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Atlas Comics (1950s)

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Atlas Comics is the 1950s and early 1960s 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.

File:Atlaslog.jpeg

This company is distinct from the 1970s comic-book company, also founded by Goodman, that is generally known as Atlas/Seaboard Comics.

Many legendary artists of the 1960s Silver Age of Comic Books honed their craft at Atlas, such as future Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko; his Spider-Man artist on successor, John Romita, Sr.; initial Iron Man artist Don Heck; and signature Daredevil and Tomb of Dracula artist Gene Colan. As well, such Golden Age stars as Jack Kirby and Bill Everett produced some of their finest or most fondly remembered work.

After the Golden Age

Young Men #25: Cover art by Carl Burgos.

Atlas grew out of Timely Comics, the company Goodman founded in 1939 and whose star characters were the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, and Captain America.

With the end of the wartime boom years — when superheroes were new and inspirational, and comics provided cheap entertainment for millions of children, soldiers and others — the post-war era found superheroes falling out of fashion. Television and paperback books now also competed for readers and leisure time. Goodman began turning to a wider variety of genres than ever, emphasizing horror, Westerns, teen humor, crime, war comics, and even Bible stories.

The line marking the end of the Golden Age is vague. For Timely, at least, it appears to have ended with the cancelation of Captain America Comics at issue #75 (Feb. 1950) — by which time it had already been titled Captain America's Weird Tales for two issues, the finale featuring merely anthological horror-suspense stories and no superheroes. Already by this time, the company's flagship title, Marvel Mystery Comics, starring the The Human Torch, had ended its run (with #92, June 1949), as had Sub-Mariner Comics (with #32, the same month).

Whatever the demarcation point, Goodman began using the globe logo of Atlas (shown above), the newsstand-distribution company he owned, on comics cover-dated Nov. 1951.

Goodman attempted to revive superheroes in the comics Young Men #24-28 (Dec. 1953-June 1954), with Golden Age stars the Human Torch (art by Syd Shores and Dick Ayers, varioiusly), the Sub-Mariner (written and drawn by Bill Everett), and Captain America (by writer Stan Lee and artist John Romita Sr.). Yet while the stories were updated to the Cold War '50s, they featured the same sort of Communist villains as the post-war comics of the late '40s, and broke no new ground.

Two years later, DC Comics' Showcase #4 (Sept. 1956) would successfully bring back superheroes and kick off the Silver Age of comic books with modern, uncluttered, streamlined reimagining of super-speedster The Flash.

Trend-following

Atlas, rather than innovate, took the less-risky route, at least in the short term, of following popular trends in TV and motion oictures — with Westerns and war dramas prevailing for a time, drive-in sci-fi monsters another time — and even other comic-book publishers' trends, most notably the groundbreaking EC horror comics. Until Stan Lee, Goodman's comics-division editor-in-chief and head writer, would begin to revolutionize comic books with the advent of The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man in the early 1960s, Atlas was content to turn a profit flooding newsstands with cheaply produced product — often beautifully rendered by talented, low-paid young artists.

The writing staff during this period included five scripters besides Lee: Don Rico, Hank Chapman, Carl Wessler, Paul S. Newman, and, in the teen-humor division, future MAD Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee.

Among the notable artists whose work graced Atlas were Human Torch creator Carl Burgos, who did exquisite covers for the Young Men superhero-revival attempt. Fellow veteran Bill Everett had honed his stories and art for Sub-Mariner and the modern-mythological series Venus into the kind of sleek, clean lines that DC's Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson (The Flash) and Gil Kane (Green Lanter) would later use to refresh the field. There was the prolific and much-admired young draftsman Joe Maneely, whose work in all genres but particularly Westerns and on the medieval adventure title The Black Knight, produced an exquiste ouevre until his untimely death just prior to Marvel's 1960s pop-culture breakthrough. The shadowy, voluptuous textures of Russ Heath suspense tales, the languid fluidity of Gene Colan war stories, and later the sharp, individualistic stylings of a fledgling Steve Ditko's quirky bagatelles provided treasures amid the trash.

Goodman distributed his torrent of comics to newsstands through his self-owned distributor, Atlas, from 1952 to late 1956. He then switched to another distributor that quickly went bankrupt. Stan Lee, in a 1988 interview with Roy Thomas , 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. e 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.' turning out 40, 50, 60 books a month, maybe more, and 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 that DC's Independent News Distributors would accept from us."

Return of Jack Kirby

Goodman's men's magazines and paperback books were still successful — the comics, except for the early Golden Age were always a relatively small part of the business — and Goodman considered shutting the division down.

The specific details of his decision not to are murky, centering around a supposed day when Goodman found much unused, paid-for art in a closet, and in a fit anger downsized the division with orders to use up the inventory. Lee, a witness, addressed this in the interview noted above:

"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."

Jack Kirby, who after his amicable split with creative partner Joe Simon, was doing some work for DC, but as recalled in a 1990 interview for The Comics Journal, was not as busy as he liked or needed to be:

"I came in and they were moving out the furniture, they were taking desks out — and I needed the work!" p. 38

Atlas or Marvel?

The exact point at which "Atlas" became "Marvel" has never been definitively established. Goodman — whose comic books in the 1950s were published by at least 59 shadow companies, fron Animirth Comics to Zenith Publications — used the globe logo of the newsstand distributorship he owned, Atlas, both before and after he began self-distibuting.

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 distrbution 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, and for unspecified reasons dropped the Atlas globe at that time. Had American News continued, Goodman might have continued to brand the company Atlas.

Collectors routinely refer to the companies comics from 1958 on after Kirby returned as "pre-superhero Marvel".

Atlas titles by genre

CRIME

ESPIONAGE

HUMOR - SATIRE

  • Crazy
  • Riot
  • Wild

HUMOR - SITCOM

  • Millie the Model

HORROR/SCIENCE FICTION

  • Adventures into Terror
  • Astonishing
  • Journey into Mystery,
  • Journey into Unknown Worlds
  • Marvel Tales,
  • Strange Stories of Suspense
  • Strange Tales
  • Strange Tales of the Unusual
  • Suspense

JUNGLE

  • Jann of the Jungle
  • Jungle Action
  • Jungle Tales
  • Lorna, the Jungle Queen, retitled Lorna, the Jungle Girl

ROMANCE

MEDIEVAL ADVENTURE

  • The Black Knight

WAR

  • Battle

WESTERN

  • Annie Oakley

MISC

  • Bible Tales for Young Folk


References

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