Creeper (comics) - Fictional Character Biography

Fictional Character Biography

Jack Ryder is a former Gotham City television talk show host fired due to his outspoken nature. Finding employment in network security, he attempts to rescue a scientist named Dr. Yatz whom mobsters have kidnapped in order to obtain his newest discoveries. The chief mobster hosts a masquerade party at his mansion. To gain entry, Ryder improvises a costume from yellow tights and facial make-up designed to look like skin, a green wig and trunks, and red gloves, boots, and furry cloak. Ryder locates Yatz inside, but the mobsters detect him and open fire, wounding Ryder. Yatz injects Ryder with a serum and implants a device in his wound. The serum confers the power to almost instantly heal any wound and grants Ryder enhanced strength and agility. The device, used with its activator, causes the costume to disappear, leaving Ryder naked. Yatz inadvertently leaves the activator out of the wound, but does not realize this until after the tissues had healed. At this point, the mobsters find their victims again, this time killing Yatz. Ryder discovers that with the activator, he can regain the wild costume whenever he wishes. With it, a crazy laugh and his enhanced physical abilities, he has no trouble routing the crooks.

The eventual revision of The Creeper's origin eliminated the serum and claims that the scientist surgically implanted two devices (some accounts claim a single device with two effects) that enhance Ryder's physical abilities and can recreate an object whose "imprint" is stored in its circuitry. The scientist performs this surgery to save Ryder's life after criminals he was investigating attacked and drugged him. Because the scientist is unaware of the drugs in Ryder's system he inadvertently recorded their "imprint" at the same time he recorded the "imprint" of the costume. Thus the device that recreates Ryder's costume when he becomes The Creeper also recreates the drugs in his system, explaining the Creeper's odd personality. These drugs so overwhelm Ryder's system that their effect becomes cumulative and the Creeper gradually becomes more irrational. When the Creeper changes back to Jack Ryder, the drugs disappear and with them, the psychosis. Eventually, Ryder comes to believe that he and the Creeper are two entirely different people instead of two roles played by the same man; he also holds this belief in his Creeper persona, which becomes increasingly disdainful of "Jack Ryder." The Creeper once regained his rationality while bound by Wonder Woman's magic lasso, but the implications of this have never been explored. In Outsiders Bruce Wayne The Road Home it is revealed that he once dated Vicki Vale.