Roger Brand
Roger Brand | |
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Born | January 5, 1943 Michele Robinson |
Roger Brand (January 5, 1943 – November 23, 1985) was an
, often combining the two.Biography
Early life and education
Born in New Mexico, Brand grand grew up in El Sobrante, California, where he was friends with cartoonist Joel Beck. Brand and Beck were classmates at De Anza High School, and they remained lifelong friends.
Comics
Some of Brand's earliest comics work appeared in the early 1960s in the
In 1966, Brand and his wife
Dan Adkins, who also had been Wally Wood's assistant, remembered working with Brand:
I did a story called "The Haunted Sky." I'm not sure if that's a Creepy or Eerie story — but it was in one of the books, and I penciled the splash, and . . . because . . . I had to do something for Marvel . . . I gave it to Roger to finish. So "The Haunted Sky" . . . is my splash, a story Archie [Goodwin] wrote for me about planes . . . and Roger finished the story. . . . He helped me on that anniversary issue, the 100th issue of "Sub-Mariner versus the Hulk", Tales to Astonish, I guess. Roger helped me ink that, we inked nine pages in a week. . . . I don't know how I met Roger. Bill Pearson used to have an apartment that wasn't too far from Wally Wood. . . . You'd meet all kinds of people over at Bill's place. I probably met Roger, because I also knew Michelle, his wife. So I met her over there.[6]
Underground comics
By the late 1960s Roger and Michele were back in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Entering the underground comix field, Brand initially did comics for the tabloid Gothic Blimp Works, and later for such titles as Banzai!, Candid Press, Insect Fear, Tales of the Leather Nun, Yellow Dog, and Young Lust.[4][5][7]
Brand edited and contributed to Tales of Sex and Death (two issues, 1971–1975) and Real Pulp Comics (two issues, 1971–1973). Real Pulp became a springboard for cartoonist Bill Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead. As Griffith recalled, "In San Francisco in 1970, I was asked to contribute a few pages to Real Pulp Comics #1, edited by cartoonist Roger Brand. His only guideline was to say, 'Maybe do some kind of love story, but with really weird people.' I never imagined I'd still be putting words into Zippy's fast-moving mouth some 38 years later."[8]
In late 1976, while renting a room in
Personal life and death
Brand's wife Michele (1941–2015) was also involved in underground comix, contributing stories to such publications as It Ain't Me, Babe, Wimmen's Comix, and Arcade. Brand and Michele divorced c. 1974. She later married comics artist Bernie Wrightson[9] and continued for many years working behind the scenes in the comics industry.
Brand died of liver failure at age 42, on November 23, 1985, in San Francisco,[2] at Joel Beck's house, where he had been living for some time.[2]
Exhibitions
References
Notes
- ^ California, Death Index, 1940-1997
- ^ a b c T.H. "Comix Artist Roger Brand Dead," The Comics Journal #107 (Apr. 1986).
- ^ Rosenkranz, Patrick. Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963-1975 (Fantagraphics Books, 2002), p. 56.
- ^ a b Lambiek: Roger Brand
- ^ a b Grand Comics Database: Roger Brand
- ^ Jon B. Cooke interview with Dan Adkins, Comic Book Artist #14.
- ^ "Comic Book Database: Roger Brand". Archived from the original on 2012-11-07. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
- ^ "Dueben, Alex. "Is Bill Griffith Having Fun Yet?", CBR, October 6, 2008". Archived from the original on December 25, 2008. Retrieved May 20, 2010.
- ^ MacDonald, Heidi. "RIP Michele Wrightson," The Beat (June 1, 2015).
Sources
- Deitch, Kim. "A Lousy Week For Woods (Remembering Roger Brand)," The Comics Journal (OCT 12, 2011).
- Geerdes, Clay. "The Erotic Cartoon Art of Roger Brand", Knight, July, 1971.