| The Green Team | |
|---|---|
 The Green Team from1st Issue Special #2 (May 1975), cover art byJerry Grandenetti. | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| First appearance | 1st Issue Special #2 (May 1975) |
| Created by | Joe Simon Jerry Grandenetti |
| In-story information | |
| Member(s) | Commodore Murphy J.P. Huston Cecil Sunbeam Abdul Smith |
The Green Team is a fictionalcomic book team of rich-kid adventurers published byDC Comics. The team debuted in1st Issue Special #2 (May 1975), and was created byJoe Simon andJerry Grandenetti. In its initial appearance, the group was subtitled "Boy Millionaires". In 2010s comics, a revamped version of the group appeared in a series subtitled "Teen Trillionaires", thus adjusting for bothinflation and the declining popularity of boy adventurers.
The Green Team's first adventure appears in1st Issue Special #2 (cover-dated May 1975), an anthology comic.[1] For many years, this would be their only conventionally published appearance. Not long after their debut, a regularGreen Team series went into production, but theDC Implosion prevented it from reaching store shelves.[2] Two issues had been completed at the time the series was cancelled, and these saw publication of a sort in the first volume ofCancelled 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Cavalcade (Fall 1978), a two-volume collection DC Comics printed on photocopiers to secure copyrights on the stack of unpublished material left over after the DC Implosion. In the first of the two unpublished adventures, the boys are pitted against giant lobsters and the Russian Navy. In the second, the Green Team faces a villain called the Paperhanger who has special wallpaper that grows plants and trees, and who is a dead ringer forAdolf Hitler.[3]
In subsequent decades, the Green Team appeared on one page of Ambush Bug #3 (August 1985), in one panel ofAnimal Man #25 (July 1990), and a single page ofAdventures of Superman #549 (Aug. 1997), in which the boys meet theNewsboy Legion andDingbats of Danger Street, financing a youth center for the two street gangs. WriterKarl Kesel explained that he was a fan of the Newsboy Legion, and brought in the other two boy groups as a counterpoint to the Newsboys, since all three were created by Joe Simon and/orJack Kirby.[2] Cecil Sunbeam and Abdul Smith, two members of the Green Team, appear inAmbush Bug: Year None #1 (Sept. 2008).
As part ofThe New 52 reboot of DC's continuity, the Green Team and its sister bookThe Movement were re-established in 2013.[4] Written byArt Baltazar andFranco Aureliani, and drawn by Ig Guara, the first issue debuted in May 2013 and focused 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.
The only prerequisite for joining the Green Team is possession of at leastone milliondollars, primarily in cash. The boys pay fortunes to anyone who can offer them a worthy adventure. In their first story, they fund the "Great American Pleasure Machine", a sort ofroller coaster ride that brings so much pleasure, it drives the villain of the piece insane.
A text page in1st Issue Special #2 (May 1975) explains, their jumpsuit uniforms have many pockets for money, with special locks, and they carry ticker-tape wristwatches, a chain of keys that unlock any of their many labs and money vaults in far-flung lands, and a quarter-million dollars each.