Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
***
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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."
Posts
31 comments:
Even though we’re technically into the third month of Atlas/Seaboard’s mad campaign to conquer the comic book world, I must not have seen any of their previous offerings for sale anywhere. I’m pretty sure that seeing the first issues of THE DESTRUCTOR, WULF THE BARBARIAN and PLANET OF VAMPIRES at the liquor store spinner rack was the first inkling I had that there was a new comics publisher in the marketplace.
Those first three Atlas titles were fascinating to me, they were like Pod-person Marvel comics. Funky and weird, kinda familiar but also Really Not.
I’m unclear about the exact chronology, but I do remember getting THE SCORPION, MORLOCK 2001, WEIRD SUSPENSE (featuring The Tarantula) and POLICE ACTION (with Lomax and Luke Malone) off the spinner rack, very soon after buying the first three.
Anyhow!
Back in the day, I think I liked The Destructor the most. It was the most traditionally “Super-heroic” title of that first Atlas wave, and the most overtly Marvel-like (the lead character was even more of an a-hole than Conway’s or Moench’s usual “woe-is-me” hot-heads with big-ass chips on their shoulders). I wasn’t much of a Ditko fan back then but I thought Wood’s inks made his artwork look really good. I actually started liking Ditko’s stuff because of his Atlas work.
I was (and still am) really into Sword and Sorcery, so I was prepared to like Wulf from the get-go. I appreciated that it wasn’t a straight Conan ripoff, and though I can certainly recognize all of its derivative qualities nowadays (Moorcock, Vance, Heinlein, etc) it seemed pretty fresh and exciting at the time. I think the Hama/Janson art on the first issue still looks nice.
The basic flaws of PLANET OF VAMPIRES are incandescent in 2025 but I’m still somewhat able to view it through my 1975 lenses. I don’t like the art nearly as much as I did 50 years ago, the main hero is a TOTAL dick, the set-up is kinda silly and the “science” is ridiculous but I still kinda dig it. Like Steve says, it’s THE OMEGA MAN MEETS PLANET OF THE APES — which is both its shame and its glory. And c’mon, that cover is boss!
More later.
b.t.
WESTERN ACTION 1:
I bought this one years later. Don’t think I ever saw it for sale when it was new.
I generally like Doug Wildey’s artwork a lot, and he could always be depended upon to draw a mean Western. Sadly, even though I’ve read the Kid Cody lead story more than a few times, I can recall almost nothing about it.
My only takeaway about the Comanche Kid back-up is that I’m convinced Al Milgrom was trying to channel John Severin’s style while inking it, in a desperate attempt to make something interesting out of Jack Abel’s rather plain-jane pencils.
b.t.
TALES OF EVIL 1:
The stories are about on par with what you’d get in your average DC Mystery/Horror anthology. Not terrible but not great either. The art by Jerry Grandenetti is decent, if not up to his highest standards (as in early issues of the Warren and DC horror comics). The one drawn by Sekowsky and Roussos — yeesh. There are some tastier items coming up in the following two issues.
SAVAGE COMBAT TALES 1 :
Even if I’d seen this for sale at the time, chances are good that I wouldn’t have bought it. I was never a big fan of War comics, unless they were drawn by Kubert, Heath or Toth. As with the Atlas Western comic, I know I’ve read this one but it resolutely refuses to remain in my memory. Some kind of Dirty Dozen knock-off, is it? Looking at the listings at the GCD, I see that Archie Goodwin and Al McWilliams did the lead stories in all three issues — that’s gotta be some king of record for Atlas, no?
b.t.
“Kind” not “king”
b.t.
THE SCORPION 1:
Prior to this, I think I may only have seen Chaykin’s artwork on a “Beyond the Farthest Star” back-up in DC’s TARZAN, and maybe one issue of SWORD OF SORCERY featuring Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. I thought this was a quantum leap forward in quality. The page layouts were stronger and more imaginative, and the faces and figures were more stylized and dynamic.
Honestly, it’s not the deepest story — Steve, you probably don’t remember the plot because there really isn’t much of one — it’s basically just a string of Pulp/Serial-style action set-pieces. And the villains are a couple of ne’er-do-wells who aren’t even much of a challenge for our hero. But it’s packed with Old-Timey fashions and cars and light aircraft and atmosphere and smart-alecky slang. It’s wall-to-wall Period Piece fun and it made me an instant Chaykin Fan. Probably my favorite single issue of any Atlas comic.
b.t.
CH is in BT's corner regarding SCORPION. It is the one stand-out issue for CH of the entire ATLAS run. And that is because of Chaykin and the 1930s pulp groove. (Alas - they mucked him up with issue #2.)
