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Scare Tactics (comics)

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Outlaw Nation
Cover of issue #1
Art by Anthony Williams and Andy Lanning
Publication information
PublisherDC Comics
Publication dateDecember 1996 – March 1998
No. of issues12
Creative team
Written byLen Kaminski

Scare Tactics is a comic book series published by DC Comics. A total of twelve issues appeared, dated from December 1996 to March 1998. The series, written by Len Kaminski, was a part of DC's Weirdoverse group of titles.

Publication history

Len Kaminski had the following idea to help promote the book.[1]

I had planned on there being a real-life ST fan club package, which would’ve included a small poster, a backstage pass and a cassette “bootleg” of one of their songs. I wrote the song, and went out of pocket a grand or two on a great east village band (which I can’t name due to weird contract stuff with their manager), studio time (sound engineering and the actual “tune” donated gratis by my friend [and ST fan] Ed) – only to have DC tell me to cut it out, I didn’t own the rights to ST (and besides, it was hinted, they didn’t need me running around making their marketing department look bad). So I had a crate of hundreds of those cassettes on my hands for years before I finally ditched them, keeping just a few for myself.

DC Comics promoted the book in the middle of the series’ run by creating a series of one-shots teaming some team members with notable DC characters:[1]

  • Catwoman Plus #1 (featuring Scream Queen)
  • Impulse Plus #1 (featuring Gross-Out)
  • Robin Plus #2 (featuring Fang)
  • Superboy Plus #2 (featuring Slither)

Fictional biography

The series focused on the band Scare Tactics, teenage monsters who escaped from government custody and decided to hide in plain sight by becoming traveling rock and roll musicians, trying to escape their pasts while encountering supernatural adventures on the road.

The band members consisted of:

  • Arnold Burnsteel (band's scruffy human conspiracy theorist manager/bus driver who rescued them from the top secret R-Complex facility in New Mexico with the help of his friend Jared Stevens, a smuggler of arcane artifacts transformed into the ankh-scarred, mystic golden blade-wielding demon hunter known as Fate)
  • Gross-Out (drummer Philbert Hoskins – bullied fat kid obsessed with astronomy mutated by meteorite radiation into a hulking and hungry grey sludge monster)
  • Slither (bass guitarist James Tilton – human-reptile hybrid created by scientist father as part of his medical experiments who is secretly in love with Nina but worried that the increasing viciousness of his lizard side could cause him to hurt her and his friends)

References

  1. ^ a b Brian Cronin (May 6, 2011). Comic Book Resources (ed.). "Comic Book Legends Revealed #312". Retrieved May 18, 2011.

Scare Tactics at the Grand Comics Database