A lot of people have heard of Brother Power the Geek if only because once you've heard the name it's darn near impossible to forget but how many people have actually read the original comics.

Brother Power was created by Joe Simon in 1968 and survived a whopping two issues. I can't say whether it was cancelled because of low sales but it was definitely running with the wind in its face. According to Carmen Infantino the series was hated by legendary DC editor Mort Weisinger who disliked the 60's hippie subculture and lobbied for the cancellation of the series.

DC comics has rarely taken strong or even mild political or sociological stances. Joe Simon was no young counterculture thumbing his nose at society's conventions. He was 55 when he wrote Brother Power, at least a generation removed from the hippie movement. It's similar to Jack Kirby who was 54 when he created the New God flower children, the Forever People, back in 1971. They were middle aged men trying to tap into the younger generation. In fact Joe Simon was several years older than Weisinger. The only argument I can see that the comic was sympathetic towards hippies is that they weren't cast as the villains. On the other hand comics had been beaten up pretty hard by congress and sometimes the self censoring becomes so engrained that it becomes part of your being. The original name Joe Simon came up with was Brother Power the Freak which made a lot more sense but was nixed because editors felt Freak would cause people to think it was a drug reference.

I'm not going to praise all the comics I'll be discussing in my journals but I really enjoyed Brother Power and I think it's a real shame the series wasn't given more of a chance. It is an incredibly weird pair of comics but the 60's and early 70's were an incredibly weird period and most of the comics I'll be discussing come from that era. My copies are both reader copies and I'd love to upgrade because I enjoyed them that much. Apparently Brother Power has shown a small resurgence and high grade issues can fetch more than a couple of bucks

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