 | |
| Company type | Division |
|---|---|
| Industry | Publishing |
| Predecessor | Timely Comics |
| Founded | November 1951; 73 years ago (1951-11) |
| Founder | Martin Goodman |
| Defunct | October 1957; 67 years ago (1957-10) |
| Fate | Rebranded asMarvel Comics in 1961 |
| Successor | Marvel Comics |
| Headquarters | Manhattan,New York City, U.S. |
Key people | Martin Goodman |
| Products | Comic books,magazines |
| Parent | Magazine Management Co., Inc. |
Atlas Comics was the 1950scomic-bookpublishing label that evolved intoMarvel Comics.[1] Magazine andpaperback novel publisherMartin 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 evolved out of Goodman's 1940s comic-book division,Timely Comics, and was located on the 14th floor of theEmpire State Building. This company is distinct from the 1970s comic-book company, also founded by Goodman, that is known asAtlas/Seaboard Comics.
Atlas Comics was the successor ofTimely Comics, the company thatmagazine andpaperback novel publisher Martin Goodman founded in 1939, and which had reached the peak of its popularity during the war years with its star characters theHuman Torch, theSub-Mariner andCaptain America.[3] The early to mid-1950s found comic books falling out of fashion due to competition fromtelevision and other media.[4]
Timely largely stopped producing superhero comics with the cancellation ofCaptain America Comics at issue #75 (cover-dated Feb. 1950), by which time the series had already been titledCaptain America's Weird Tales for two issues, with the finale featuring only anthologicalsuspense stories and no superheroes.[5] The company's flagship title,Marvel Mystery Comics, starring the Human Torch, had already ended its run with #92 in June 1949,[6] as hadSub-Mariner Comics with #32 the same month,[7] andThe Human Torch with #35 in March 1949.[8] Timely made one more attempt at superheroes with the publication ofMarvel Boy #1-2 (Dec. 1950 - Feb. 1951),[9]: 7 which was retitledAstonishing with issue #3 (April 1951) and continued theMarvel Boy feature through #6 (Oct. 1951).[10][11]
In the absence of superheroes, Goodman's comic book line expanded into a wide variety of genres, producinghorror,Westerns,humor,talking animal,drama,crime,war,jungle,romance,espionage,medieval adventure,Bible stories andsports comics. As did other publishers, Atlas also offered comics aboutmodels and career women.
Goodman began using the logo of the Atlas News Company, the newsstand-distribution company he owned, on comicscover-dated November 1951, even though another company, Kable News, continued to distribute his comics through the August 1952 issues, with its "K" logo and the logo of the independent distributors' union appearing alongside the Atlas globe.[12] The Atlas logo united a line put out by the same publisher, staff and freelancers through 59 shell companies, from Animirth Comics to Zenith Publications.[13] Soon afterwards, the company rejoined theAssociation of Comics Magazine Publishers and begin using the "star" logo of ACMP on comics cover-dated between April 1952 and January 1955 on its titles, prior to the establishment of theComics Code Authority.[14][15]
Atlas attempted to revive superheroes inYoung Men #24-28 (Dec. 1953 - June 1954) with the Human Torch (art bySyd Shores andDick Ayers, variously), the Sub-Mariner (drawn and most stories written byBill Everett) andCaptain America (writerStan Lee, artistJohn Romita Sr.). The short-lived revival also included restarts ofSub-Mariner Comics (issues #33-42, April 1954 - Oct. 1955)[16] andCaptain America (#76-78, May-Sept. 1954).[17] All three superheroes also appeared in the final two issues ofMen's Adventures (#27-28, May–July 1954).[18]
Goodman's publishing strategy for Atlas involved what he saw as the proven route of following popular trends in TV andmovies —Westerns and war dramas prevailing for a time,drive-inmovie monsters another time — and even other comic books, particularly theEChorror line.[19][20]: 67–68 As Marvel/Atlas editor-in-chiefStan Lee told comic-book historianLes Daniels, Goodman "would notice what was selling, and we'd put out a lot of books of that type." Commented Daniels, "The short-term results were lucrative; but while other publishers took the long view and kept their stables of heroes solid, Goodman let his slide."[20]: 57
While Atlas had some horror titles, such asMarvel Tales, as far back as 1949, the company increased its output dramatically in the wake of EC's success. Lee recalled, "[I]t was usually based on how the competition was doing. When we found that EC's horror books were doing well, for instance, we published a lot of horror books."[20]: 67–68 Until the early 1960s, when Lee,Jack Kirby andSteve Ditko would help revolutionize comic books with the advent of theFantastic Four andSpider-Man, Atlas was content to flood newsstands with profitable, cheaply produced product — often, despite itself, beautifully rendered by talented if low-paid artists.[21]
