Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew

Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! is a DC Comics comic bookabout a team of funny animal superheroes called the Zoo Crew. The characters first appeared in a special insert in The New Teen Titans #16 (February 1982), followed by a series published from 1982 to 1983. The Zoo Crew characters were created by Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw. Although the series, which was the last original funny animal property created by DC Comics, proved short-lived, it is still fondly remembered by many comic fans of its generation,and the characters appear occasionally in cameos in the mainstream DC Universe (this is made possible due to the existence of a "multiverse" in the DCU, which allows the Zoo Crew characters to exist on a parallel Earth).

The series was introduced in a 16-page insert in The New Teen Titans#16. The series was cancelled after twenty issues, with six issues still in preparation. These six issues were eventually published in three double-sized issues as Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew in the Oz-Wonderland War Trilogy, with the indicia title Oz-Wonderland Wars(plural). The series did not, in fact, depict a conflict between the Land of Ozand Wonderland, which plotter E. Nelson Bridwell considered antithetical to Ozite politics, but rather depicted the Nome King retrieving the magic belt and using his powers against both Oz and Wonderland, with the Zoo Crew coming in as reinforcements against him. The series was praised for its artwork, by Carol Lay, for its close emulation of the work of John R. Neilland Sir John Tenniel, but the story, scripted by Joey Cavalieri, was seen by many to be too close to the plot of Ozma of Oz to reach its full potential. The series featured cameos from Hoppy the Marvel Bunny and the Inferior Five.

A Showcase Presents reprinting of the entire series was slated for September 2007, but was postponed along with several other Showcaseeditions due to royalty issues in DC's contracts of the 1980s. The book was finally released in September 2014. After years of absence, the Zoo Crew was reintroduced in Teen Titans in 2005. In October 2007 a three-issue miniseries called Captain Carrot and the Final Ark featured the Zoo Crew picking up from the Teen Titans storyline.