by 
Last updated on December 10th, 2021
On the heels of last year’s batch of books about the pets of various DC heroes (Superman’s dog Krypto, Batman’s dog Ace, etc.) comes this follow-up. A half-dozen “DC Super Pets” books will be released this fall, featuring more of DC’s animal heroes. The Brave and the Old blog has a list of all the books, complete with covers; my two cents on each of the characters featured follows:
- “Attack of the Invisible Cats”: The Space Canine Patrol Agents (here looking more like their Dog Star Patrol versions from the “Krypto the Superdog” TV show) versus the Phantom Zone crooks’ cats (who, of course, are evil). If you’re wondering, yes, there was an “SCPA” (a pun on the SPCA, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) in the 60s Superboy comics, with Krypto as a member. And yes, one of the SCPA stories revealed that several Phantom Zoners’ *cats* were exiled there with them. Don’t worry cat lovers, DC has heroic cats too (particularly Streaky the Super-Cat)…
- “Backyard Bowwow”: Krypto deals with Bizarro-Krypto. Bizarro-Krypto also was seen sometimes in the old Bizarro World stories.
- “Battle Bugs of Outer Space”: evil insects fighting an all-insect version of the Green Lantern Corps. There’s a few insect GL Corp members, so I suppose the “Bug Corps” will see those guys show up…
- “Salamander Smackdown”: Two villainous news versus the biggest and most obscure surprise of this line… the Terrific Whatzit! TW’s costume here, however, is that of the modern Flash’s, making him look more like “the Crash,” another super-fast turtle in the DC speedster pantheon. (The Crash is a funny-animal version of the Flash, who lives on the parallel world dubbed “Earth-C-Minus,” as opposed to TW’s world of “Earth-C,” home of the Zoo Crew.)
- “Superpowered Pony”: Mechanikat and Dogwood (two villains from the Krypto TV show, the former the series’ main master villain—an evil cyborg cat) versus Comet the Super-Horse. Comet’s another 60s character, who mostly appeared in Supergirl stories. As his name indicates, Comet’s a super-powered horse; in the original comics, he was an ancient Greek centaur who was turned into a horse and given various superpowers, with the occasional ability to turn into a human. In modern comics, Comet’s backstory was made extremely convoluted (don’t ask). I’ll assume this series (like “Tiny Titans”) will probably just go with Comet being another animal from Krypton, like Krypto…
- “The Hopping Hero”: A crocodile versus Hoppy, the Marvel Bunny. Hoppy’s a 40s character who appeared in Fawcett’s Captain Marvel comics (and later his own comic). Like Billy Batson, Hoppy would become Marvel-Bunny by saying “Shazam!” In Hoppy’s case, he lived in a funny-animal dimension attached to Captain Marvel’s world, and thus his “Shazam” acronym stood for the powers/abilities of six funny animal-gods. Hoppy’s turned up occasionally since the Golden Age, including having met Captain Carrot once.
While I suppose the Aquaman Shrine will be disappointed that Topo won’t be reappearing (ditto Batman fans about Ace), Flash fans should be pleased to see the Terrific Whatzit (or a modernized version of him) showing up, as will Captain Marvel fans seeing Hoppy.