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, futureMad magazine cartoonistAl Jaffee.Daniel Keyes, future author ofFlowers for Algernon, was an editor beginning 1952.[22] Other writers, generally freelance, includedRobert Bernstein.[23]
The artists — some freelance, some on staff — included such veterans as Human Torch creatorCarl Burgos[24] and Sub-Mariner creatorBill Everett.[25] The next generation included the prolific and much-admiredJoe Maneely, who before his death just prior to Marvel's 1960s breakthrough was the company's leading artist,[26] providing many covers and doing work in all genres, most notably on Westerns and on the medieval adventureBlack Knight.[27] Others includedRuss Heath,[28]Gene Colan,[29] and the fledgling, highly individualisticSteve Ditko.[30]
Some of Atlas' prominentWestern titles, many reprinted in the 1970s, wereRingo Kid, with art by Maneely,Fred Kida andJohn Severin; artistDoug Wildey'sThe Outlaw Kid; artistJack Keller'sKid Colt, Outlaw; the anthologyGunsmoke Western, starring Kid Colt; andBlack Rider, drawn by Maneely,Syd Shores and others.[31]
Atlas also published various children's and teen humor titles, includingDan DeCarlo'sHomer, the Happy Ghost (a laCasper the Friendly Ghost),Homer Hooper (a laArchie Andrews) and theJoe Maneely-drawnMelvin the Monster (a laDennis the Menace).Sergeant Barney Barker, drawn byJohn Severin, was Atlas' answer toSgt. Bilko.[32]
One of the most long-running titles wasMillie the Model, which began as a Timely Comics humor series in 1945 and ran into the 1970s, lasting for 207 issues and launching spinoffs along the way. Created by writer-artistRuth Atkinson,[33]: 31 it later became the training ground forcartoonist DeCarlo — the future creator ofJosie and the Pussycats,Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and otherArchie Comics characters, and the artist who established Archie Comics’ modern look.[33]: 31 [34] DeCarlo wrote and drewMillie for 10 years.[35]
The high-school seriesPatsy Walker, co-created by Atkinson and writerOtto Binder in 1944,[36] featured art byAl Hartley,Al Jaffee,Morris Weiss and others, and ran until 1967[37] It spun off three titles. Patsy herself would be integrated intoMarvel Universe continuity years later as thesupernatural superheroineHellcat.[38]
Atlas' talking animal books featuredcartoonistEd Winiarski's trouble-proneBuck Duck, Maneely's mentally suspectDippy Duck, andHowie Post'sThe Monkey and the Bear. Buck and the other animal characters briefly returned in the early 1970s when Marvel published the five-issue reprint titleLi'l Pals ("Fun-Filled Animal Antics!").[39]
Miscellaneous titles included the espionage seriesYellow Claw, with Maneely, Severin, andJack Kirby art; theNative American heroRed Warrior, with art byTom Gill;[40] thespace operaSpace Squadron, written and drawn by future Marvel production executiveSol Brodsky;[41] andSports Action, initially featuring true-life stories about the likes ofGeorge Gipp andJackie Robinson, and later fictional features of, as one cover headline put it, "Rugged Tales of Danger and Red-Hot Action!".[42]
Staff artistStan Goldberg recalled in 2005, "I was in the Bullpen with a lot of well-known artists who worked up there at that time. ... 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 wasJohn 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".[43]
From 1952 to late 1956, Goodman distributed Atlas' comics to newsstands through his self-owned distributor, the Atlas News Company. He shut down Atlas News Company in 1956 and began newsstand distribution throughAmerican News Company,[12][33]: 66 the nation's largest distributor and a virtualmonopoly, which shortly afterward lost aJustice Departmentlawsuit and discontinued its business. As comic-book historianGerard Jones explains, the company in 1956
...had been found guilty of restraint of trade and ordered to divest itself of the newsstands it owned. Its biggest client,George Delacorte, announced he would seek a new distributor for hisDell Comics and paperbacks. The owners of American News estimated the effect that would have on their income. Then they looked at the value of theNew Jersey real estate where their headquarters sat. They liquidated the company and sold the land. The company ... vanished without a trace in thesuburban growth of the 1950s.[44][page needed]
