Who Says A Comic Book Has To Be Good??

One of the keys to Marvel's Silver Age success was the ability to make fun of themselves. The little company ballooned in popularity and became a true behemoth of a publisher by the Bronze Age, but the start was much more humble. From the get-go there was a connection made with the readers, who were treated with some measure of respect, if not deference. You got the impression from the comics and the supplementary pages that you were part of something bigger, no small inducement for a typical comic fan, probably an awkward and perhaps lonesome reader. The cliche of the comic book fan is somewhat old hat, but there's no doubt that it's the result of some truth.

Not Brand Echh was the book for the fanboy, an exquisite spoof in the successful style of MAD magazine which used as its foil the very company that published it. As the series continued it broadened its range of targets, but always the core to getting the jokes was a firm knowledge of the comic books that Marvel published. In fact the title of the comic was an inside joke all on its own, and likely incomprehensible to the casual newsstand reader.  NBE didn't last long but it made a huge impression on fans of a certain age.

From time to time Marvel has attempted to recapture that magic with reprints like Crazy and later the reasonably successful Crazy magazine, and even a contemporaneous comic titled Spoof!. Other titles have come and gone like Arrgh! and What The!?, some more successful than others. Now they've done it again with a fourteenth issue of the long defunct Not Brand Echh. 

Here are the deliriously antic covers of the first thirteen issues of the classic comic. The artwork is by Jack Kirby, Marie Severin and Tom Sutton among others.

Not Brand Echh has at long last been reprinted, but only in a hefty volume in the Masterworks series. At over sixty bucks it's likely a bargain true enough given today's prices, but I haven't yet popped for it. Maybe this is the holiday season for it to show up under my tree. The way things have unfolded in the last year, I can use some good laughs.

What prompts this post is the publication of a fourteenth issue. Sadly it's a weak addition to an historical series. No single artist in this new issue is remotely a match for Marie and no artist has the punch of a Sutton.  It was nice though to see Forbush Man get some attention after all these years.

Forbush Forever!

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