Dr Mid-Nite and the Sandman team up in Showcase #64 - homage to The Brave & The Bold #193

This one might take a bit of explaining - I guess most people will know that, when the Justice Society reappeared in the Silver Age, Julie Schwartz decided that, as well as their annual team-up with the JLA, he'd feature pairs of JSA members in DC's tryout books (Doctor Fate and Hourman in Showcase #55-56, Starman and Black Canary in The Brave & The Bold #61-62).

There's convincing evidence that Schwartz also had plans for a third such team-up, featuring the somewhat mismatched duo of the Spectre and Dr Mid-Nite, but he clearly had second thoughts, and the Spectre starred on his own in Showcase #60-61 and #64.

But what if Schwartz went back to the pairings and, after the first two Spectre appearances, opted to shift him immediately into his own book - and instead used Showcase #64 to feature a different team up: Dr Mid-Nite and the Sandman? With that as a concept, it occured to me that both the Sandman (in Adventure Comics #40) and Dr Mid-Nite (in All-American Comics #88) had clashed with different villains called the Tarantula, and I thought Schwartz and/or Gardner Fox might have decided to build on that coincidence -- and that, in turn, led to me to Marvel's villain of the same name, and I pinched the title wording ("Danger Is A Man Named ... Tarantula!") from Amazing Spider-Man #134 for this mock cover.

Art by Bambos Georgiou, adapted from Jim Aparo's cover to The Brave & The Bold #193.