The Atlas globe remained on the covers, however, until American News went out of business in June 1957.[45] With no other options, Goodman turned to the distributorIndependent News, owned by rivalNational Periodical Publications, the futureDC Comics, which agreed to distribute him on constrained terms that allowed only eight titles per month.[33]: 66 The last comic to bear the Atlas globe on the cover was the comicDippy Duck #1,[46] and the first to bear the new "Ind." distributors' mark wasPatsy Walker #73, bothcover-dated October 1957.[47] The company was accordingly renamed to Goodman Comics after signing a distribution pact withIndependent News, according to a 1960 trade article.[48]
Stan Lee, in a 1988 interview, recalled that Goodman:
...had gone with the American News Company. I remember saying to him, 'Gee, why did you do that? I thought that we had a good distribution company.' His answer was like, 'Oh, Stan, you wouldn't understand. It has to do with finance.' I didn't really give a damn, and I went back to doing the comics. [Later,] we were left without a distributor and we couldn't go back to distributing our own books because the fact that Martin quit doing it and went with American News had gotten the wholesalers very angry ... and it would have been impossible for Martin to just say, 'Okay, we'll go back to where we were and distribute our books.' [We had been] turning out 40, 50, 60 books a month, maybe more, and [now] the only company we could get to distribute our books was our closest rival, National [DC] Comics. Suddenly we went ... to either eight or 12 books a month, which was all Independent News Distributors would accept from us.[49]
During this retrenchment, according to a fabled industry story, Goodman discovered 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:
It would never have happened just because he opened a closet door. But I think that I may have been in a little trouble when that happened. We had bought a lot of strips that I didn't think were really all that good, but I paid the artists and writers for them anyway, and I kinda hid them in the closet! And Martin found them and I think he wasn't too happy. If I wasn't satisfied with the work, I wasn't supposed to have paid, but I was never sure it was really the artist's or the writer's fault. But when the job was finished I didn't think that it was anything that I wanted to use. I felt that we could use it in inventory — put it out in other books. Martin, probably rightly so, was a little annoyed because it was his money I was spending.[49]
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. "Stan called me and said, 'Joe, Martin Goodman told me to suspend operations because I have all this artwork in house and have to use it up before I can hire you again.' It turned out to be six months, in my case. He may have called back some of the other artists later, but that's what happened with me."[50]
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. ArtistJack Kirby — who had amicably split with creative partnerJoe Simon a few years earlier, and separately lost a lawsuit to aDC Comics editor — was having difficulty finding work. He recalled that in late 1958,
I came in [to the Marvel offices] and they were moving out the furniture, they were taking desks out — and I needed the work! ... Stan Lee is sitting on a chair crying. He didn't know what to do, he's sitting on a chair crying — he was still just out of his adolescence [Note: Lee, born Dec. 28, 1922, would actually have been about 36.] I told him to stop crying. I says, 'Go in to Martin and tell him to stop moving the furniture out, and I'll see that the books make money'.[51]
The interviewer,The Comics Journal publisherGary Groth, later wrote of this interview in general, "Some of Kirby's more extreme statements ... should be taken with a grain of salt...."[52] Lee, specifically asked about the office-closing anecdote, said,
I never remember being there when people were moving out the furniture. If they ever moved the furniture, they did it during the weekend when everybody was home. Jack tended toward hyperbole, just like the time he was quoted as saying that he came in and I was crying and I said, 'Please save the company!' I'm not a crier and I would never have said that. I was very happy that Jack was there and I loved working with him, but I never cried to him. (laughs)[49]
