Ross Andru & Mike Esposito with Bill Everett, Torch vs. Subby, Not Brand Echh #1

The actual golden age fight between the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner had just been reprinted a few months earlier in Fantasy Masterpieces (# 8), and here was a send-up making fun of the whole thing.

Bill Everett is typically credited as one of the pencillers on this story — I’d like to believe that — but writer Roy Thomas says he remembers that Everett may have only worked on the title splash at most. Either way, Ross Andru was no stranger to superheroes or satire, and this page is a favorite.

I had only recently started buying Marvel comics off the spinner racks when Not Brand Echh premiered in the summer 1967. I was immediately attracted to its zaniness. I knew Marvel didn’t take itself too seriously from reading its traditional comics — The “Bullpen Bulletins”, the “no-prize” gimmick, the Merry Marvel Marching Society, et al — but Not Brand Echh (NBE) was a new level of nutty. (A bit later on I discovered it was in the spirit of the original EC Mad comics, but I didn’t know anything about that era yet.)