40 Years Ago Today From DC Comics -- Unexpected #112

Unexpected #112 (On Sale: February 6, 1969) has a nice cover by Neal Adams.

Johnny Peril stars in "The Brain Robbers" by George Kashdan and Jack Sparling. "Burn, Match, Burn" is by Dave Wood and Artie Saaf and "The Corpse That Didn't Die" is by Dave Wood and Pat Boyette and was reprinted in Unexpected #162.

Dave Wood's (AKA D. W. Holtz and D. W. Holz) first writing for DC was in Big Town #1, January 1951. In the early '50s he also wrote a number of Strong Bow stories for All-Star Western and Foley of the Fighting Fifth for All-American Western and Western Comics. He wrote for numerous issues of Rex the Wonder Dog beginning with issue #1 and pulled a long stint on the DC war books, All-American Men of War, Our Army at War and Star Spangled War Stories.

For World's Finest Comics he wrote Green Arrow, Tomahawk and Batman/Superman stories. He also wrote Batman stories in Batman and Detective Comics and Superman stories in Superman. For Mystery In Space he wrote Adam Strange, Space Ranger and Ultra the Multi-Alien (Dave's creation) and for Strange Adventures he wrote Star Hawkins and Animal Man (Dave's creation). Dave Wood also wrote a number of Dial H for HERO stories for House of Mystery and the Martian Manhunter for House of Secrets.

In 1968 he made the rounds of the Mort Weisinger books doing Supergirl in Action Comics and the Superboy and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen features, but by 1969, Dave was relegated to this single Murray Boltinoff mystery title, where, except for a fill-in back-up story in the Boltinoff-edited Challengers of the Unknown (a story most likely written for the Unexpected), Dave would finish his career at DC.

Before coming to DC, Dave wrote Blackhawk stories for Quality from 1940-1949 and wrote Bombshell for Lev Gleason. During his time at DC Dave also wrote adventure stories for Harvey Comics and between 1958 and 1960 wrote the daily syndicated strip Sky Masters of the Space Force drawn by Jack Kirby and Wally Wood.

I don't know why Dave left DC or what happened to him after he left DC except for a single story he wrote that appeared in Creepy Magazine in 1971. This was the time when the old guard of writers were being pushed out and Dave Wood was most likely just part of that push. Dave's stories in Unexpected would appear regularly for the rest of 1969, then in three issues in 1970 then one issue in 1971, 1973, 1974 and finally in 1975.

Edited by Murray Boltinoff.