Atlas Comics (1950s)
Atlas Comics was the 1950s comic-book publishing label that evolved 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 evolved out of Goodman's 1940s comic-book division, Timely Comics, and 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 known as Atlas/Seaboard Comics.
History
After the Golden Age
Atlas Comics was the successor of Timely Comics, the company that magazine and paperback novel publisher Martin Goodman founded in 1939, and which had reached the peak of its popularity during the war years with its star characters the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner and Captain America. The early to mid-1950s found comic books falling out of fashion due to competition from television and other media.Timely largely stopped producing superhero comics with the cancellation of Captain America Comics at issue #75, by which time the series had already been titled Captain America's Weird Tales for two issues, with the finale featuring only 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 in June 1949, as had Sub-Mariner Comics with #32 the same month, and The Human Torch with #35 in March 1949. Timely made one more attempt at superheroes with the publication of Marvel Boy #1-2, which was retitled Astonishing with issue #3 and continued the Marvel Boy feature through #6.
In the absence of superheroes, Goodman's comic book line expanded into a wide variety of genres, producing horror, Westerns, humor, talking animal, drama, crime, war, jungle, romance, espionage, medieval adventure, Bible stories and sports comics. As did other publishers, Atlas also offered comics about models and career women.
Goodman began using the logo of the Atlas News Company, the newsstand-distribution company he owned, on comics cover-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. 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. Soon afterwards, the company rejoined the Association 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 the Comics Code Authority.
Atlas attempted to revive superheroes in Young Men #24-28 with the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner and Captain America. The short-lived revival also included restarts of Sub-Mariner Comics and Captain America. All three superheroes also appeared in the final two issues of Men's Adventures.
Trend-following
Goodman's publishing strategy for Atlas involved what he saw as the proven route of following popular trends in TV and movies — Westerns and war dramas prevailing for a time, drive-in movie monsters another time — and even other comic books, particularly the EC horror line. As Marvel/Atlas editor-in-chief Stan Lee told comic-book historian Les 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."While Atlas had some horror titles, such as Marvel Tales, as far back as 1949, the company increased its output dramatically in the wake of EC's success. Lee recalled, "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." Until the early 1960s, when Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko 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 artists.
The Atlas "bullpen" had at least five staff writers 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 Flowers for Algernon, was an editor beginning 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 Black Knight. Others included Russ Heath, Gene Colan, and the fledgling, highly individualistic Steve Ditko.
Some of Atlas' prominent Western titles, many reprinted in the 1970s, were Ringo Kid, with art by Maneely, Fred Kida and John Severin; artist Doug Wildey's The Outlaw Kid; artist Jack Keller's Kid Colt, Outlaw; the anthology Gunsmoke Western, starring Kid Colt; and Black Rider, drawn by Maneely, Syd Shores and others.
Humor and miscellanea
Atlas also published various children's and teen humor titles, including Dan DeCarlo's Homer, the Happy Ghost, Homer Hooper and the Joe Maneely-drawn Melvin the Monster. Sergeant Barney Barker, drawn by John Severin, was Atlas' answer to Sgt. Bilko.One of the most long-running titles was Millie 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-artist Ruth Atkinson, it later became the training 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 Comics’ modern look. DeCarlo wrote and drew Millie for 10 years.
The high-school series Patsy Walker, co-created by Atkinson and writer Otto Binder in 1944, featured art by Al Hartley, Al Jaffee, Morris Weiss and others, and ran until 1967 It spun off three titles. Patsy herself would be integrated into Marvel Universe continuity years later as the supernatural superheroine Hellcat.
Atlas' talking animal books featured cartoonist Ed Winiarski's trouble-prone Buck Duck, Maneely's mentally suspect Dippy Duck, and Howie Post's The Monkey and the Bear. Buck and the other animal characters briefly returned in the early 1970s when Marvel published the five-issue reprint title Li'l Pals.
Miscellaneous titles included the espionage series Yellow Claw, with Maneely, Severin, and Jack Kirby art; the Native American hero Red Warrior, with art by Tom Gill; the space opera Space Squadron, written and drawn by future Marvel production executive Sol Brodsky; and Sports Action, initially featuring true-life stories about the likes of George Gipp and Jackie Robinson, and later fictional features of, as one cover headline put it, "Rugged Tales of Danger and Red-Hot Action!".
Staff artist Stan 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 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".
Layoffs
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 through 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 comic-book historian Gerard Jones explains, the company in 1956The Atlas globe remained on the covers, however, until American News went out of business in June 1957. With no other options, Goodman turned to the distributor Independent News, owned by rival National Periodical Publications, the future DC Comics, which agreed to distribute him on constrained terms that allowed only eight titles per month. The last comic to bear the Atlas globe on the cover was the comic Dippy Duck #1, and the first to bear the new "Ind." distributors' mark was Patsy Walker #73, both cover-dated October 1957. The company was accordingly renamed to Goodman Comics after signing a distribution pact with Independent News, according to a 1960 trade article.
Stan Lee, in a 1988 interview, recalled that Goodman:
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:
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."