Credit where credit is due: Who created who in Thunderbolts*

•Bucky Barnes, Captain America's sidekick, was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1941's Captain America Comics #1. His Winter Soldier look, identity and backstory as a brainwashed assassin with a robot arm were the creations of Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting. Barnes first appeared as the Winter Soldier in 2005's Captain America #6.

•La Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, an agent of the espionage team SHIELD, was created by Jim Steranko in 1967's Strange Tales #159.  

•Red Guardian Alexei Shostakov, the Soviet Union's answer to Captain America, was created by Roy Thomas and John Buscema in 1967's Avengers #43. 

•Taskmaster, a mercenary and combat instructor with "photographic reflexes" that allow him to mimic the moves of his opponents, was created by David Michelinie and George Perez in 1980's Avengers #196.

•John Walker, a one-time Captain America antagonist, was created by Mark Gruenwald and Paul Neary, appearing for the first time in 1986's Captain America #323, wherein he used the name "Super Patriot." He later became the new (and temporary) Captain America, before finally settling on the name USAgent in 1989's Captain America #354. I'm afraid I'm not sure which artist deserves credit for the black, white and red variation of the original Simon and Kirby Captain America costume that Walker eventually adopted as his USAgent get-up. (Tom Morgan seems to have penciled its first appearances). If you know, please tell us in the comments and I'll update this post. 

•The Ghost, an Iron Man villain with a power suit that allows him and objects in his possession to become invisible or intangible, was created by David Michelinie and Bob Layton in 1987's Iron Man #219. 

•The Thunderbolts, a group of long-time Marvel supervillains who secretly adopt new codenames and costumes to pose as a superhero team, were created by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley for the 1997 Thunderbolts series (Although they first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #449 by Peter David and Mike Deodato Jr.).  

•Yelena Belova, the second Black Widow, has some rather convoluted creation credits. She first appeared as a sketch by artist J.G. Jones in 1998's Marvel Knights Wave 2: Sketchbook #1, made her first in-story appearance in a 1999 issue of Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee's miniseries Inhumans and then starred in a 1999 Black Widow miniseries by Devin K. Grayson and Jones, who are usually credited as her creators. (Wikipedia lists Grayson, Jones, Jenkins and Lee all as her creators, though). She is, obviously, a legacy version of Black Widow Natasha Romanoff, who was created by Stan Lee, Don Rico and Don Heck for the Iron Man feature in 1964's Tales of Suspense #52. She has since adopted the name White Widow.

•The Sentry, a Superman analogue with mental health problems that manifest as the alternate identity The Void, was created by Paul Jenkins, Jae Lee and Rick Veitch for 2000's The Sentry #1. 

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Speaking of who created The Sentry... You'll note that I credited Paul Jenkins, Jae Lee and Rick Veitch above. As you've probably noticed, I was going by Wikipedia's credits for all of those I didn't already know. A few months ago, I would have told you that Jenkins and Lee created The Sentry, but then, that was before I stumbled upon this interview with Veitch at the website Popverse, which includes various sketches of the character in the style of different artists apparently created to support a pitch. It's a fascinating (if rather sad) interview, and paired with this follow-up story, it seems like Veitch and Jenkins are currently in rather strong disagreement about whether or not Veitch contributed to the character's development at all.

Review: Casey Jones: North By Downeast

Introduced by creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in 1985's Raphael one-shot (which you can read in its entirety here, Casey Jones would become one of the central characters in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, joining the core cast of the title characters, Splinter and April on a more-or-less permanent basis from 1986's TMNT #10 on, as well as appearing in all of the cartoons (albeit just briefly in the first and most influential series), and as many of the feature films as The Shredder did (each were in three of the five films). Despite Casey's role as a sort of unofficial, human fifth Turtle, he didn't earn a comic book with his name in the title until 1994's two-part miniseries Casey Jones: North By Downeast (That same year he'd also share a title with his best friend among the Turtles in Casey Jones and Raphael, an ill-starred miniseries that Mirage only published a single issue of).

