DC Comics' 1st Issue Special was a pale imitation of their original try-out book, Showcase, but the series did have its moments. The issues featuring Mike Grell's The Warlord, Dr. Fate (by Walt Simonson), Metamorpho (by Ramona Fradon), The Creeper (by Steve Ditko, of course) and Starman were somewhat popular (with Warlord getting his own book soon after, and that incarnation of Starman appearing again in James Robinson's classic series in the nineties), and you have got to give DC credit for trying to give the comic-buying public the opportunity to get out of the super-hero genre, with Lady Cop, The Dingbats of Danger Street, Codename: Assassin and, of course, The Green Team.

1st Issue Special was also a haven for a grand old comic book creative team, namely Jack Kirby and Joe Simon. The two men who had created or revitalized such classics as Captain America, Manhunter, The Newsboy Legion, the Boy Commandos, and the Kid Cowboys of Boy's Ranch didn't work on a feature together for 1st Issue Special, but both did a number of issues of their own creations. They singlehandedly created many comic book genres, including romance comics and, the boy gang comic, as evidenced with the Kid Cowboys, the Newsboy Legion and the Boy Commandos. They each did their own somewhat updated version of the concept for this comic as well, with Kirby producing The Dingbats of Danger Street, and Simon creating The Green Team, with fellow industry legend Jerry Grandenetti. Simon and Grandenetti had also recently worked on DC's short-lived Champion Sports series, which had been devoted to realistic sports stories. Again, neither Simon or Kirby had much success with either concept, since the "boy gang" was a really outdated concept (and even now, is only used as an aside on DC's Superman titles, with the Newsboy Legion & the Dingbats being a fixture in Metropolis's "Suicide Slum".

The Green Team was an interesting twist on Simon and Kirby's long-standing formula, as instead of being indigent street kids, the Green Team was a group of boy millionaires, based at the Millionaire's Club in an unnamed city (though it may be presumed to be Metropolis). They invested in “adventure projects” that required the “participation of adventurous boys” around the world (as well as the need for at least a million dollars).

The three original members were:

Commodore Murphy, shipping magnate; J. P. Houston, oil tycoon and Cecil Sunbeam, known as the Star Maker.

After seeing a number of crackpot projects come through the door, the Green Team was introduced to shoeshine boy Abdul Smith, who wanted to join any club, but particularly he wanted to join the Green Team. However, he didn't quite the requirement to have the million dollars to join (he had $32 in his bank book). Later that day, armed with the goal of getting that million, Abdul took in his latest five-dollar deposit to the bank. The bank's computer, however, recorded the deposit over and over until he had the princely sum of $500,000. The next day, he went to the floor of the Stock Exchange to shine shoes. He asked if he could join the club, and was scoffed at until they saw his bankbook. A quick phone call confirming the amount had the stockbrokers selling Abdul shares of Amalgamated Spacecraft, which they had a good tip on.

Abdul was back at the Green Team's office with his million-dollar bankbook in hand the next day (he had made a million and a half on the stock market before the bank had discovered its error and taken the original $500,000 back), becoming the fourth member of the group.

The first conference that Abdul sat in on was with Professor Apple, a brilliant scientist who wanted funding to develop his Great American Pleasure Machine. The device was touted to replace television, the movies, television and Broadway, and would allow a person to “come for weeks at a time and take a timeless journey through the thrills of the universe” stored in Apple's computer banks. The one thing that their money couldn't buy was happiness, so the Green Team financed the invention to give it a try, building it on a piece of real estate that they had recently acquired. The GAP (Great American Pleasure) project was not without controversy, as Broadway producer David D. Merritt organized a protest against it, refusing to allow construction to continue and trapping the Green Team in their own skyscraper. Merritt came to negotiate and they found that he only wanted a pay-off for himself, not caring about the entertainment workers he had rallied to his supposed cause. The Green Team rejected Merritt's offer and he swore they would never experience their GAP Machine and continued to lay siege to the building.

The Green Team donned their “Action Uniforms” (which included a wristwatch tickertape, a chain of keys to unlock the groups various holdings, and a million dollars in four pockets that could only be opened by the combination lock on their belt buckles), and headed to the rooftop and their helicopter. Unfortunately, Merritt had hijacked their chopper and was heading for the GAP machine himself. In order to get out of the building and follow, the Green Team tossed upwards of a million dollars off the roof of the building to divert the angry mob surrounding it. Merritt, in the meantime, had arrived at the GAP and locked himself inside the machine, which activated and sent him on a ten-day trip. The Green Team was able to watch Merritt's progression through the GAP on a television monitor over the following days, but the screens suddenly went black about a week later. They got Merritt out of the GAP and took him to the emergency room, where they found he had been driven insane by too much pleasure. The guys decided to give Commodore Murphy's battleship another workout and destroy the GAP Machine before it hurt anyone else.

The Green Team also had two adventures that never received full publication. With the "DC Explosion" of 1978, and the subsequent "DC Implosion" after the accountants at Time-Warner got done, DC Comics put out two issues of Cancelled Comics Cavalcade in order to cement their copyrights on certain characters and stories whose books or features had been cancelled as a result of the "Implosion". The first issue of the photocopied comic (which had been limited to under 40 copies each) featured what would have been amounted to the first two issues of a Green Team series. In the first tale, the boys tried to do something about the high cost of food by starting a lobster ranch, and in the second, they had to foil the evil plans of the Deadly Paperhanger, who had created a wallpaper from which real plants grew. Instead of using it to feed the world in the way the Green Team had funded him for, he wanted revenge and to destroy the world with his wallpaper.

The Green Team next helped out Superman in The Adventures of Superman #549. Two gangs in Metropolis's Suicide Slum had been fighting over the abandoned Goldberg Theater. Both the Newsboy Legion and the Dingbats of Danger Street wanted to use the building as their clubhouse, and had fought numerous squabbles over it. Superman called in the Green Team to invest in the building, converting it into a proper youth center that both gangs could use.

The Green Team also made what is more than likely a non-continuity appearance in Ambush Bug #3, the issue in which Ambush Bug was cataloging the DC Universe while Joanie DC was on the warpath. The Bug spoke with Richard Rich, who told him that the Green Team had disbanded because of Affirmative Action (they had to accept any millionaires and “Lotto killed 'em”). Rich also lamented that he had never joined the team because he had never gotten over the death of his dog Dollar, but did recall how he used to spike the Green Team's Kool-Aid with whiskey.

The Green Team next appeared in the pages of Animal Man #25 as one of the many characters stuck in Limbo. Animal Man was on a very mind-blowing search for the people responsible for the death of his family (which turned out to be his writer, Grant Morrison), and he was looking for the City of Formation when he happened upon Limbo. He was met at the gate by Merryman of the Inferior Five, and was immediately assaulted by the Green Team, who offered the hero money to get them out of there. Merryman, however, was convinced that there was hope for all of them, especially with the recent exits of Bwana Beast and Brother Power, The Geek. Whether or not this particular appearance is in normal continuity is debatable, but it sure is the Green Team's coolest appearance to date.

And that's pretty much been it for The Green Team so far. Six appearances in thirty years, and only two that really count in the grand scheme of things DC. The concept itself has pretty much been looked upon by creators and fandom alike with something that's not quite scorn and something that's definitely not acceptance, but the idea and the way we've seen it executed does have a certain quirky charm. Bringing the boys in to do a deus ex machina on a simple problem like a gang fight has to bring at least a smirk to the face of the jaded modern comic reader. It let's us old fogies remember a time when things were definitely a lot simpler, and a lot less serious.