The Zoo Crew is a funny animal-meets-superhero team at DC that was created by Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw. Led by Captain Carrot, the team included American Eagle, Yankee Poodle, Pig-Iron, Rubberduck, Little Cheese, Fastback, and Alley-Kat-Abra. The team debuted in a special 16-page insert in The New Teen Titans #16 (February 1982), then starred in a short-lived ongoing series titled, Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew.

The team was introduced when people of Metropolis started behaving like primates when a ray from space hit them. Trying to find the source, Superman used a meteor to break through an energy barrier that was around Earth, but the impact transported him to a new dimension. There, he encountered anthropomorphic animals who gained superpowers when they were struck by the meteor. The newly powered animals joined Superman to find the source of the phenomenon, discovering that Starro was behind it.

Once they stopped Starro, the animals decided to become the Zoo Crew superhero team of Earth-C. Their early efforts were somewhat bumbling since they did not know how to work together. They would attack a foe at the same time and end up getting in each other’s way instead of helping. Lucky for them and the citizens of Earth-C, it didn’t take long for the Zoo Crew to learn how to work together as a team.

Their world was similar to ours, but with cute tweaks that involved a lot of animal puns. It was home to famous animals like Byrd Rentals, Liz Whaler, and Marlin Brando (based on Burt Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marlon Brando), and the President of the United Species of America was Mallard Fillmore (a play on Millard Fillmore). The Zoo Crew was based in Follywood, Califurnia; and other locations on Earth-C were Waspington, DC, Gnu York, Loondon, and Cornada.

The Zoo Crew members interacted with characters from DC’s funny animal books of the Golden and Silver Ages like The Dodo and the Frog, Funny Stuff, Real Screen Comics, and others. While some of those characters only made cameos, Peter Porkchops became a member of the team, taking the name Pig-Iron, and Merton McSnurtle was Fastback’s uncle.

Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew ran for 21 issues from February 1982 to November 1983. The Zoo Crew has returned a few times over the years, including in Teen Titans Vol. 3 which featured a darker, more serious version of the team. They starred in the Captain Carrot and the Final Ark three-issue miniseries where they fought Frogzilla and Salamandroid at a comic convention, and they appeared in Convergence on a team with Harley Quinn.