Wood Chips #39: Roger Brand

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Kim Deitch's recent very moving writing about Roger Brand has stirred a lot of comments, with people posting their own memories of Roger. It all brings back those long ago days and nights of creative jaunts at drawing boards all over Manhattan. You can read Kim's memoir and the remarkable comments it triggered here.

This prompted me to recall my own meeting with Roger when he drew one of my scripts for Jungle Jim #22 (February 1969), following my layouts. This was actually written by completing a script someone else at the Wood Studio had started and then abandoned. The four Jungle Jim stories I wrote for Wally Wood were penciled by Roger, Tom Palmer, Steve Ditko and (in a later issue) Pat Boyette. Of the four, this one is the weakest. The convoluted plot elements barely hang together, but Roger's considerable drawing skills keep the story from totally collapsing. I like the coloring effect of the pure white beam. Wally Wood inked, along with Roger, me and others in a group inking session at the Wood Studio in 1967. Bill Yoshida did the lettering.

For the rest of issue #22, visit Pappy's Golden Age.