The Green Team is a fictional comic book team of rich-kid adventurers published by DC Comics. The team debuted in 1st Issue Special #2 (May 1975), and was created by Joe Simon and Jerry Grandenetti. In their initial, Pre-Crisis appearance, their group was subtitled "Boy Millionaires". Following The New 52 reboot of the DC Comics Universe, a revamped version of the group appears in a new series called The Green Team: Teen Trillionaires.
Publication history
The Green Team's only published adventure appears in 1st Issue Special #2 (May 1975), a try-out magazine of DC Comics. Two issues of a regular Green Team series were in various stages of completion but were not published.
Two inventoried stories were belatedly published in the first volume of Cancelled Comic Cavalcade (Fall 1978), a two-volume collection DC Comics printed on photocopiers to secure copyrights on the stack of unpublished material left over after the DC Implosion. In the first of the two unpublished adventures, the boys were pitted against giant lobsters and the Russian Navy. In what would have been the third issue, the Green Team face a villain called the Paperhanger who had special wallpaper that grew plants and trees, and who was a dead ringer for Adolf Hitler. They dispatch all menaces, then disappear into history in their private jet.
In subsequent decades, the Green Team appeared in one panel of Animal Man #25 (July 1990), written by Grant Morrison. In this self-reflexive adventure, Animal Man, on his way to meet writer Morrison, passes through a town populated by many obscure DC characters including Ultra the Multi-Alien, Max Mercury, Red Bee, the Space Canine Patrol Agents, and the Green Team. The boys beg Animal Man to rescue them from limbo and offer to bribe him with sacks full of cash. The team also appears in a single page of Adventures of Superman #549 (Aug. 1997), written by Karl Kesel, in which the boys meet the Newsboy Legion and Dingbats of Danger Street, financing a youth center for the two street gangs. Cecil Sunbeam and Abdul Smith appear in Ambush Bug: Year None #1 (Sept. 2008), written by Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming. Ambush Bug is assigned to solve the murder of Jonni DC and the team provides clues as he investigates.
New 52 Revival
It was announced alongside its sister book, The Movement in February 2013 that The Green Team would be revived as part of DC's The New 52. Written by Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani, and drawn by Ig Guara, the first issue is to debut in May 2013 and will focus on teens who use their financial resources to purchase power in the DC Universe, including super powers. This run lasted 8 issues and concluded in January 2014.
Fictional character biographies
The only prerequisite for joining the Green Team is one million dollars. The boys paid fortunes to anyone who could offer them a worthy adventure. In their first and only published story, they funded the "Great American Pleasure Machine", a sort of roller coaster ride that brings so much pleasure, it drives the villain of the piece insane.
As a text page in 1st Issue Special #2 (May 1975) explained, their jumpsuit uniforms had many pockets for money, with special locks, and they carried ticker-tape wristwatches, a chain of keys that would unlock any of their many labs and money vaults in far-flung lands, and a quarter-million dollars each that any of them could whip out at any time in the name of adventure.
Membership
Pre-Crisis
- Commodore Murphy - a boy shipping magnate.
- J.P. Huston - a Texan oil tycoon
- Cecil Sunbeam - a Hollywood film director known as "The Starmaker".
- Abdul Smith - an African-American shoeshine boy who received half a million due to a bug in his bank's computer. He shrewdly multiplied that stake, returned it to the bank, and had a million dollars left.
New 52
- Commodore Murphy: Described as "the leader of the group" who's "into electronics". He is also interested in superhero-related materials. He's affectionately referred to as "64" within the group, an inside joke related to his trust fund; he will inherit 64 trillion dollars from his family when he turns twenty-one.
- J.P. Houston: A Texan who comes from "old money". He is Latino and has a sister named Lucia Lynn (L.L.) who often spends time with the group. He has misgivings about Commodore's interest in "this superhero thing" and how it will affect the group.
- Cecilia Sunbeam: Described as "a big-time actress". "She's a celebrity, and she has all the problems that go with that."
- Mohammad Qahtanii: A modern prince. He is the youngest member of the group.
References
External links
- DCU Guide: The Green Team
- The Green Team Resource
- Oddball Comics: 1st Issue Special #1
- Grand Comics Database: Green Team