I did seemingly like others as there are indeed a good dozen I have kept over the years: for sure DESTRUCTOR and the #1s.
I kept the ATLAS #1s b/c I missed out on the MARVEL #1s, though I did mail and ask Stan Lee to mail me #1s of Spidey and FF like around 1969, lol. Anyhow for sure the ATLAS #1s are now worth big $$$ like FF#1 and Spidey #1 and I am going to sell them and retire next week.
CHARLIE "Soon to be very rich" HORSE!!!
I have that issue of The Scorpion - I must have gotten it off that friend of my cousin’s in the 80s, or else in an Exchange shop in the 90s.
I really like 1970’s Chaykin - he managed to be loose and fluid but graphic and tightly organised at the same time.
What happened after the first issue, did he bail?
Matthew:
I seem to remember conflicting versions of why Chaykin ran into deadline problems with SCORPION 2. Maybe he was working on another job at the time (the first Cody Starbuck story in STAR*REACH? That crazy “White Air Supremacy” story in HARPOON magazine?) — ? Whatever the case may be, he needed to recruit help from his pals (Wrightson, Kaluta etc) to finish inking it. It looks noticeably rushed compared to the first issue. There is also a rejected Chaykin cover for #2 floating around online (Ernie Colon did the one that was published).
b.t.
POLICE ACTION 1:
The Lomax story is basically competent but not very interesting. I’m not a fan of Mike Sekowsky’s pencil art but fortunately Al McWilliams’ inks overpower them, so the art is at least of a professional standard. Steve is correct, the Lomax series does feel like a cop show from the 70s. It felt VERY square back in the day and hasn’t gotten any hipper over time.
If Lomax had the whole comic to himself, I might not have bought it. But I was a big Mike Ploog fan, and seeing his name in the credits for the Luke Malone back-up (art AND story) got me to plunk down my two bits.
Malone is a likeable schmuck of a P.I. , more Rockford than Marlowe, and though the story is full of things you’ve seen a million times before, it also has something Lomax lacks: a sense of humor. Frank Springer may not be the best choice to ink Ploog’s pencils, but it mostly works.
b.t.
MORLOCK 2001 #1:
Throw 1984, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, FARENHEIT 451, DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS in a blender, add just a pinch of THE TIME MACHINE , hit “Purée” and what do you get? A really depressing and unpleasant collection of dystopian cliches.
I bought it mostly for the art — at the time, I tried to convince myself Al Milgrom was doing an almost passable Jim Starlin imitation. I see now that I was wrong. Very, very wrong.
I’m not going to claim the inevitable and infamous “Third Issue Atlas Re-set” made the series any better but it certainly didn’t make it any worse.
b.t.
Bt, you're definitely going above and beyond the call of duty with all these summaries and reviews. :)
WEIRD SUSPENSE#1:
I have questions!
Why does this one title have the words “ ALL NEW — NO REPRINT” in the banner along the top of the cover? As it happens, when I read the first couple pages of THE DESTRUCTOR 1, something about it seemed vaguely old-fashioned or out-dated and I did briefly wonder if it was a reprint of some comic I’d never heard of before. I wonder if other fans at the time might have had similar suspicions about a comic book published by some company that seemingly came out of nowhere. And after all, their VICKI comic WAS made up entirely of reprints…
Why isn’t it just THE TARANTULA #1 instead of WEIRD SUSPENSE FEATURING THE TARANTULA #1? Were they hedging their bets and ready to replace the Awful Arachnid if they needed to and figured they’d save a few bucks by not having to start up a whole new comic? Or were they just blindly following Marvel’s lead (ASTONISHING TALES featuring Deathlok, FEAR featuring Morbius, etc)?
Who uses that much pink on the cover of a Horror Comic? Although I have to admit, it IS oddly striking — it certainly got my attention.
b.t.
Steve, the entire Atlas line remains one of my fondest guilty pleasures. I own copies of every comic and magazine they ever published except GOTHIC ROMANCES. Realizing that there was this new company suddenly producing comics — ones that resembled Marvel product more than Charlton or Gold Key product — was one of the most exciting things that happened in my Early Days of being a dedicated Comic Book Fan/Collector. Just thinking about that introductory house ad by Ernie Colon, and the “What’s Happening With ATLAS” page (and even that super-cool MEDIASCENE ad) gives me the warm ‘n’ fuzzies. So it’s pure fun for me to revisit those long-ago days of my mis-spent youth!
Plus your post teeing-up the February titles of the first wave of Atlas titles was pretty epic and inspiring (and hilarious as always) too.
b.t.
