One of the core tenets of the Marvel Universe is that all these very silly events and characters must be taken absolutely seriously. The fandom hate it when you make fine of their favourites, but fortunately the creators do still love doing it.
These comics often get swept under the table - when I was at my peak Marvel Zombie period, I literally could not tell if Not Brand Ecch was actually a real thing, or some kind of weird bullpen in-joke. And nobody talks much about What The--?!, even though the first half dozen issues had art by the ultra-hot Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Erik Busiek and Whilce Portacio, with other stories by deadset legends like Steve Ditko, John Severin, Hilary Barta, June Brigman, Jon Bogdanove, Fred Hembeck and John Byrne.
All these artists benefit from the loose nature of exaggerated cartooning - Ditko in particular breaks out of that beautiful rigidity to create something truly energetic with Severin on the inks - creating comics that are full of jokes that haven't aged well, on stories with art that remains more timeless than the serious comics of the day.
This particular issue was always my personal favourite, I got it right off the shelf at the time, and still have that copy today. Most of it is concerned with a gentle pisstake of Kraven's Last Hunt, with the terribly underrated Alex Saviuk doing some good homages, some classic Hembeck foolishness, and a really terrific spoof of the X-Men teams of the day, with wonderfully goofy Kyle Baker art.
It also has Todd McFarlane doing a very, very silly Batman two-pager, and this wonderful one-page strip, which would quickly feel gently naïve when you know what is coming in the 90s-
So some humour is still there, and deserves to be remembered with some fondness. There is worth in comic book satire, and some gorgeous art to be found, especially when you don't take your funny books so damn seriously.
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