Kirby had previously returned, in late 1956, to freelance on five issuescover-dated December 1956 and February 1957,[53] but did not stay. Now, beginning with the cover and the seven-page story "I Discovered the Secret of the Flying Saucers" forStrange Worlds #1 (Dec. 1958), Kirby returned for a 12-year run that would soon help revolutionize comics. While career necessity led Kirby back to publisher Goodman, whom he had left acrimoniously in 1941, Kirby nonetheless helped elevate simple science fiction and giant-monster stories with what comics historian Charles Hatfield called "a vital jab in the ribs by [his] outlandish artistry.[54]: 100 Soon his dynamic work began gracing countless covers and lead stories in the extantStrange Tales and the newly launchedAmazing Adventures,Strange Worlds,Tales of Suspense,Tales to Astonish andWorld of Fantasy. "Offsetting the formulaic nature of the stories was a dash of invigorating absurdity," wrote Hatfield. "The tales had Kirby's energy and, courtesy of Lee, confessional, first-person titles typical of sensation-mongering tabloids and comics, such as, 'I Created Sporr, the Thing That Could Not Die!'"[54]: 100–101
A Kirby science fiction/monster story, usually inked byChristopher Rule initially, then byDick Ayers following Rule's retirement, would generally open each book. This was followed by one or two twist-ending thrillers or sci-fi tales drawn byDon Heck,Paul Reinman, orJoe Sinnott, all capped by an often-surreal, sometimes self-reflexive short by Lee and artistSteve Ditko. Lee in 2009 described these "short, five-page filler strips that Steve and I did together", originally "placed in any of our comics that had a few extra pages to fill", as "odd fantasy tales that I'd dream up withO. Henry-type endings." Giving an early example of what would later be known as the "Marvel Method" of writer-artist collaboration, Lee said, "All I had to do was give Steve a one-line description of the plot and he'd be off and running. He'd take those skeleton outlines I had given him and turn them into classic little works of art that ended up being far cooler than I had any right to expect."[55]
Don Heck, who worked as an Atlas staff artist from 1954 until the company's retrenchment in 1957 before returning the following year, recalled that the 1958 page rate "was around $20 per page to pencil and ink, I think [rival comic-book publisher]DC's average was $38. It didn't pick up until 1964-65, and even then it didn't go up all that much — a couple of bucks a page."[56]
Although for several months in 1949 and 1950 Timely's titles bore a circular logo labeled "Marvel Comic", the first modern comic books so labeled were the science fiction anthologyJourney into Mystery #69 and the teen humor titlePatsy Walker #95 (both June 1961), which each showed an "MC" box on its cover.[57] However, collectors routinely refer to the company's comics from the April 1959 cover-dates onward (when they began featuring Jack Kirby artwork on his return to Goodman's company), aspre-superhero Marvel.[58] Goodman would reuse the name Atlas for thenext comics company he founded, in the 1970s.[59]
Some titles may be arguably Timely at the earlier end, or Marvel at the later end. Many series took over the numbering from previous series, which are listed. In titles numbered from or into the variousAll Winners Comics, additional clarifying information is supplied.
Note: The romance titleLinda 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.
In 1949, Timely's Big Three (Captain America, the Human Torch, and Namor) went into limbo, along with most other super-heroes of the day.
The Atlas logo was first used on November 1951 issues, but Kable News Co. continued to distribute the issues through the August 1952 issues, and its "K" logo and the logo of the independent distributors' union continued to appear alongside the Atlas globe. The Atlas globe also remained in use through the September 1957 issues, plus one of the two issues cover-dated October 1957, while [American News Corporation] had taken over distribution as of November 1956.
Of more interest today is the artwork in these comics. Goodman did not pay well but ... he usually had work available and his checks always cleared. As a result, just about everyone who worked in the New York comic book talent pool passed through his titles and some of the better artists — men like Bill Everett, Joe Maneely, Russ Heath and Dan DeCarlo — did an awful lot of pages.
Joe was always Stan's favorite artist. No question about it. Even over[Jack] Kirby and the others.
Note at the bottom left of the cover is the Atlas globe, this being the latest month the globe will ever appear (Sept/57) as Goodman lost his distributor when ANC (American News Corp.) crashed in April. There is an October cover month with the globe, the comic bookDippy Duck #1, but this is a clerical anomaly as cover proofs show an original Sept/57 date and the issue was on the stands with August and September cover-dated comics.
In fact, the first true 'Marvel Age' comic — the first issue minus the Atlas symbol in the upper-left corner — wasPatsy Walker #73 (Oct. 1957).
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