One last comment on the Feb ‘75 Atlas issues (for now) — that Leiber/Giacoia cover for TALES OF EVIL 1 is pretty terrible, but those word ballooons (John, what happened?” followed by “EEEEE”) are brilliant and hilarious in their un-imaginative straightforwardness.
b.t.
Atlas comics were also one of my fondest comic related memories. I had every issue bar Gothic Romance (-which I only managed to see a copy of for the first time a few years ago in a local antique shop for £25, I gave it a miss). I gave almost all my Atlas comics away about 15 years ago and wish I had kept a few more of them but some were dire especially the third issues.
It is strange that the Tarantula didn't have his own title as they gave "Morlock 2001" a truely mental comic, it's own title. I had forgotten all about the "All new no reprint" tagline on "Weird Suspense" but it was only for the first issue but no idea why they added that
Notwithstanding peoples fondness for these, they do strike me as the product of someone (Martin Goodman) that never really knew the difference between a good comic and a bad. I guess that’s why he never valued his better creators.
I did notice the All new, no reprint line which seems at odds with some of the material. Also, is that a Neal Adams’ cover on Planet of the Vampires?
DW
Steve Does Comics Fact Check -
Claim: Chaykin had deadline issues with The Scorpion #2 because he was also working on the first Cody Starbuck story, or 'White Air Supremacy'.
False. Or at least highly unlikely, because: Star*Reach #1 went on sale April '74, and Harpoon #2 was cover dated November '74, while The Scorpion #2 went on sale February '75 (#1 in late Nov '74, and his only published work in between - which I believe was completed a while before it appeared - was the Shining Prince segment of Seven Soldiers of Victory in Adventure #438).
There's an interesting piece here about the history of Atlas -
https://web.archive.org/web/20101201104708/http://twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/articles/16goodman.html
- and it seems the changes to The Scorpion were down to Martin Goodman just not liking it, because it didn't look enough like his idea of a Marvel comic ie he didn't think it would sell, and demanded changes.
Or, to put it another way, Atlas mucked up #2 - turns out, Charlie was correct the whole time! Who saw that coming, eh?
Er, just kidding, Charlie.
And seriously, b.t. - well done on the summaries. I actually thought it was great you brought up the context around The Scorpion, and gave me a reason to look into it closely. Otherwise I wouldn't have known that the very next work of Chaykin's published after #2 - which would have been on the stands at the same time as #3 - was the first Dominic Fortune story, in Marvel Preview #2.
I appreciated the irony.
-sean
Paul:
On a hunch I just checked out the Atlas titles cover-dated March 1975 at Mike’s Amazing World — TARGITT #1 and the second issues of GRIM GHOST and IRONJAW also have the “ALL NEW — NO REPRINT” thing as part of their banners. No idea what the significance of that is…
Glad to see someone else was nutty enough to want to own a copy of every single Atlas comic (even if you ended up giving most of them away).
You’ll get no argument from me about some of them being “dire”. Things like HANDS OF THE DRAGON and the spandex version of THE SCORPION are so awful that even I can’t read them. Well, not very often, anyway :)
b.t.
sean:
I missed Chaykin’s first Dominic Fortune story in MARVEL PREVIEW (I first read it in the issue of BIZARRE ADVENTURES which reprinted both of them) — so it never occurred to me that it could have come out so close to the publication of SPANDEX SCORPION. Pretty cheeky of him :D
b.t.
DW The Planet of Vampires cover was pencilled by Pat Broderock and inked by Neal Adams. I really liked this comic at the time but they killed off most of the main characters in the first 3 issues , so I am not sure what the long term plan was for this comic , had they succeeded . Issue 3 has some nice Russ Heath art on the strip.
b.t. Thanks for the update of the "All New No Reprint" blurb I had totally forgotten that was on so many other titles. I would concur that Hands of the Dragon was one of, if not the worst of Atlas' titles - strangely that's one of the comics I held onto for some reason.
I haven't read these, so a few (extremely) random reactions is all I can offer:
1.) b.t. mentioned Larry Hama - Scott Edelman's blog featured Larry Hama, a couple of weeks ago. Vince Colletta discussed with sympathy, interested me.
2.) Regarding the Tarantula cover's colour - even macho man Claw the Unconquered's first cover kicked off in pink!
3.) Did the Scorpion/Targitt have a girl-friend/female character, equivalent to Sabbath Raven (who, in addition to being Dominic Fortune's girl-friend, bankrolled his crime-fighting lifestyle) ?
4.) Space-horror's a sub-genre, all of its own. All its tropes & conventions are probably listed, somewhere. Space vampires even appeared on Buck Rogers, with Gil Gerard!
