Brand Echh: STAR BRAND #1

The eight New Universe titles rolled out two-a-week across a month’s worth of time, and I sampled all of them. The promotion around this initiative made it feel like a seminal event, and so I was determined not to miss the moment. Ultimately, I found myself disappointed with pretty much all of the launch titles, and there was only one series that I stuck with, though even that only lasted about five issues or so. STAR BRAND was clearly the flagship of the line and so was the first book out of the gate. And in retrospect, it was perhaps the strongest series launched as a part of the New Universe. But for all that, it wasn’t the book that I wound up following. I’d only gain a greater appreciation for STAR BRAND long after the fact, when I got to read the run as back issues during the time of my internship at Marvel. It’s a flawed venture, but a profoundly fascinating one, in that it drew so heavily from the life experiences of writer and Editor in Chief Jim Shooter that he and the main character, Ken Connell, seems somehow of a piece.

STAR BRAND was illustrated by John Romita Jr. and Al Williamson, and in later years Shooter would tell stories about how the two of them stepped up and volunteered to help him out by drawing his series, the budget for creators and promotional efforts for the line having been dramatically slashed. It’s a nice story, well-polished in how often it was retold, but my insider understanding from speaking to both artists was that the circumstances weren’t entirely that simple. John had been penciling UNCANNY X-MEN at the time, and was prevailed upon by Shooter to do STAR BRAND, which was described to him as being akin to “Marvel’s Superman.” Al Williamson, same thing. Shooter’s prediction was that the New Universe books were going to sell so well that they’d make thousands in sales incentives and live like kings. The fact that it was the company’s EIC telling them that was a powerful motivator for them to both get on board.

What makes STAR BRAND so fascinating is just how much of it draws from Shooter’s own life and background (Jim grew up in a poor family in a depressed steel town in Pennsylvania) and how unlikable the story makes its lead character Ken Connell. Ken is a self-interested mechanic from a blue collar world who’s good-hearted but selfish, prone to anger when under pressure and a bit limited in his dealings with other people, but ultimately trying to do the right thing, whatever that may be. The parallels between Connell and Shooter aren’t even hidden, they’re right out in the open. It’s another example of Jim’s attraction towards stories about ordinary people from humble backgrounds who gain enormous power and who want to use it for the common good but who are misunderstood and hounded and ultimately undone by those who don’t understand them. It’s a theme that Shooter would return to time and time again, and it clearly spoke to him on some primal level. But oddly, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of self-awareness in STAR BRAND. It’s as if Shooter is writing a version of his own life without actually being aware of it. It’s so weird, but completely mesmerizing as a result.

It’s also interesting to see just how quickly Shooter abandons the ground rules that he himself had set up for this line. The New Universe was supposed to be “The World Outside Your Window”, indistinguishable from the real world at least up to the point where the White Event that unleashes super-powers across humanity happens. But Shooter’s premise involves Connell encountering an Old Man in the remote Pennsylvania woods who claims to be an alien from another world and who passes the titular Star Brand to Connell, which makes him super-strong and indestructible and able to fly, at least while he is concentrating on being so. Connell, though, isn’t really the sharpest tool in the shed, so upon realizing what he’s gained possession of, he swiftly seeks out the advice of his friend Myron for what he ought to do with it. Romita isn’t yet quite the artist that he would become–that wouldn’t happen until he took over DAREDEVIL–but he’s already good enough to give Connell and Myron and really all of the characters in this series distinctive appearances. Especially in a line that’s going to largely eschew costumes, such a capability is going to be especially important to differentiate one person from another.

But as soon as Connell and Myron lay out the basics of what they know about the Brand and the power it conveys, they’re attacked by an armored alien who covets the Brand for himself. This alien claims that the Old Man who passed the power on to Connell was lying about everything he said, and that the only way to prevent an impending holocaust would be to hand over the power to the alien. Connell buckles at first, then doubles down on keeping his power, using it instead to obliterate his attacker. But it’s impossible to tell what is true at this point in a way that’s really interesting. Is Connell guarding a power that can’t be permitted to fall into the wrong hands or is he a pawn in some larger intergalactic conspiracy about which we know nothing? Sadly, Shooter won’t remain on the series long enough to provide us with definitive answers, but the ambiguity is pretty delicious.

