Atlas/Seaboard February 1975.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

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Listen.

Can you hear it?

The sound of printing presses overheating?

Not half you can.

For this is the month in which Atlas/Seaboard ramps up another gear, as it publishes a mammoth thirteen titles. And that's the most it's yet managed to unleash in a single month.

The keen observer will have noted that, three months into its project, Atlas has still not got round to publishing a second issue of any of its books, meaning that everything it's produced, so far, has been a first issue. This means it now has twenty ongoing titles. This can only make us wonder how many books it intends to launch before its expansion is complete.

I'm starting to wonder if that's the venture's true strategy. To simply flood the market with first issues - as that's where the biggest sales are - and that any issues published after that are fairly incidental. That will, after all, be basically, the tactic Marvel Comics will use to corner the US market in the very early '90s.

What can I tell you about this book I've never read?

I can tell you it stars someone called Vicki Young who I'll assume to be a model.

And that it contains no fewer than nine tales. All of which, oddly, are 1960s reprints from Tower publishing's Tippy Teen.

One of the venture's more appreciated periodicals hits the scene and, inside, we'll discover the first appearance of Tiger-Man.

We also discover The Sting of Death! Kromag the Killer, The Films of Alistair MacLean and Lawrence of Arabia, take a look at the Ron Ely Doc Savage movie and read a yarn called Escape from Nine by 1. All packed into 68 action-packed pages no reader shall ever forget nor even want to forget.

Issue #1 of the company's very own supernatural anthology smashes us in the face with unbridled horror when we're served a triptych of tales that could make the hardest man's hair stand on end.

In the first of them, the devil enters a doll which is then found by a young girl. In the second, an attempt at a cure for baldness turns a harmless man into a werewolf. And, in the third, a man accepts a challenge to spend the night in a cemetery claimed to be the home of a vampire. What fate might befall him before dawn? And how does it involve a film crew?

Forget the Shadow. Forget the Avenger. Even forget Doc Savage and Conan the Barbarian. Because a whole new pulp hero bursts into life. One who wasn't even created in the age of the pulps!

Holding no connection to the Marvel villain of the same name, the Scorpion flings himself into a plot I can't quite remember. But I do remember that he's Moro Frost, 1930s Soldier of Fortune and has worn numerous identities over many decades.

I also remember he's the brainchild of Howard Chaykin which is probably the most famous thing about the character.

Yet another completely unique strip enters the fray, thanks to the arrival of Sgt Stryker's Death Squad.

I've never read this one but the internet informs me this issue entices us with two tales. One called Reborn in Battle and the other titled Bounty.

Frankly, I'm not expecting this to be massively different from certain other war comics published by certain other companies.

There's no substitute for hard-bitten crime drama and the good news is that's exactly what we're going to get. No substitute for hard-bitten crime drama.

Two stories of felon-thwarting await us when Lomax and Luke Malone hit the streets of the sin-filled city.

The first is basically Kojak with hair and the second is a down-at-heel gumshoe who doesn't know how to stay out of trouble. Nor how to avoid untrustworthy dames.

The Omega Man meets Planet of the Apes when a bunch of astronauts return to Earth, from a five-year mission.

Only to discover it's been taken over by vampires!

Now, those astronauts must battle to survive on a world where everyone wants to drink their blood!

But what's this? It seems to be a comic that's decided to mashup Adam Warlock and George Orwell's 1984.

It's the future and, for some reason, a scientist has been working on creating people who grow in large pods. As far as I can recall, that scientist is killed by the thought police but one of the pods is taken off to be studied by the authorities, whereupon its occupant emerges from his pod and gets an education on the society he's been born into.

Unfortunately, it turns out he's in the habit of turning into a killer tree that must drink lashings of fresh human blood, in order to slake its maniac appetite.

This one's written by Michael Fleisher.

That is a name we shall be hearing more than once tonight.

Digging into the corners of my memory, I suspect I'm correct in thinking this yarn's delivered by the combined talents of Archie Goodwin, Steve Ditko and Wally Wood and that it involves a wayward youth who, upon being shot by gangsters, drinks a super-serum his dad was working on, and then sets out to avenge his father's murder by those very same gangsters.

And now we get to meet Atlas' answer to the incredible Hulk, when the Brute makes his sensational debut.

In a plot seemingly lifted from the film Trog, a huge prehistoric apeman is discovered living in a cave and is quickly brought into captivity, for study.

Needless to say, it's not long before, thanks to a wrongdoer, the Brute's free of his cage and killing everyone he encounters before stowing away on the undercarriage of an aeroplane.

This one's also written by Michael Fleisher who gives us a hero who starts the issue by eating several innocent children. And the rest of the comic makes it clear our protagonist has started as he means to go on.

Strangely, having already launched the majesty of Ironjaw upon the world, Atlas decides to give us a second barbarian hero. Admittedly one of a far more tasteful variety.

In this issue, a decade after the murder of his parents, young Wulf sets out to mete vengeance upon Mordek Mal Moriak, the sorcerer who killed them.

Thinking about it, I think his mentor, a one-eyed juggler and expert swordsman, gets murdered in this issue. I'm going to assume it's his death which motivates our protagonist to get out there and on the trail of justice.

So determined are Atlas to make this comic resemble one of Marvel's cowboy books that Larry Lieber steps in to give us as Kirbyesque a cover as you could get without actually hiring Jack Kirby.

Inside, we find the brand new adventures of Kid Cody and The Comanche Kid.

Tragically, I can shed no further light upon the innards of this comic than that.

I do believe, however, that this book will run for just one issue before retreating to the great ranch in the sky.

It's what we've all been waiting for. Atlas Comics' very own answer to Spider-Man.

Granted, it isn't necessarily the right answer, as we get to meet Count Lycosa, a man who turns into a man-spider-monster-thing every night and eats anyone he encounters.

Yes, this is written by Michael Fleisher.

And, yes, Lycosa is supposed to be the hero of this book.

As for what happens in this sensational first issue, as far as I can recall, some thieves break into his castle and, so, he eats them.

It's not exactly, "With great power comes great responsibility."

It's more, "With great power comes great dining opportunities."