5.) Morlocks & set in the future - influence of H.G.Wells, perhaps? Marvel did a successful twist on War of the Worlds, so can Atlas derive something from the Time Machine? Just a guess.
I'm through rambling...
Phillip
SCORPION - goes full tilt muck up by #3 as he becomes a man in tights.
Ditto to those who expressed the excitement when the line launched! Closest thing out there to Marvel… but NOT Marvel.
Phillip:
Yes — Moro Frost, The Scorpion did have a girlfriend /sidekick character named Ruby Bishop, but their relationship is very different from Dominic Fortune and Sabbath Raven: Frost is clearly the boss, Ruby is his sexy, competent assistant, he doesn’t owe her thousands of dollars, etc. They’re very much in the archetypal Pulp Hero mode of characters like The Shadow and Margot Lane or The Spider and Nita Van Sloan, but with one pretty big difference : Frost and Ruby apparently live together in his Manhattan brownstone. They’re both a bit too “cool” and perfect, maybe — Fortune and Sabbath seem more “human”, overall.
The Diversions of the Groovy Kind blog has scans of both complete Scorpion stories, if you want to check them out. I think Toth’s abandoned Scorpion reboot “The Vanguard”’ is there too.
b.t.
Steve, I don't think the early 90s was the only time Marvel tried flooding the market. My understanding is that was a tactic Martin Goodman used regularly, and the 60s - when Marvel were limited by the distribution deal with DC - was probably the only time they didn't try it.
Possibly Atlas would have been better off with less titles to start with, and concentrate on getting them right, before trying to expand...?
Besides The Scorpion being obviously the best comic here - by a looong way - its also notable as the first true, full length example of a then new genre, the Howard Victor Chaykin Comic. These days we all know what that is, right?Swashbuckling/hardboiled rebel hero, proletarian anti-facist subtext, a strong graphic sense with a bit of art-deco style, an interest in fashion and ladies' underwear etc etc...
There was Iron Wolf in Weird Worlds beforehand of course, which had all the elements in place, but that had been scripted by Denny O'Neil from Chaykin's plots so not quite the real thing, at least not tíl it was reworked in the first Cody
Starbuck short.
Its impressive how Chaykin was able to carve out an A-list career for himself in American comics on his own terms, without having a signature super-hero run to his name. Maybe I'll be fact checked on this, but part from drawing one Batman story, I don't think he worked on a super-hero comic tíl after Star Wars?
Good for him.
-sean
Thanks, b.t. - That's interesting!
Phillip
He drew a SHIELD / Nick Fury story in Marvel Spotlight. Does that count?
b.t., So far as Fortune and Sabbath seeming more human goes... Much as I like Chaykin's writing, he was still finding his style so maybe working with a writer on the first Dominic Fortune helped develop the concept a bit?
Even if it was Len Wein.
The other improvement is that Fortune doesn't have trousers - translation: pants - that go so high above his waist.
-sean
sean:
In his introduction to the Fortune reprints in BIZARRE ADVENTURES, Chaykin describes The Scorpion stories as being, “heavy, vaguely mystical, New York, etc” and pitched Fortune to Marvel as deliberately being the flip side of that: Hollywwood, sunshine, more The Spirit than The Spider, etc. He may have just been looking for ways to differentiate the two characters for legal reasons, or it’s possible he was trying to add layers to the character to make him more appealing (whether that was Wein’s influence or not). Or both.
Interesting to note his next project as writer / artist after the two Fortune stories was Monark Starstalker, who was very much in the same stoic “Too Cool For School” mould as The Scorpion. But after that, most of his heroes were in the flawed “heroic but kind of a butthead” Fortune/Flagg mould.
b.t.
But also: is Fortune’s “Action Onesie” an actual improvement on The Scorpion’s high-waisted trousers? I’m not entirely sure about that…
b.t.
Thats a good point about the Howard Victor Chaykin Hero not bring as flawed early on, b.t. (thinking about it, a would be-writer would probably learn more from the kind of people he worked with after Monark Starstalker - such as Samuel Delany and Michael Moorcock - than Len Wein or Roy Thomas).
And yes, Dominic Fortune's onsie isn't one of the better examples of Chaykin's design sense either.
-sean
No, Matthew. Nick Fury isn't a super-hero.
Actually, tbh I forgot that one. Probably because I haven't read it. So for all I know it might well have super-hero or two turning up in it...erm, let's say 'apart from drawing one Batman story and an issue of Marvel Spotlight' then, to be the safe side.
-sean
Post a Comment