| Atlas Comics (1950s) |
Article Index for Atlas |
Website Links For Atlas |
Information AboutAtlas Comics (1950s) |
|
Atlas Comics is the 1950s Comic Book Publishing company that would evolve into ''' Marvel Comics '''. Magazine and Paperback-novel publisher Martin Goodman , whose Business Strategy involved having a multitude of Corporate entities, used Atlas as the umbrella name for his comic-book division during this time. Atlas was located on the 14th floor of the Empire State Building . This company is distinct from the 1970s comic-book company, also founded by Goodman, that is generally known as Atlas/Seaboard Comics . AFTER THE GOLDEN AGE .]] Atlas grew out of Timely Comics , the company Goodman founded in 1939 and whose star characters during the 1930s and '40s Golden Age Of Comic Books were the Human Torch , the Sub-Mariner , and Captain America . The post-war era, however, found superheroes falling out of fashion. Television and paperback books now also competed for readers and leisure time. The line marking the end of the Golden Age is vague, but for Timely, at least, historians point to the cancellation of ''Captain America Comics'' at issue #75 (Feb. 1950) — by which time the series had already been ''Captain America's Weird Tales'' for two issues, with the finale featuring merely anthological Suspense stories and no superheroes. The company's flagship title, '' Marvel Mystery Comics '', starring the Human Torch, had already ended its run (with #92, June 1949), as had ''Sub-Mariner Comics'' (with #32, the same month). Goodman's comic-book line dropped superheroes and expanded into a wider variety of genres than even Timely had published, emphasizing Horror , Westerns , Humor , Funny-animal , Men's Adventure - Drama , Crime , and War Comics , later adding a helping of Jungle books, Romance titles, and even Espionage , Medieval adventure, Bible Stories and Sports . As did other publishers, Atlas also courted female readers with mostly humorous comics about Models and career women. Goodman began using the globe logo of Atlas (see above), the newsstand-distribution company he owned, on comics cover-dated November 1951. This united a line put out by the same publisher, staff and freelancers through 59 shell companies, from Animirth Comics to Zenith Publications. Atlas would attempt to revive superheroes in ''Young Men'' #24-28 (Dec. 1953 - June 1954), with the Human Torch (art by Syd Shores and Dick Ayers , variously), the Sub-Mariner (drawn and most stories written by Bill Everett ), and Captain America (writer Stan Lee , artist John Romita Sr. ). Yet they featured the same sort of Communist Red Scare villains as the late-'40s comics, broke no new ground, and looked old-fashioned — particularly in comparison with the clean, uncluttered, streamlined reimagining of super-speedster The Flash two years later in DC Comics ' '' Showcase '' #4 (Sept. 1956), which would successfully bring back superheroes and kick off the Silver Age Of Comics . TREND-FOLLOWING ''Astonishing'' #30 (Feb. 1954): Cover art by Joe Maneely .]] Atlas, rather than similarly innovate, took what it saw as the proven route of following popular trends in TV and Stan Lee would help revolutionize comic books with the advent of The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man , Atlas was content to flood newsstands with profitable, cheaply produced product — often, despite itself, beautifully rendered by talented if low-paid young artists. The Atlas "bullpen" had at least five staff writers (officially called editors) besides Lee: Hank Chapman , Paul S. Newman , Don Rico , Carl Wessler , and, in the teen-humor division, future MAD Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee . Daniel Keyes , future author of the classic Novelette '' Flowers For Algernon '', was an associate editor circa 1952. Other writers, generally freelance, included Robert Bernstein . The artists — some freelance, some on staff — included such veterans as Human Torch creator Carl Burgos and Sub-Mariner creator Bill Everett . The next generation included the prolific and much-admired Joe Maneely , who before his death just prior to Marvel's 1960s breakthrough was the company's leading artist, providing many covers and doing work in all genres, most notably on Westerns and on the medieval adventure '' The Black Knight ''. Others included Russ Heath , Gene Colan , and the fledgling, highly individualistic Steve Ditko . Atlas' most prominent Western titles, many reprinted in the 1970s, were '' Ringo Kid '', with art by Maneely, Fred Kida and John Severin ; Doug Wildey 's '' The Outlaw Kid ''; Jack Keller 's '' Kid Colt, Outlaw '' and the anthology ''Gunsmoke Western'', starring Kid Colt; and '' The Black Rider '', by Maneely, Syd Shores and