Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jun 7, 2025 | 8 comments

SCOTT SHAW! SATURDAYS…

By SCOTT SHAW!

I graduated from San Diego’s Will C. Crawford High School in June 1968. On July 16, 1968, DC’s Brother Power, the Geek #1 hit the spinner rack at the Mayfair Market, where I usually bought my comics. I knew that Joe Simon co-created Captain America and, thanks to Harvey Comics’ reprints a few years earlier, Fighting American, but other than issues of Marvel’s Fantasy Masterpieces that featured Golden Age Cap, I’d never seen much of Joe’s work in comics. So I eagerly slapped down 12 cents in the Mayfair and headed straight home to get a-readin’.

I was shocked.

At the time, I was very straight, never drinking, never smoking, never hanging out with hippies in my high school – because we didn’t have any… yet — although I saw quite a few of them when my parents and I had a vacation in San Francisco in 1967. In fact, our motel was close to Haight-Ashbury, so I saw and even interacted with a few actual hippies at a nearby theater while watching Ray Harryhausen’s One Million Years B.C.

Cover art by Joe Simon.

So, when I saw the blurb on the first issue of Brother Power, the Geek, “HERE is the REAL-LIFE SCENE of the DANGERS in HIPPIE-LAND,” I was shocked that Cap’s co-creator felt that hippies were somehow evil fiends. (Later, I realized that  Joe was hoping to attract potential readers with the fabricated luridness of hippies.) I was also slightly repelled by the comic’s art, which to me, had an unpleasant vibe.

However, when the second (and final) issue of Brother Power, the Geek hit the stands on September 9, 1968, I wasn’t shocked. I was angry! Why? Because over the summer of ’68, I had not only become a hippie, I started reading underground comix as well as the mainstream comics. I still rejected alcohol, but I was doing everything else that hippies were doing, illegal and otherwise. And I’ve gotta tell you: Gilbert Shelton’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comix made Joe Simon’s Brother Power, the Geek seem like a joke… and not the funny kind.

Although I bought both issues, I was kinda relieved there weren’t more, because it felt better to spend whatever money I had on Feds ‘n’ Heads, Tales of Toad, and Zap Comix, among other early underground books. These were written and drawn by men and women who were only a few years older than me, which was much more legit than mainstream comics edited, written, and drawn by middle-age men who were also protective fathers. Yeesh.

Simon

However, I didn’t realize that there was a back story to DC’s Brother Power, the Geek comics.

Originally, his name was gonna be Brother Power the Freak, but Superman family editor Mort Weisinger was worried that “freak” might refer to drugs or addicts. So it was changed to Brother Power the Geek… not referring to comic book collectors, but to the guy at the carnival whose job is to bite off the heads of live chickens. Yeahhh, because that isn’t freaky?

And although Joe Simon was the only creator’s name in both issues, the interior stories were penciled by Al Bare, who had begun in the industry with Marvel’s Mystic Comics #6 in 1941. His most prolific work was with Sick magazine, an obvious ripoff of Mad that was edited by… wait for it… Joe Simon, who inked over Al Bare’s pencil art on the comics’ interior pages.

Brother Power was Joe Simon’s re-imagining of Frankenstein’s monster, a mannequin turned reclusive hero/philosopher. A urban group of happy hippies are being terrorized by a biker named Hound Dawg and his motorcycle gang known as the Mongrels. To escape them, some of the hippies hide out inside an abandoned tailor shop that has a human-sized dummy. With a mixture of radiator heat and a bolt of lightning, the mannequin slowly comes to life.

Suddenly, the Mongrels come crashing through the window. But when they attack the living scarecrow, he trashes them with one of their own motorcycles. Yup, he has super powers — durability and strength, the ability to absorb electricity, and the power to take superhuman leaps. One of his hippie friends calls out, “Brother Paul, that’s power! BROTHER POWER!” After the faceless humanoid displays his super-skills around New York City, his long-haired new pals, Nick and Paul, teach Brother Power how to speak their hippie language and how to play guitar. But when they try to get him attend an elementary school, he drops out!

When the Psychedelic Circus Parade comes to town, their “beautiful vibrations, baby” lull Brother Power, and the performers kidnap the mannequin superhero. Nick comes up with an idea, “We’ll have a HAPPENING at their diggers… a COMIC BOOK HERO HAPPENING!!” – which immediately draws the Mongrels to attack the hippie cosplayers, of course. Days later, they discover a powerless Brother Power in the Psychedelic Circus’ freak show, surrounded by swipes of monster designs by Wallace Wood and Basil Wolverton… and Alfred Hitchcock! But when a spotlight accidentally falls into a puddle of water at the Geek’s feet, he gets charged with his superpowers and trashes his captors.