Ken Connell, it turns out, is also a bit of a creep when it comes to women. We’re hereafter introduced to both Barbara Petrovic, a middle-class single mother of two whom Connell is in a relationship with despite her being a bit out of his league, and Debbie “the Duck”, a less educated blue collar girl who co-dependently dotes on Ken, even though he treats her shabbily. She’s ready to given Ken money and clothes and make excuses with his bosses all in the hopes that he’ll look at her twice, and he takes advantage of her for his own needs while being oblivious to hers. The sexual politics of the entire series are really weird (and only get stranger when you realize that Shooter named Debbie after his own longtime friend Debbie Fix.) To Shooter’s credit, he really doesn’t shy away from the fact that Ken isn’t a good guy here, but it’s a really odd choice given that we’re meant to sympathize with Connell and bond with him as the star of the book.

Throughout the rest of the issue Connell is stalked by the alien’s partner, a second identical alien who is a bit more circumspect in how it tries to get Connell to hand over the Star Brand to him. Eventually, Connell reaches his limit after the alien tries to use Barbara’s kids as hypnotized pawns. He suits up in the outfit he was wearing when he first got the Brand, which will now function as his costume, and seeks out the remaining alien and his ship. He swiftly kicks the alien’s ass, causing him to retreat back to space in his ship. Connell has decided that, whatever the truth may be, the Star Brand is his and he’s keeping it. And that’s the set-up for Marvel’s Superman figure. Readers at the time thought the set-up owed a bit too much to Green Lantern, and they have a point there–but no more so that Nova does, for example. Shooter, though, had become a divisive figure, and so judging the book became more about judging its creator that simply the work itself.

STAR BRAND was among the more consistent of the New Universe titles. While the late start that the creators got meant that Alex Saviuk had to step in along with Vince Colletta to produce the art on issue #3, Shooter and Romita Jr stayed together as the creative team through issue #7. That last issue wound up being scripted by Roy Thomas from a plot by Shooter, and thereafter Cary Bates and George Carragone did a bunch of fill-in work for the rest of Shooter’s tenure at Marvel. In those final months, it became clear that Shooter’s mind was on other things, and given that his dismissal was imminent, it’s not hard to see how that would be the case. Following Shooter’s departure, STAR BRAND was reorganized and relaunched mid-run under the oversight of Mark Gruenwald. Mark recruited John Byrne to take over the series, though to do so he had to agree to make it a bimonthly. Even with that, Byrne only did scripts and layouts on it, with Tom Palmer brought in to provide finished artwork. Byrne didn’t waste much time in throwing out most of Shooter’s concepts and he seemed to delight in torturing Ken Connell, killing him off repeatedly, whom he seemed to see as a Shooter stand-in (Byrne’s relationship with Shooter had deteriorated during the final years of Jim’s time as EIC. Byrne would also memorably plot a sequence into an issue of DC’s LEGENDS event in which Guy Gardner humiliates a barely-disguised version of Shooter in the guise of “Sunspot”, a Star Brand doppelganger. ) While the Shooter STAR BRAND issues are intriguing, the Byrne run largely comes off as half-assed and ill-motivated.

As with most of the other New Universe titles, the cover of STAR BRAND #1 was drawn a couple of times before Shooter was happy with it. What we see above is one of those unused earlier attempts, which isn’t all that much different from what eventually saw print. But Jim had a very specific vision in his mind–though it was one that he struggled to get across to the editors and other creators who were meant to be working on the line. Accordingly, working on the New Universe titles wasn’t a happy time for most of the principles involved.

In the first Universe News Bullpen-style page, Jim outlines his vision for the new line in an introductory column.