others. (The Atlas versions of two prominent '60s Western characters, the Rawhide Kid and the Two-Gun Kid , were different and historically undistinguished iterations.) HUMOR AND MISCELLANEA .]] Atlas also published a plethora of children's and teen humor titles, including Dan DeCarlo 's ''Homer, the Happy Ghost'' (a la Casper The Friendly Ghost ) and ''Homer Hooper'' (a la Archie Andrews ). If newspapers had '' Dennis The Menace '', Atlas had the Joe Maneely -drawn ''Melvin the Monster''. TV had Sgt. Bilko ? Atlas had the lovably conniving ''Sergeant Barney Barker'' — drawn by John Severin , one of comics' top war artists, no less. One of the most popular titles was the long-running '' Millie The Model '', which began as a Timely Comics humor book in 1945 and ran a remarkable 207 issues, well into the Marvel-era '70s, launching spin-offs along the way. Created or co-created (accounts differ) by artist Ruth Atkinson , it later became the proving ground for Cartoonist DeCarlo — the future creator of Josie And The Pussycats , Sabrina, The Teenage Witch and other Archie Comics characters, and the artist who established Archie's modern look. DeCarlo wrote and drew ''Millie'' for a remarkable ten years, even while such companion titles as ''Tillie the Typist'', ''Nellie the Nurse'' and even his own ''Sherry the Showgirl'' fell by the wayside. The high-school series ''Patsy Walker'', also created or co-created by Atkinson in 1945, ran until 1967 and spun-off three titles. More naturalistic than the Slapstick y ''Millie'', it featured attractive but sedate art by Al Hartley , Al Jaffee , Morris Weiss and others. Given the tone and the target audience, ''Patsy Walker'' oddly included the legendary Harvey Kurtzman 's bizarre "Hey Look!" one-pagers in several early issues. Patsy herself would be integrated into Marvel Universe continuity years later as the Supernatural superheroine Hellcat . No hellcats graced Atlas' Funny Animal books, but they did have Cartoonist Ed Winiarski 's trouble-prone ''Buck Duck'', Maneely's mentally suspect ''Dippy Duck'', and Howie Post 's ''The Monkey and the Bear'', which bore a striking resemblance to DC Comics ' ''Fox and the Crow''. Buck and others saw life again briefly in the early 1970s, when Marvel published the five-issue reprint title, ''Li'l Pals'' ("Fun-Filled Animal Antics!"). Notable miscellanea include the espionage title '' Yellow Claw '', with sumptuous Maneely, Severin, and Jack Kirby art; the Native American hero ''Red Warrior'', with art by Tom Gill ; the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet -like ''Space Squadron'', written and drawn by future Marvel production executive Sol Brodsky ; and ''Sports Action'', initially with true-life stories about the likes of George Gipp and Jackie Robinson , and later with fictional "Rugged Tales of Danger and Red-Hot Action!" LAYOFFS From 1952 to late 1956, Goodman distributed this torrent of comics to newsstands through his self-owned distributor, Atlas. He then switched to American News Company , the nation's largest distributor and a virtual Monopoly — which shortly afterward lost a Justice Department Lawsuit and discontinued its business. As historian and author Gerard Jones explains, the company in 1956 Stan Lee, in a 1988 interview, recalled that Goodman: For that and other reasons, including a recession in the overall economy, Atlas retrenched in 1957. A fabled story has the publisher discovering a closet-full of unused, but paid-for, art, leading him to have virtually the entire staff fired while he used up the inventory. In the interview noted above, Lee, one of the few able to give a firsthand account, told a seemingly self-contradictory version of the downsizing: In a 2003 interview, Joe Sinnott , one of the company's top artists for more than 50 years, recalled Lee citing the inventory issue as a primary cause: RETURN OF JACK KIRBY & Steve Ditko .]] Goodman's men's magazines and paperback books were still successful — the comics, except in the early Golden Age, were a relatively small part of the business — and Goodman considered shutting the division down. The details of his decision not to do so are murky. Jack Kirby, who after his amicable split with creative partner Joe Simon a few years earlier was not as busy as he would have liked, recalled in a 1990 interview for '' The Comics Journal '' that in late 1958, The interviewer, ''Comics Journal'' publisher Gary Groth , later wrote of this interview in general, "Some of Kirby's more extreme statements ... should be taken with a grain of salt...."Jack Kirby interview, ''The Comics Journal Library'', p. 19 Lee, specifically asked about the office-closing anecdote, said, Kirby had previously returned, in late 1956, to freelance on five issues