Some of Brand's earliest comics work appeared in the early 1960s in the University of California, Berkeley's California Pelican humor magazine, alongside drawings by Beck. In 1966, Brand and his wife Michele moved from Oakland, California, to New York City, specifically to break into the comics business. Brand began as an assistant to Gil Kane and Wally Wood, contributing to Wood's witzend and moving on to such publications as Creepy, Eerie, Jungle Jim and Web of Horror. Dan Adkins, who also had been Wally Wood's assistant, remembered working with Brand:
Underground comics
By the late 1960s Roger and Michele were back in the San Francisco Bay Area. Entering the underground comix field, Brand initially did comics for the tabloid Gothic Blimp Works, and later for such titles as Banzai!, Candid Press, Insect Fear, Tales of the Leather Nun, Yellow Dog, and Young Lust. Brand edited and contributed to Tales of Sex and Death and Real Pulp Comics. Real Pulp became a springboard for cartoonist Bill Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead. As Griffith recalled, "In San Francisco in 1970, I was asked to contribute a few pages to Real Pulp Comics #1, edited by cartoonist Roger Brand. His only guideline was to say, 'Maybe do some kind of love story, but with really weird people.' I never imagined I'd still be putting words into Zippy's fast-moving mouth some 38 years later." In late 1976, while renting a room in Gary Arlington's house in the Mission District, Brand began working at Robert Beerbohm's comic book storeBest ofTwo Worlds, located at 1709 Haight Street in San Francisco. When Beerbohm opened a second location at 2512 Telegraph Ave in Berkeley in May 1977, Brand began working in that location as well, alongside Kim Deitch, Bruce Simon, and others. By then Brand had developed a severe alcohol problem coupled with overuse of "speed."
Brand's wife Michele was also involved in underground comix, contributing stories to such publications as It Ain't Me, Babe, Wimmen's Comix, and Arcade. Brand and Michele divorced circa 1974. She later married comics artistBernie Wrightson and continued for many years working behind the scenes in the comics industry. Brand died of liver failure at age 42, on November 23, 1985, in San Francisco, at Joel Beck's house, where he had been living for some time.
