Mars Attacks Creator and KOOP Mainstay Len Brown Dies at 84

Two seemingly separate communities – horror fans and country music enthusiasts – are unified in their mourning with the passing of an Austinite who played a major role in both fields.

For regular listeners to KOOP, Len Brown was the longtime voice and host of Country Roots, his Brooklyn accent little indicator of his extensive knowledge of country & western music. He’d actually broken into the radio business on several stations in New Jersey, but when he retired to Austin in 2000 he quickly became a mainstay of the city’s community-owned and operated station. His contribution was recognized in 2022, when he was one of the first people to be inducted as a KOOP Honorary Member. KOOP General Manager Federico Pacheco wrote that Brown was “an important part of KOOP’s history and a wonderful example of the passion and curiosity that community radio is all about.”

Len Brown (left) on his final visit to the KOOP studios in 2022, when he was made an Honorary Member alongside Edward “Magic” Johnson, Gilka Cespedes, Kim McCarson, Rod Moag, Andrew Dickens, and Louis Harrison for their contributions to the station. Credit: KOOP

However, for horror fans the name Len Brown carries a different, more deliciously terrifying connotation: for he was the creator of the infamous Mars Attacks trading cards. 

Born in Brooklyn in 1941, mere weeks before America entered World War II, Brown joined the Product Development Department at Topps Chewing Gum after graduating high school. The candy company had originally combined gum with mini-comics on the wrapper, but started including tie-in cards for TV shows in 1950 before revolutionizing the trading card industry by adding baseball for the 1952 season. They expanded with sets like Fighting Marines in 1953, Davy Crockett in 1956 and Target: Moon in 1957, but their collections were either historical, educational, sporting, or licensed from TV shows and films. 

It was Brown who changed the game when he came up with the idea for Topps’ own line. He’d been working on the back texts and stats for baseball cards when he was inspired by the cover of issue 16 of E.C. Comics’ Weird Science. It depicted a trio of boys hiding behind a rock as a UFO disgorges a cadre of strange-looking aliens in domed space suits. Brown approached his boss, Woody Gelman, about his idea for a horrific and bloody card series recounting a savage invasion of Earth by Martians, and they hired the artists behind that cover, Wally Wood, to bring the invaders to graphic life. The resultant card series, with story by Brown and Gelman, card texts by Brown, sketches by Wood, art by Bob Powell, and colors by Norman Saunders and Maurice Blumenfeld, was a controversial smash that was pulled from the stands after public outcry. 

The card “Watching From Mars” from the original 1962 Mars Attacks series by Topps, created by future Austinite Len Brown. Credit: Topps, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

But the cards that made it to the streets were holy artifacts for kids and horror fans who hoarded them and counted themselves lucky to have one, never mind an entire set. It was only in the 1990s that they resurfaced and were reprinted, then were given the Hollywood seal of approval with Tim Burton’s semi-comic movie adaptation, Mars Attacks!, in 1996. Yet, popular as the movie was, it never quite captured the gory, grisly, no-holds-barred mayhem of Brown’s original creations, its fanged invaders turning their heat rays on middle America.

That first brush with storytelling then transferred into a parallel career in comic writing, as Brown and Mars Attacks artist Wood went on to create T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents for Tower Comics. He would continue his day job at Topps, taking over from Gelman as Director of New Product Development, playing a key role in the early careers of artists like Maus creator Art Spiegelman and overseeing the launch of other legendary Topps sets like Garbage Pail Kids. Cartoonist and publisher Mark Newgarden, who worked under Brown at Topps, took to Facebook to call him “without question the heart and soul of that operation.” 

Brown also wrote multiple books on music history with his longtime collaborator, Gary Friedrich, as well as books on trading cards and comics postcards with his old boss at Topps, Gelman.

Brown is survived by his wife, Abby, his children, Jon and Valarie, and his stepsons Todd, Eric, and Harris Demel. Well-wishers and fans of his work are encouraged to make a donation in his memory to alz.org or dementiasociety.org.

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