The story that fills the pages of Casey Jones actually wasn't originally intended for a miniseries. Rather, the "North By Downeast" story started out being serialized short chapter by chapter in the short-lived Mirage Studios anthology Plastron Cafe. Never finished there, Casey Jones reprinted those chapters and finished off the storyline in a set of two comics, produced in full color (the shorts in Plastron were, of course, in black-and-white, color still being fairly new to the world of the Turtles, even at that late date in the publisher's history).

Read today, Casey Jones is probably more noteworthy for who made it, rather than whose name is in the title: Character co-creator Kevin Eastman provided the story and inks, but Rick Veitch scripted, penciled and even lettered the story (Usual TMNT letterer Steve Lavigne provided the colors, and John Totleben the covers). Veitch, probably still best-known for his BratPack and Swamp Thing, despite some compelling and under-appreciated work since (including Cant' Get No and Army @ Love for Vertigo), was here making a return trip to the world of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, having previously produced the three-part storyline "The River" (TMNT #24-#26) and the weird-ass one-off TMNT #30.

If any publisher ever decides to collect TMNT comics by creator, Veitch has certainly produced enough of it to fill a good-sized trade paperback and, significantly, most of it is very good; "The River" being one of the better non-Eastman and Laird stories that wasn't a wild departure.

The pacing in "North By Downeast," as well as its set-up, betrays its origins as short strips spread across issues of an anthology. It opens cinematically, on a dark and stormy night, the first few pages of panels taking us from an establishing shot of the New York City, following the rain into a gutter, down a drainpipe, into an open manhole, and into the sewer. Casey is sneaking into the Turtles' den, and letting in enough water to short out their electricity.

He strikes a match, and begins to tell the Turtles a story...one of a solo adventure of his as random and wild as any of the Turtles' more outlandish adventures.

Veitch takes Eastman and Laird's original conception of Casey as a street vigilante who fights crime with baseball bats, hockey sticks and other blunt sporting equipment he keeps in the beat-up golf-bag slung over his shoulder to the extreme, even if it's a logical, even more realistic extreme. His Casey wears not only a hocky mask, but also hockey gloves, knee and shin pads, a cup and what appears to be either hockey or football pads (I'm no sports fan) as body armor. His bag is stuffed full of the usual sporting equipment, as well as a ski pole (for stabbing), a crowbar a saw and other useful items.

The first issue is mostly set-up, as our hero prowls the rooftops, looking for crimes to fight while occasionally watching strangers' television sets by peering in their windows, when he discovers a particularly weird crime: Crackheads stealing a tank of lobsters.

He intervenes, and soon finds himself fighting something...wrong, people that aren't quite people. He catches a cinderblock to the head, and finds himself stripped of his sporting equipment and ejected from a huge, nautilus-shaped ship of some kind.

He's rescued by a sexy fisherwoman, wearing a bikini under a slicker and hat and chomping on a corncob pipe, Popeye-style, who tells him a weird tale of lobster men from Venus, a lobster God king, a special lobster—The Royal Roe—which will allow the lobster men to regain their original form if they present it to their monstrous emperor.

In the second issue, all of the ish he learns about hits the fan, as he fashions himself a new mask and armor out of the discarded shells of some of the giant lobster men and, arming himself with an axe and a...boat thing...

...he wades into the alien lobster guys' ritual to raise an Ebirah-sized lobster. The crazy plot, which reads like a modern take on something Robert E. Howard might have pounded out over the course of a weekend, is met with crazy imagery by Veitch, as Casey's opponents shift forms mid-fight, and in an effort to reclaim his hockey mask (and save the world), he faces a lobster wearing it over his lobster face.

Eastman and Veitch give their story an old-school pulp twist ending (or, an old-school pulp-inspired old-school horror comic twist ending), with Casey leaving the Turtles as abruptly as he joined them, and leaving the story's ending—and veracity—somewhat ambiguous. Save for some evidence he leaves behind.

It's a pretty ludicrous story, start to finish, but Veitch and Eastman sure do work well together, and, visually, this is probably the best Casey Jones has ever looked, or ever would look again.

March 29th's Meanwhile in Las Vegas...

This week's Las Vegas Weekly column takes a closer look at Rick Veitch's gorgeous-looking new Vertigo satire, Army @ Love (and a rather cursory look at the new Fantastic Four line-up).