Cover: Lee Elias

Showcase #48

Jan 1964 · DC · 0.12 USD

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★ 1st appearance — Johnny Blake★ 1st appearance — Lena the lemur

About this Issue

Showcase #48 marks the first time Cave Carson and his underground exploration team migrated from The Brave and the Bold — where they had debuted in 1960 — to DC's dedicated tryout anthology, representing a second editorial bet on a Silver Age concept that never quite broke through to a solo title. The issue belongs to a distinct subgenre of early-1960s DC adventure comics that answered the era's fascination with subsurface science fiction, placing Carson alongside contemporaries like Rip Hunter and the Sea Devils in a world built on exploration rather than superpowers. Although the Showcase run ultimately failed to earn Carson his own series, the character's persistence across two tryout titles over four years testifies to DC's genuine investment in the property, and the issue gained renewed cultural relevance decades later when Gerard Way revived Carson for DC's Young Animal imprint in 2016.

In "Killers of the Dead-End Maze," Cave Carson and his team race against time to stop Emile Basto, a mad scientist using prehistoric insect hormones to unleash giant creatures upon a French town. With Lee Elias handling both the interior art and cover, this 1964 Showcase #48 delivers a pulpy, suspenseful tale of science gone wrong—penciled and inked with gritty detail by Elias, and lettered by Stan Starkman.

Contains 2 stories

Killers of the Dead-End Maze

24 pp · Adventure

Lena the Lemurunnamed French police inspectorsMolemenEmile Basto

In "Killers of the Dead-End Maze," Cave Carson and his team race against time to stop Emile Basto, a mad scientist using prehistoric insect hormones to unleash giant creatures upon a French town. With the fate of the village hanging in the balance, they infiltrate Basto’s hidden cavern lair, where the stakes rise as they confront the monstrous results of his twisted experiments.

Untitled Humor story

1 pp · Humor

a co-worker of Homer'sa spelunking guide

ComicBooks.com Value

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Raw (VG) $16

CGC 9.4 · 1 in census $763*

CGC 9.2 · 4 in census $442*

CGC 9.0 · 3 in census $301*

CGC 8.5 · 6 in census $206

CGC 8.0 · 5 in census $158*

CGC 7.5 · 3 in census $126*

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CGC 7.0 · 2 in census $105*

CGC 6.5 · 3 in census $88*

CGC 6.0 · 3 in census $79*

CGC 5.5 · 2 in census $66

CGC 5.0 · 1 in census $62*

CGC 4.5 · 2 in census $49*

CGC 4.0 none in existence

CGC 3.5 none in existence

CGC 3.0 · 1 in census $31*

* estimate — limited direct-sales data at this grade

Our model’s value — refined as new sales data arrives · CGC census counts shown where available

More listings for this title

FAIR $9.95 VERY GOOD $13 VG $17.5 VG $18 VG $18.95 VG $19.95 FN $20 FN $21.09

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History

After five appearances in The Brave and the Bold between 1960 and 1961, Cave Carson went dormant until DC transferred the feature to Showcase — a title that had already launched the Silver Age Flash, Green Lantern, and Aquaman — for a fresh round of tryout issues beginning with #48. The Brave and the Bold chapters had rotated through several artists, but the Showcase installments brought a stable creative pairing: writer Bob Haney, already developing a reputation for breezy adventure scripts, and artist Lee Elias, who handled both the cover and interior pages. Editor Murray Boltinoff oversaw the run, and the new team injected more character depth into the ensemble, though the series still could not secure enough readership to graduate to its own title.

Trivia · 8 facts

Published with a cover date of January–February 1964 by DC Comics as part of the long-running Showcase tryout anthology.
The lead story is titled 'Killers of the Dead-End Maze,' in which Cave Carson's team encounters ancient cave paintings that foreshadow an attack on them, while the main antagonist Emile Basto uses prehistoric-insect hormones to grow creatures to giant size.
Represents the seventh overall appearance of Cave Carson (Calvin 'Cave' Carson) and his first tryout in Showcase, having previously appeared in The Brave and the Bold #31–33, 40, and 41.
Written by Bob Haney with cover and interior art by Lee Elias; edited by Murray Boltinoff.
Cave Carson's core team — strong-man Bulldozer Smith, younger adventurer Johnny Blake, and Christie Madison — all appear, as does Bulldozer's pet lemur Lena.
The team's signature vehicle, the underground drilling machine called the Mighty Mole, is central to the action.
Cave Carson and his crew would appear in two further Showcase issues (#49 and #52, spanning into late 1964) but never received a dedicated solo series, making the character one of Silver Age DC's most-tested but never-graduated concepts.
Cave Carson was revived in 2016 as the lead of DC's Young Animal imprint series Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye, written by Gerard Way and Jon Rivera with art by Michael Avon Oeming, bringing renewed attention to his Silver Age appearances.