In the early 1980s at the beginning of the end of their tenure as a publishing house, Charlton came up with a way to produce a book more cheaply. They outsourced the creation of the content to fans and would-be professionals and paid not a penny--publication itself would be the only compensation these creators would … Continue reading Brand Echh – Charlton Bullseye #4
By the late 1960s, a whole new niche market had opened up on the newsstand for comics. That was the niche of the black and white magazine, a format primarily pioneered by Warren Publications but one that almost every publisher and would-be publisher would experiment with. The great value in producing a black and white … Continue reading Brand Echh – Hell-Rider #1
By 1967, Steve Ditko had become an industry legend. By this point, he had left Marvel and his two best-known creations, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, behind. But he was on the cusp of revealing the character whose outlook and point of view most closely resembled his own--and he did it in the third issue of … Continue reading Brand Echh – Witzend #3
Attempts to tap into the Marvel style weren't limited to only the 1960s. One of the most blatant attempts happened in the 1970s, and represented a tragedy of unfulfilled potential. In 1974, after he had sold Marvel and thereafter his son Chip had been pushed out of the company in favor of Stan Lee, Marvel … Continue reading Brand Echh – The Destructor #1
Hey, it's been a while since we last dropped in on my favorite of the Archie/Mighty Comics heroes, the hen-pecked Web. So let's see what he's been up to. As with the previous installments--and, really, all of the various Mighty Comics releases--the story is a painful rip-off attempting to channel the Marvel style of the … Continue reading Brand Echh – Fly Man #38
This one really should have been the blockbuster that Stan Lee and Martin Goodman feared that Harvey was going to produce with Joe Simon heading up their attempt to jump onto the super hero bandwagon in 1966. Spyman was the brainchild of future Marvel superstar Jim Steranko. But apart from the odd spot illustration (such … Continue reading Brand Echh – Spyman #1
As interest in super heroes became a full-blown fad in the mid-1960s, driven in large part by the premiere of the Batman television series, just about everybody got into the act, trying to capture some portion of that marketplace for themselves. One of the more oddball entries was the Fab 4, who were the headliners … Continue reading Brand Echh – Super Heroes #1
One of the most memorable and idiosyncratic characters of the silver age of comics was Herbie Popnecker. Herbie started out as the star of a single one-off mystery/supernatural story, but proved so popular with the readership of the American Comics Group that he was brought back time and time again, and eventually gained his own … Continue reading Brand Echh – Herbie #14
The American Comics Group was a regular presence on the nation;s newsstands from the mid-1940s through to the close of the 1960s. They did a wide variety of comic books with their own unique flavor--but the one genre that they mostly avoided was super heroes. Editor and main writer Richard Hughes reportedly had little interest … Continue reading Brand Echh – Adventures Into The Unknown #154
As we talked about last time, Captain Marvel was just about the biggest and most popular super-heroic character during the Golden Age of Comics. So it was perhaps almost inevitable that, with a new super hero boom striking the industry in the mid-1960s, the creators behind the Captain's good works would try to strike gold … Continue reading Brand Echh – Fatman, The Human Flying Saucer #1
The Tom Brevoort Experience 