Marble Universe Day!

Marie Severin was born on this date in 1929. Severin was the sister of artist John Severin, and she was a key artist at EC Comics and later Marvel in its heyday. She was dandy artist on her own, but she was especially good at caricature and wild and wooly comedic action. It's hard to imagine Not Brand Echh without her. 

It's Earth-9047 according to those mavens who monitor such things. The "Marble Universe" is a mockery, specifically of the Marvel Universe and any other that a joke might demand. 

If "Mirthful" Marie Severin had never drawn anything but Not Brand Echh, she'd still be one of Marvel's most significant and important artists. While other "Bullpenners" contributed to the comic including such luminaries as Jack Kirby, Tom Sutton, Gene Colan, and such, the book's whole demeanor and feel was defined by Marie Severin's lively energetic renditions of the "Marble Comics" characters who populated the upstart pages of this self-deprecating rolling masterpiece.

More than anything else it was Not Brand Echh that made Marvel's talents different, not only a willingness to make fun of themselves, but actually an eagerness to find the absurdity in the comics they themselves produced and so put all of the effort into a more complete context. It was as far from stuffy as one could get. And leading the pack was Marie Severin, a masterful caricaturist who could nail not only the look but the feel of a person and imbue them with antic energy on the comic book page. These are Marie's real masterpieces, as loony as they are.

Here are her covers for the book, all of the run, save for a couple by Tom Sutton and Jack Kirby.

(Tom Sutton with Additions by Marie)

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Tennis, Anyone?

I adore this single page by the incomparable John Buscema and George Klein. These two blended their talents all too briefly on the Assemblers, but they created some exciting pages between them in that tiny period of time.

For one thing I like comic book pages where characters read comics, especially recognizable comics. It's fun, and suits the personality of Hawkeye (not yet revealed to be Clint Barton yet) perfectly.

And for another thing, his page is a clever multiverse-bending ending to a story from Not Brand Echh #12. That's a delightful cover by Marie Severin by the way. 

The whole story can be found here at the Diversions of the Groovy Kind Blog. The story by Roy Thomas and Tom Sutton is pretty funny and involves these "Revengers" at a very particular time in their history when they were arguably at their weakest. The team consisted of Goliath, the Wasp, Hawkeye, the Black Panther and brand-new member the largely untried Vision.

In fact, this story had to happen in between issues #58 and #59 of The Avengers run since that is the only possible time that the assembled team pictured so elegantly by Buscema and Klein ever existed. The Vision became an Avenger in issue #58 and the erratic Hank Pym doffed his Goliath duds to become Yellowjacket in issue #59.

So, it is in the pages of Not Brand Echh of all places, in this weird fusion of the of the Marvel and Marble universes where we find this Avengers team assembled for the one and only time really.

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A Marvel Madhouse Gallery!

As the 1980's blossomed in the United Kingdom, at time when Margaret Thatcher was ascendant as Prime Minister and trading kisses with our own President Ronald "Ronnie" Reagan, unemployment mushroomed as British Steel cut jobs, and a Beatles reunion becomes an impossibility, Marvel UK decided the time was ripe to launch some parody magazines. Dez Skinn was in charge at the time and he launched the title Frantic which drew from material developed for Marvel's Crazy magazine.

And then he launched Marvel Madhouse which used both stories and artwork from the over a decade old Not Brand Echh. I for one like to see foreign versions of a cover to see how the colors might changed or the layouts might differ. In this case these Marie Severin covers are topped by a lively and memorable logo.

The chain of NBE cover reprints ends when an interior image of Forbush Man is used with new images to decorate issue eight. 

There are two more Marie Severin reprinted covers than the book shifts focus welcoming a certain misplaced duck into its fold. 

While the art says Howard the Duck, there are still blurbs that announce new "old" NBE material inside. These covers of course come from issue of Howard and are by Frank Brunner and John Buscema. 

Forbush Man makes a final appearance on issue fourteen's cover, with art by Gene Colan. 

Marvel Madhouse closes up shop after seventeen colorful issues. The Not Brand Echh brand simmering to life again a decade after its demise in these United States. 

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King Konk!

Marvel was riding high when they launched Not Brand Echh, a comic which made fun of its own comic book niche and increasingly as the months and issues rolled by other parts of the pop culture world. They jumped into movies with the likes of a spoof on Bonny and Clyde and Frankenstein. But they really hit it out of park in the eleventh issue with their take on "The Greatest Monster Movie of All Time!" -- the great King Kong. 

They called it "King Konk" and the honors fell to artist Tom Sutton and writer Roy Thomas. It was a then modern spin on the making of the story and you can find the whole shenanigan at this groovy link. 

If you'd like to own the story in good old-fashioned paper form, then check out the recent Not Brand Ecch complete collection.

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Severin Package Part 3 - Not Brand Echh!

If "Mirthful" Marie Severin had never drawn anything but Not Brand Echh, she'd still be one of Marvel's most significant and important artists. While other "Bullpenners" contributed to the comic including such luminaries as Jack Kirby, Tom Sutton, Gene Colan, and such, the book's whole demeanor and feel was defined by Marie Severin's lively energetic renditions of the "Marble Comics" characters who populated the upstart pages of this self-deprecating rolling masterpiece.

More than anything else it was Not Brand Echh that made Marvel's talents different, not only a willingness to make fun of themselves, but actually an eagerness to find the absurdity in the comics they themselves produced and so put all of the effort into a more complete context. It was as far from stuffy as one could get. And leading the pack was Marie Severin, a masterful caricaturist who could nail not only the look but the feel of a person and imbue them with antic energy on the comic book page. These are Marie's real masterpieces, as loony as they are.

Here are her covers for the book, all of the run save for a couple.

Rip Off