Unexpected #112 (On Sale: February 6, 1969) has a nice cover by
Neal Adams.
Johnny Peril stars in
"The Brain Robbers" by
George Kashdan and
Jack Sparling.
"Burn, Match, Burn" is by
Dave Wood and
Artie Saaf and
"The Corpse That Didn't Die" is by
Dave Wood and
Pat Boyette and was reprinted in
Unexpected #162.
Dave Wood's (AKA
D. W. Holtz and
D. W. Holz) first writing for DC was in
Big Town #1, January 1951. In the early '50s he also wrote a number of
Strong Bow stories for
All-Star Western and
Foley of the Fighting Fifth for
All-American Western and
Western Comics. He wrote for numerous issues of
Rex the Wonder Dog beginning with issue #1 and pulled a long stint on the DC war books,
All-American Men of War, Our Army at War and
Star Spangled War Stories.
For
World's Finest Comics he wrote
Green Arrow, Tomahawk and
Batman/Superman stories. He also wrote
Batman stories in
Batman and
Detective Comics and
Superman stories in
Superman. For
Mystery In Space he wrote
Adam Strange, Space Ranger and
Ultra the Multi-Alien (Dave's creation) and for
Strange Adventures he wrote
Star Hawkins and
Animal Man (Dave's creation).
Dave Wood also wrote a number of
Dial H for HERO stories for
House of Mystery and the
Martian Manhunter for
House of Secrets.
In 1968 he made the rounds of the
Mort Weisinger books doing
Supergirl in
Action Comics and the
Superboy and
Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen features, but by 1969, Dave was relegated to this single
Murray Boltinoff mystery title, where, except for a fill-in back-up story in the Boltinoff-edited
Challengers of the Unknown (a story most likely written for the
Unexpected), Dave would finish his career at DC.
Before coming to DC, Dave wrote
Blackhawk stories for Quality from 1940-1949 and wrote
Bombshell for Lev Gleason. During his time at DC Dave also wrote adventure stories for Harvey Comics and between 1958 and 1960 wrote the daily syndicated strip
Sky Masters of the Space Force drawn by
Jack Kirby and
Wally Wood.
I don't know why Dave left DC or what happened to him after he left DC except for a single story he wrote that appeared in
Creepy Magazine in 1971. This was the time when the old guard of writers were being pushed out and
Dave Wood was most likely just part of that push. Dave's stories in
Unexpected would appear regularly for the rest of 1969, then in three issues in 1970 then one issue in 1971, 1973, 1974 and finally in 1975.
Edited by
Murray Boltinoff.
Unexpected #117 (On Sale: December 4, 1969) has a cover by Nick Cardy.
