Showing posts with label Atlas Comics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atlas Comics. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Reading Room WORLD OF SUSPENSE "Lead-Lined Box!"

What lay hidden in the back of Atlas' World of Suspense #5 (1956)...
...something so hideous...so terrifying...that it couldn't even be hinted at on the cover?
WOW!
I hope the SPCA or PETA never sees this tale illustrated by Chuck Miller (aka Charles F Miller)!
The writer is unknown.
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Thursday, November 13, 2025

Reading Room ADVENTURE INTO MYSTERY "Watcher!"

Here's a never-reprinted cautionary tale...
...from Atlas' Adventure in Mystery #7 (1957) whose "moral" is a little lost on me...
All Andrew Morris really needs is someone to doublecheck his time/space coordinates!
If he does decide to collaborate with others when he rebuilds, I'd hope he register a patent for for the system first!
Better safe, than sorry!
Marvin Stein does a fine job visualizing this tale by an unknown writer.
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Friday, September 5, 2025

Friday Fun SNAFU "Ebenezer Freezer Food Plan and Munching Society"

As Unemployment Rises and Stagflation Takes Hold...

...perhaps this solution, presented in the never-reprinted MAD magazine clone Atlas' Snafu #1 (1955) could be the answer!



Likely written by editor Stan Lee and definitely-illustrated by versatile workhorse Joe Maneely, this feature holds up as well as anything EC's MAD crew could produce!

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Tuesday, September 2, 2025

Reading Room / Tales Twice Told AMAZING ADULT FANTASY "Why Won't They Believe Me?"

Stan (the Man) Lee felt a good story...
...such as this one from Atlas' Amazing Adult Fantasy #7 (1961), was worth repeating...
Scripted by Lee and illustrated by his Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko, the tale was typical of the "gotcha" snap-ending stories made popular in mass culture by Rod Serling on The Twilight Zone, but done a decade earlier in comics by the EC Comics horror and sci-fi/fantasy books (though usually with more gore).
Lee re-used (and expanded) the plot almost a decade later when he re-did it with another Silver Age legend, as you'll see Thursday...

Monday, September 1, 2025

Monday Mecha Madness CRAZY "Robert the Robot!"

Here's a long-lost tale from the era when MAD comic clones filled America's newsstands!
(Which bring up the question...does anybody under 30 even know what a "newsstand" is?)
While the story's not a classic, it's not bad, either!
The amazingly versatile Joe Maneely handled the art for this never-reprinted tale from this never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Crazy V1N7 (1954), but the script is not by Stan Lee...who would've had his name on it if he had penned the story!
Maneely could do anything; sci-fi, horror, war, romance, western, even humor, as this story demonstrates!
If not for his tragic death falling from a New York suburban commuter train, he would have been one of the major talents of Marvel Comics in the 1960s.
Atlas had no less than three MAD clones going at once; CrazyWild, and Riot!
MAD themselves commented on the proliferation of clones, not only from Atlas, but virtually every other publisher with this opener for their spoof of the 1950s movie Julius Ceasar by Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood...
When MAD converted to a b/w magazine, Atlas dropped the three color comics and launched the b/w Snafu,which only lasted three issues!
Atlas/Marvel would revive Crazy twice more!
First, in early 1973 as a reprint book of Not Brand Echh stories.
Then, in late 1973 as a b/w magazine going head-to-head with MAD, and surviving until 1983 for 96 issues!
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Friday, August 1, 2025

Friday Fun MARVIN MOUSE "Not-So-'Honest John' "

The creator of Prince Namor: the Sub-Mariner, Bill Everett, was an amazing writer/artist...
 ...who could do almost anything he was asked to do.
Unfortunately, funny animals, weren't exactly his "cup of tea"!
This never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Marvin the Mouse #1 (1957) was scripted by Stan Lee and illustrated by the aforementioned Bill Everett.
I believe Everett was instructed to make the characters as different as possible from other cartoon mice such as Mickey and Mighty, which resulted in rodents who looked more like rats than mice!
Bill had shown a knack for humor as shown HERE and HERE, but this was a major disappointment!
A caption at the end of the book read "And remember, every issue Marvin Mouse magazine brings you the best in laughs, adventure, and fun ... don't miss a single issue!"
No problem!
The book ended up a one-shot and the already-completed stories intended for #2 became filler in the backs of other humor titles.
(Editor Stan Lee was very frugal and didn't let anything go to waste!)
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Sunday, June 29, 2025

Atomic Reading Room TALES TO ASTONISH "Voice of Fate"

...but with some interesting variations!
This story by plotter Stan Lee, writer Larry Lieber, and artist Don Heck is from Atlas' Tales to Astonish #33 (1962) and is a retelling of "Mister Black", which appeared only a couple of months earlier in Atlas' Strange Tales #93 (1962).
You'll note the protaganist is now American...but still a draft dodger.
Of course, the story omits why the Japanese would even take him in (since he had nothing of value to the government), or how he even got to Japan in the middle of World War II...
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Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Atomic Reading Room STRANGE TALES "Eyes that Never Close"

With the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima coming up...
...we're presenting several tales from the 1950s-60s relating to it.
This never-reprinted story from Atlas' Strange Tales #61 (1958) treats the bombing as just another disaster, but one the criminal won't escape from.
Illustrated effectively by Bernie Krigstein, who tells a story in only four pages that most artists today would need twenty pages for.
BTW, the writer is unknown.

Be Here Thursday For the Next Horrific Hiroshima Tale!
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Tuesday, May 6, 2025

Reading Room WORLD OF FANTASY "Creatures Who Captured Earth!"

Did you know the two famous sci-fi stories' plots that were combined to create this tale?
Hint: one original involves robots/androids,, and the other is about cannibalism...
This never-reprinted story by Stan Lee/Larry Lieber and Don Heck from Atlas' World of Fantasy #18 (1959) was based on two classic sci-fi tales...
"With Folded Hands" by Jack Williamson, which premiered in Astounding Science Fiction...
...and was expanded into the novel The Humanoids, (and a sequel, The Humanoid Touch, over 30 years later)!
Though never done on film or tv, the story was adapted to radio on Dimension X (which you can hear HERE) and the basic plot was re-used in the classic Star Trek episode "I, Mudd".
The other plot point, involving decoding an alien text to discover a secret agenda, was probably taken from the 1950 Galaxy Magazine short story "To Serve Man" by Damon Knight.
(Note that the classic Twilight Zone episode adapting the tale wouldn't appear until three years later.)
Also note that, while the comic tale was never reprinted, it was redone only two years later by another of Atlas/Marvel's major artistic stars!
We'll have that story Thursday!