Peter B. Gillis Big Comics Readthrough

Stan Lee was a fan of humour magazines and had tried to get a few MAD style knock offs up and running over the years. One such effort was Not Brand Echh , which, like MAD occasionally did, lampooned superheroes. Here Marvel creators (well, mostly Roy Thomas and Marie Severin) got to work on presumably cathartic parodies of their own creations, in exaggerated cartoony styles. This bi-monthly series only lasted 13 issues in the late 1960's. 20 years later, Marvel decided to revive the concept in the same style as a 4 issue mini,  What The--?! . It proved reasonably successful enough to continue on an occasional schedule, eventually clocking up 26 issues over 5 years, twice as many as its predecessor. By this point Peter Gillis was on the outs with Marvel, when Warp inker Hilary Barta called him up and asked if he wanted to work on a Punisher parody for the first What The. Neither of them had any love for the ridiculously popular at the time and frequently brainless vigilante co...

In addition to the regular Warp series, there were 3 standalone specials, plus 4 back up strips. The first 2 backups ( Faceless Ones and Sargon ) had no Peter Gillis involvement, so I'll round up the rest here. Warp Special #1 (1983) Pencils: Howard Chaykin Inks: George Freeman The origin of Warp's most charming character, Prince Chaos , is basically a Superman parody. It still fails to explain why Chaos and Cumulus are related, as they appear to be born in different centuries on different planets to different parents. Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe it's just cosmic reasons. Although I never really got how Sargon and Valaria are meant to be estranged sisters either.  Anyhow, this special features the original heroic Cumulus, rather than his whiny rebirth David. It's the tale of how Chaos and Valaria got together and how Chaos killed the first Cumulus. It's also notable for introducing First's nexus of worlds Cynosure, which became the backdrop for Gr...