cover-dated Dec. 1956 and Feb. 1957, ''Astonishing'' #56 (4 pp.), ''Strange Tales of the Unusual'' #7 (4 pp.), ''Quick-Trigger Western'' #16 (5 pp.), and '' Yellow Claw '' #2-3 (19 pp. each) but did not stay. Now, beginning with the cover and the seven-page story "I Discovered the Secret of the Flying Saucers" for '' Strange Worlds '' #1 (Dec. 1958), Kirby returned for a 12-year run that would soon help revolutionize comics. Atlas gave Kirby a high-profile market, splashing the maestro's work across countless covers and lead stories, with the singular quality and dynamism of Kirby's art elevating such preexisting comics as '' Strange Tales '' and the newly launched '' Amazing Adventures '', ''Strange Worlds'', '' Tales Of Suspense '', '' Tales To Astonish '' and '' World Of Fantasy '' above the other horror/science fiction titles that had proliferated in the wake of the recently defunct master of those comics genres, EC Comics . A Kirby monster story, usually inked by Dick Ayers , would generally open each book, followed by one or two twist-ending thrillers or sci-fi tales drawn by Don Heck , Paul Reinman , or Joe Sinnott , with the whole thing capped by an often-surreal, sometimes self-reflexive Lee-Ditko short. PRE-SUPERHERO MARVEL seal). Art by Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers.]] Goodman had begun moving away from newsstand distributor Kable News by branding his comics with the Atlas globe on issues cover-dated Nov. 1951, even though Kable's "K" logo and North American map symbol remained through the Aug. 1952 issues. Goodman shut down his self-distributorship on Nov. 1, 1956, and began newsstand distribution through American News Service. The Atlas globe remained, however, through the Oct. 1957 issues, when American News went out of business. Goodman switched to the distributor Independent News, owned by rival DC Comics , and dropped the Atlas globe at that time. Goodman would reuse the name Atlas for the Next Comics Company He Founded , in the 1970s. The final comic to bear the Atlas globe logo was ''Dippy Duck'' #1, the company's only release with an October 1957 cover date. Goodman's switch to the distributor Independent News (see Above ), owned by rival DC Comics , was on constrained terms that allowed only eight titles per month. Fans sometimes refer to these surviving, bi-monthly titles as the "sweet 16". The first of these to bear the new "Ind." label was ''Patsy Walker'' #73 — ironically cover-dated, like ''Dippy Duck'' #1, October 1957. The best-selling titles were Westerns (with Kid Colt starring in two titles) and girl humor (led by the long-running '' Millie The Model ''). The two fantasy titles ('' Strange Tales '' and '' World Of Fantasy '') clung on printing stored inventory material from late 1957 through late 1958. Although for several months in 1949 and 1950 Timely's titles bore a circular logo labeled "Marvel Comic", the first modern comic book so labeled was the science-fiction anthology '' Amazing Adventures '' #3, which showed the "MC" box on its cover. Cover-dated August 1961, it was published May 9, 1961. Library Of Congress copyright information at Grand Comics Database: ''Amazing Adventures'' #3 However, collectors routinely refer to the companies' comics from the April 1959 cover-dates onward (when they began featuring Jack Kirby artwork on his return to Goodman's company), as pre-superhero Marvel. QUOTES '''; the Bullpen staff was let go in 1957] The guys ... who actually worked nine-to-five and put in a regular day, and not the freelance guys who'd come in a drop off their work ... were almost a hall of fame group of people. There was John Severin . Bill Everett . Carl Burgos . There was the all-time great Joe Maneely.... We all worked together, all the colorists and correction guys, the letterers and artists. ... We had a great time". Adelaide Comics and Books: Stan Goldberg interview ATLAS TITLES BY GENRE Information from Atlas Tales Atlas Tales and other references. Some titles may be arguably Timely at the earlier end, or Marvel at the later end. Note: In titles numbered from or into the various ''All Winners Comics'', additional clarifying information is supplied. List, in progress, complete through ''Menace'', inclusive. Crime
Drama
Espionage
Funny-animal and other children's comics
: Note: These two series not supernatural, but ''Dennis the Menace''-like
Humor - satire
Humor - sitcom
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
Horror/fantasy/SF
Jungle
Romance
Sports
Superhero
War
Western
Misc.
Note: The romance title ''Linda Carter, Student Nurse'' #1-9 (Sept. 1961 - Jan. 1963), sometimes grouped together with Atlas Comics, chronologically falls within Marvel, and all covers have the "MC" box. FOOTNOTES REFERENCES
EXTERNAL LINKS |
|
|