Sunday, June 14, 2009

Random Comic Book Splash Page #22


Not a splash page at all, but actually the final page of Atlas/Seaboard's THE BRUTE #1, cover-dated February 1975. THE BRUTE was a shitty book that lasted a mere three issues (which actually made it quite successful by Atlas standards...).

The premise of THE BRUTE was an unabashed ripoff of Marvel's THE INCREDIBLE HULK. A neanderthal man unthaws from suspended animation in a Minnesota cave. Finding no dinosaurs to eat, he subsists on rats and bugs, until three little boys discover him while spelunking. Amazingly for a Comics Code book, the Brute kills (and, it's assumed, eats) two of the boys, leading the local police force to burst onto the scene, guns blazing, must to the consternation of a tree-hugging anthropologist who wants to study the beast.

But, whatever. The only reason I'm showing this page from THE BRUTE #1 is the cheeky gag penciller Mike Sekowsky added to the airplane. Giving it the ID number 5H17, which clearly looks like a non-Code-approved word at first glance...

Editor Jeff Rovin claims it was his way of sticking it to The Man. Inks by Pablo Marcos. Script by Michael Fleischer.

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