Dear Marble Gang,
This is the third issue th best issue of Brand Echh yet! I found the quality of every story supremely entertaining and the range of talent was typically strong. With art by the likes of Jack "King" Kirby and "Mirthul" Marie Severin the book looks great, but add in a new find like Tom Sutton and you have a real winner on your hands.
My favorite story was "The Incredible Bulk -The Origin of Brucie Banter" by Gary Friedrich and Marie Severin. The spin on the classic story we are all familiar with was a real hoot and not merely an inversion of the actual events. Switching the setting to a garbage dump and making it all about getting rid of trash put the right note on this offbeat kooky yarn. "Slick Jones" was a real hoot and much more like teenagers I've come across. The "Inedible Bulk's" musings were a riot and the ending was worth waiting for. Ho ho ho!
Coming a very close second was "The Honest-to-Irving True-Blue Top-Secret Original Origin of Charlie America". Roy Thomas and Tom Sutton crafted a real winner here filled top to bottom with chicken fat of the most exquisitely inane. The story itself was a nifty send up the classic and making our hero a coward and draft dodger was a neat twist as was the the surprise twist ending which I won't spoil for those who might not have read it yet. (What are you waiting for?)
It's amazing to me that a story like "The Mighty Sore! The Origin of Sore, Son of Shmodin!" by such stalwarts as Stan "The Man" Lee and Jack "King" Kirby would be the third of three in this great book but such is the high quality of the storytelling in Brand Echh at this moment. Kirby's work is so antic and filled with energy even when he's giving us a "Jazzgard" filled with all sorts of famous people (including one Alfred E. Newman too you scamps). Love the ending and Shmodin made more sense to me in this story than his Marvel Universe template ever did.
All in all a dandy issue and I'm already looking forward to the bad guys taking over.
Sincerly (Not).
Rip Jagger
Notes and Comments: The addition of the painfully underrated Tom Sutton was a major boon to the ongoing critical success of Brand Echh (soon to become Not Brand Echh). His wacky off-kilter artwork was a nifity contrast to Marie Severin's polished parodies. Both of these artists excelled at this kind of material and they even rate over the epic talent of Jack Kirby. With this issue I got a real sense of an ongoing "Marbel Universe", similar to the Marvel Universe but not just a rabid parody, though it was that too. The world of Not Brand Echh would be dubbed some years later as having taken place on Earth-616 in the expansive Marvel Multiverse and it's in this third issue that it comes alive for me. Also this time Stan Lee did write the funniest story, with both Roy Thomas and Gary Friedrich striking gold. This is a dynamite issue of a series loaded with plenty of kick.
Here those original "Silver Age" origin stories.
Next time the villains take the center stage and some new talent enters the fray.
Rip Off
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