As we saw earlier today, Jack Kirby did cartoon parody art, too. One of the first places those who know that side of The King might think that ad we looked at came from Not Brand Echh!. Others might now be going Not Brand Wha-? To explain:
Back in the 1960s, Mad Magazine forged a market for a slew of comedy/parody comic magazines. (Cracked.com readers might be interested to know it used to be a cheap imitation print magazine that we didn't read back before the internet gave them new life) Marvel Comics, always eager to fill as much shelf space as possible ever since they got out of that distribution deal with National Periodicals, decided they needed a comedy parody book. For a fair bit they'd been calling the competition Brand Echh, and so a new title was born - Brand Echh! August 1967 Marvel titles like the Fantastic Four ran full page ads featuring the cover of the first issue, and it was proudly proclaimed in the top bulletion of the BBP that month:
Notice that it's called "Brand Echh!" while i referred above to "Not Brand Echh!" That's the fault of their title slogan on the cover...
Who says a comic book has to be good??
not Brand Echh
And everybody ignored the line at the top as intro and called the book Not Brand Echh. Take a look at the contents page for the first issue:
Note that it is listed as Brand Echh in the indicia at the bottom of the page. By issue #5, they gave up and changed it to Not Brand Echh (Possibly in issue #4. I don't have that issue)
For younger readers, PG is an abbreviation for 'page', not a movie rating. The ratings board wouldn't change the designation from M to PG for another 3 years at this point.
Of course, to lead off a parody of Marvel comics, you pretty much have to do a parody of Marvel's First Family, the book that embodies Marvel comics - the Fantastic Four. But who are you going to get to parody Jack Kirby? Well, Jack Kirby, of course. They brought in Frank Giacoia to ink Kirby's pencils and give them a different feel than Joe Sinnott's work over on the FF's home book, and - Presto!:
But, no - Comet Feldmeyer isn't from Not Brand Echh.
Cover & story art by Jack Kirby & Frank Giacoia for Not) Brand Echh! #1 (1967)
