 is the debut of Space Ranger (Rick Starr), DC's first purpose-built Silver Age science-fiction action hero — a gadget-reliant, masked adventurer set in the 22nd century who established a template for technology-driven cosmic heroes that would influence characters like Adam Strange, debuting just two issues later in Showcase #17. The issue arrived at a moment when DC was systematically using its Showcase anthology as a proving ground for new concepts, and Space Ranger's success in garnering a follow-up in Showcase #16 demonstrated that the space-adventure genre could sustain a recurring lead character in the same way Showcase #4 had proven the superhero revival viable. Though Space Ranger never achieved the cultural footprint of contemporaries like Barry Allen or Hal Jordan, his run — which earned him a starring berth in Tales of the Unexpected and later Mystery in Space — shows Showcase functioning exactly as intended: as a low-risk incubator that shaped the breadth and genre diversity of the Silver Age DC line.
ComicBooks.com Value
Show all 19 grades ▾
More listings for this title
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
In 1957, DC editorial director Irwin Donenfeld convened editors Jack Schiff and Julius Schwartz and tasked each with developing a new science-fiction hero — one set in the present, one in the future; Schiff took the future-set assignment and handed the character concept to writers Edmond Hamilton and Gardner Fox for development, with Bob Brown assigned as artist. The resulting character, Rick Starr the Space Ranger, reflects Hamilton's deep roots in pulp space opera — he was already one of the medium's premier science-fiction wordsmiths — and the issue's credited editorial masthead lists Whitney Ellsworth, though the Grand Comics Database confirms Jack Schiff as the actual working editor, a common indicia practice at DC during this era.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Space Ranger (Rick Starr), Myra Mason, and the shape-shifting alien sidekick Cryll — all three debuting simultaneously in this single issue.
- Created by writers Edmond Hamilton and Gardner Fox with art and cover by Bob Brown; edited in practice by Jack Schiff (Whitney Ellsworth is the credited indicia editor).
- The issue contains two complete Space Ranger stories: 'The Great Plutonium Plot' and 'The Robot Planet,' both set in the 22nd century.
- A two-page non-fiction feature in the issue was drawn by Jack Kirby (identified across multiple sources as a space-travel history piece).
- Space Ranger is depicted as Rick Starr, a double-life executive at his father Thaddeus Starr's Allied Solar Enterprises, who operates from a secret hollowed-out asteroid base between Mars and Jupiter aboard a ship called the Solar King.
- The character has noted structural similarities to Isaac Asimov's 1952 novel David Starr, Space Ranger — same surname, same basic space-lawman concept — though no direct adaptation relationship has been documented.
- After Showcase #15 and #16 proved the concept, Space Ranger was promoted to a starring run in Tales of the Unexpected beginning with issue #40 (1959) and continuing through issue #82 (1964), then moved to Mystery in Space for a further run through 1965.
- Material from this issue has been reprinted multiple times: in DC Super-Stars #8 (1976), Mysteries in Space: The Best of DC Science Fiction Comics (Simon and Schuster, 1980), The Greatest 1950s Stories Ever Told (DC, 1992), and Showcase Presents: Showcase Vol. 1 (DC, 2012).
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Mighty The 100-Page Comic! #8 (1958), DC Super Stars #8 (1976), Mysteries in Space: The Best of DC Science Fiction Comics #[nn] (1980), The Greatest 1950s Stories Ever Told #[nn] (1992), The Essential Showcase 1956-1959 #[nn] (1993), Showcase Presents: Showcase #1 (2012)
Key issues in Showcase
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.