Later, Paul and Nick’s friend, Cindy, gives Brother Power a makeover, with a pleasant Ragged Andy-style face, a new hairdo, and new clothing, including a turtleneck bearing a big flower. Suddenly, the Geek decides that he wants to be a politician, with “flower power,” and runs for Congress!

Meanwhile, the Psychedelic Circus owner sics the police and the Mongrels on Brother Power. When Hound Dawg and his gang attack him, a TV cameraman happens to film the Geek stopping the bikers’ leader and exiting with his motorcycle. The film footage winds up on the Huntley-Brinkley Report, a then-popular news show.

Finally, the police, the Mongrels, and the National Guard chase the motorized Brother Power onto a bridge. Rather than be captured, he decides to jump into the water below. Nick sadly remarks, “A hank o’ hair, a rag and a bone! He was hardly more than a DUMMY! Yet, he was almost the very most!”

The end? Of course not!

I’ve gotta admit, Joe and Al really worked hard to pull this off. The artwork is… unique… but looking at it for the first time in a few decades, it’s lame from a hippie’s point of view. But as a pro cartoonist for half a century, I’m kinda impressed!

Of course, the second issue of Brother Power, the Geek was equally Oddball. After young fishermen pull his water-sodden body out of the water, a weirdo named the Berlin Baron and his team, the Berlin Airplanes, pluck up the Geek with their handmade Fokker biplane and attack the teenage fishers who rescued Brother Power. The Geek takes care of the baddies and gives his new friends his “secret origin.”

They help get the Geek a job at a supermarket, where he meets a lady who suggests that he talk to her husband, J.P. Acme, who owns a missile parts factory. Unknown to Brother Power, Acme has been acquired by an Oddball not-very-supervillain, Lord Sliderule! Once they meet, the baddie sets his muscular stooges on him. The Geek escapes, but Acme makes him the chairman of the board.

Who’s Who Vol. III, 1985

Meanwhile, his hippies friends are protesting Acme’s war product, so Brother Power hires all of them to work on his assembly lines, not realizing that Lord Sliderule is behind the operation. When their space missile explodes due to sabotage, the ragged superhero becomes a wanted man – and is chased by a governor who closely resembles Ronald Reagan.

All is lost, until the Berlin Baron, now a hippie (?), calls his friend, Fleegle the Eagle, a stunt flyer who crashes his plane into Acme’s factory. With the military distracted, the Geek sneaks into another missile, which Lord Sliderule launches, sending Brother Power into outer space.

“WILL we see the Geek again? We will! We will! Why should we kill off a good thing?!! Believe us, THE GEEK will touch down in good time for the next issue… But you’ll never believe WHERE!!”

Supposedly, Joe had a third issue written and drawn but never brought it into DC once he knew that Brother Power, the Geek had been cancelled.

Brother Power was briefly revived by Neil Gaiman in Swamp Thing Annual #5 (1989), and by Rachel Pollack and Mike Allred in the Vertigo Visions — The Geek special (1993), which explains that Brother Power is a “doll elemental,” whatever that means. After a lot of cameo appearances, Brother Power’s most recent appearances  were in The Brave and the Bold #29 (2010), Scooby-Doo Team-Up #67-68  (2013) as well as the 2019–20 Inferior Five miniseries.

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MORE

— ODDBALL COMICS: If You’re MAD, Get PSYCHOANALYSIS! Click here.

— ODDBALL COMICS: Herb Trimpe’s THE GLOB Was a Real Pile of Poo — and We Love Him For It. Click here.

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For over half a century, SCOTT SHAW! has been a pro cartoonist/writer/designer of comic books, animation, advertising and toys. He is also a historian of all forms of cartooning. Scott has worked on many underground comix and mainstream comic books, including: Fear and Laughter (Kitchen Sink); Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie); Simpsons Comics (Bongo); Weird Tales of the Ramones (Rhino); and his co-creation with Roy Thomas, Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew! (DC).

Scott also worked on numerous animated cartoons, including producing/directing John Candy’s Camp Candy (NBC/DIC/Saban); Martin Short’s The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley (NBC/Hanna-Barbera Productions); Garfield and Friends (CBS/Film Roman); and the Emmy-winning Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies (CBS/Marvel Productions), among many others. As senior art director for the Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency, Scott worked on dozens of commercials for Post Pebbles cereals with the Flintstones. He also designed a line of Hanna-Barbera action figures for McFarlane Toys.

Scott was one of the comics fans who organized the first San Diego Comic-Con, where he has become known for performing his hilarious Oddball Comics Live! slide shows.

Need funny cartoons for any and all media? Click here! Scott does commissions!