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Jack Ryder was a Gotham City television talk show host fired due to his outspoken nature. Finding employment in network security, he attempted to rescue a scientist named Dr. Yatz whom mobsters had kidnapped in order to obtain his newest discoveries. The chief mobster hosted a masquerade party at his mansion. To gain entry, Ryder improvised a costume from yellow tights and facial make-up designed to look like skin, a green wig and trunks, and red gloves, boots, and furry cloak. Ryder located Yatz inside, but the mobsters detected him and opened fire, wounding him. Yatz injected Ryder with a serum and implanted a device in his wound. The serum conferred the power to almost instantly heal any wound and granted Ryder enhanced strength and agility. The device, used with its activator, caused the costume to disappear, leaving Ryder naked. Yatz inadvertently left the activator out of the wound, but did not realize this until after the tissues had healed. At this point the mobsters found their victims again, this time killing Yatz. Ryder discovered that with the activator he could regain the wild costume whenever he wished. With it, a crazy laugh and his enhanced physical abilities, he had no trouble routing the crooks.
The eventual revision of the Creeper's origin eliminated the serum and claimed that the scientist surgically implanted two devices (some accounts claim a single device with two effects) that enhance Ryder's physical abilities and can re-create an object whose "imprint" is stored in its circuitry). The scientist performed this surgery to save Ryder's life after criminals he was investigating attacked and drugged him. Because the scientist was unaware of the drugs in Ryder's system he inadvertently recorded their "imprint" at the same time he recorded the "imprint" of the costume. Thus the device that recreates Ryder's costume when he becomes the Creeper also recreates the drugs in his system, explaining the Creeper's odd personality. These drugs so overwhelmed Ryder's system that their effect became cumulative and the Creeper gradually became more irrational. But when The Creeper became Jack Ryder, the drugs disappeared and with them, the psychosis. Eventually, Ryder came to believe that he and the Creeper were two entirely different people instead of two character roles played by the same man; he also held this belief in his Creeper persona, which became increasingly disdainful of "Jack Ryder." The Creeper once regained his rationality while bound by Wonder Woman's magic lasso, but the implications of this have never been explored.
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