Strange Tales #169, an issue from the same series that introduced both Dr. Strange and Nick Fury, marked the debut of a less recognizable but perennial hero. The brainchild of Teen Titans writer Len Wein and artist Gene Colan (of both Howard the Duck and Daredevil fame), Jericho Drumm was born in Haiti but moved to New York City to study psychology. Despite his family’s involvement in Voodoo, Drumm refused to believe in what he saw as mere superstition. He remained defiant until returning to Haiti and witnessing his brother Daniel’s death at the hands of an evil Voodoo practitioner. On his deathbed, Daniel made Jericho promise to avenge him and take up the Voodoo arts. So, after studying under the late Papa Jambo, Jericho merged with the spirit of his deceased brother—gaining all of Daniel’s powers while retaining his own—and became the superhero known as Brother Voodoo.
Brother Voodoo’s run as the protagonist in Strange Tales only lasted five scant issues before he was replaced, but he continues cameo in a wide range of Marvel books, despite the fact that similar heroes of his era have long since disappeared from the map.
Brother Voodoo is a great addition to the Marvel Knights team for Constructed and a real powerhouse in Sealed Pack. His stats are about average for a 3-drop, and both of his effects can help you riffle through your cards until you hit what you need. If he’s played as a 3-drop and used immediately, you’ll most likely get three cards from either effect, but that number can be bumped up if you’re playing with anything that promotes drawing. Time will tell what type of character search the Marvel Knights will have, but if they have something in addition to Brother Voodoo that’s even moderately reliable, they could be a very consistent team.
If you’re playing a combo deck that needs to see particular cards and can afford the 3-drop, this is a great character to include, so don’t be surprised if he appears in an assortment of synergy-dependent decks in the future. Including some non-team tech is relatively safe at the 3-drop level, and unlike Madame Web, he’s not a fragile old woman with a ridiculously low DEF.
Speaking of jank rogue ideas, Brother Voodoo is of note because he’s the first card to allow mass discard without totally eating your hand. There is no better way to get cards into the discard pile than via Brother Voodoo, and he can accelerate you through your deck so quickly that you should be able to fulfill virtually any KO pile threshold requirement. While a deck focused around Phantasm, Starfire, and Colossus is . . . well, low on ways to enhance its theme at the moment, Brother Voodoo could help make such a theme viable in the future.
For Sealed Pack, Brother Voodoo may be the Prankster of the set—an underdog pick that could have spectacular results. By the time you play him, you’ll already have seen ten of the thirty cards in your deck. Brother Voodoo bumps you ahead another three on turn 3 if you use his effect, and he can continue to help your cause as long as he survives. The best-case scenario is, of course, hitting your drops appropriately without his effect, leaving him available to nab combat pumps in game-breaking situations. The ideal is to get all of your desired drops and combat modifiers naturally, so Brother Voodoo is not an excuse for poor deck building, but he is a nice tool for warding off bad luck or bad draws.
That’s it for me. Enjoy the rest of the Marvel Knights previews!
-Jason Grabher-Meyer