In November, 1974, your humble blogger was pretty much a “just Marvel and DC, please” kind of guy where color comic books were concerned. But, naturally, that didn’t mean I was unaware of the wares of other companies. How could I have been? All of the spinner racks I can recall from the first decade or so of my comics buying didn’t sort the new books by publisher (or by any other system, for that matter). So if you wanted to make sure you got a look at every new DC or Marvel book out in any given week, you generally got at least a cursory glance at every new Archie, Charlton, Fawcett, Gold Key, and Harvey, as well.
And if a brand-new publisher showed up? You noticed — especially if one of their books sported a cover by Neal Adams, like Atlas/Seaboard’s Ironjaw #1 did.
Comics readers who were well plugged in to the fan press of the day were already anticipating the advent of Atlas/Seaboard, due to news articles that had appeared in publications like The Comics Reader and Mediascene. But in the fall of ’74, my seventeen-year-old self was not yet one of those readers. And so, the arrival on or around November 12th of the new publisher’s initial three color comics offerings* — which in addition to Ironjaw #1 included the first issue of Phoenix (featuring a cover drawn by Dick Giordano, from a sketch by Sal Amendola), as well as, you guessed it, the main topic of today’s blog post, Grim Ghost #1 — came as a complete surprise to me.
So whence came Atlas/Seaboard? Simply stated, the venture represented an attempt by the founder and former publisher of Marvel Comics, Martin Goodman, to get back into the game. In 1968, Goodman had sold his entire comics and magazine publishing business to the Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation (later to be known as Cadence Industries), but had stayed on as publisher until 1972. Following Goodman’s departure, editor-in-chief Stan Lee became publisher and president at Marvel; after about a year, however, Lee stepped away from the latter role, and an executive named Al Landau was installed as president. Somewhere in the midst of that, Charles “Chip” Goodman — Martin’s son and heir apparent — found himself squeezed out of his own executive role at the company.
It’s been widely assumed for decades that Martin Goodman started up Seaboard Periodicals and its comic-book imprint, Atlas (which, not so coincidentally, was one of the previous names of what was now Marvel Comics) in a spirit of retaliation against Cadence for their treatment of Chip; an early story about the new company published in Jim Steranko’s Mediascene called it “an operation that has come to be referred to as ‘Vengeance, Inc.'”, indicating that this was a commonly-held view among comics industry participants and observers practically from the beginning. And it’s certainly a reasonable assumption, as well as one which makes for a nice, juicy slice of behind-the-scenes comic book industry history. On the other hand, none of the research conducted by your humble blogger has turned up so much as a second-hand quote from either Martin or Chip Goodman acknowledging that revenge was in fact their primary motive; and it seems just as reasonable — at least to me — to believe that the elder Goodman, then 66 years of age, may have simply wanted to show that he still had what it took to make it in his chosen field — and perhaps to prove that it was he, not Stan Lee, who deserved the lion’s share of the credit for Marvel’s great success over the past decade. It’s also possible that the primary motive was, purely and plainly, a financial one, as one of Atlas’ writers, Gary Friedrich, suggested in an interview for Comic Book Artist #13 (May, 2001): “I think he [Martin Goodman] did it to make money… Now, he probably wouldn’t have minded if it would have taken a bite out of Marvel’s profits, but I don’t think it was done out of revenge. I think Martin was too smart for that.”
With both Goodmans long gone, it’s doubtful that their motives circa 1974 will ever be completely understood. But what we do know is this: they hit the ground running in June, 1974, opening Seaboard’s offices at 717 Fifth Avenue (not far at all from Marvel’s home base on Madison Ave.) with an editorial staff that included both Jeff Rovin, who’d previously worked for both DC Comics and Warren Publishing, and, rather more eye-openingly, Larry Lieber, the younger brother of none other than Stan Lee himself. Lieber had freelanced for Marvel as an artist and writer since the 1950s, but as he admitted to his former Marvel colleague Roy Thomas in a 1999 interview for Alter Ego, in 1974 he “had difficulty sometimes getting work [at Marvel]. It wasn’t a very easy period.”
Whatever the merits of Atlas/Seaboard’s editorial staff (to say nothing of Martin Goodman’s motivations for hiring them) may have been, I believe it’s fair to say that what counted the most in immediately establishing the fledgling company as a major player were Martin Goodman’s considerable financial resources, and his willingness to leverage them to offer better rates and terms to freelancers than they were accustomed to getting from DC and Marvel. As Mediascene rather archly put it at the time: “Goodman’s David and Goliath strategy is insidiously simple and outrageous — possibly even considered dirty tactics by the competition — such as higher page rates, artwork returned to the artist, rights to the creation of an original character, and a certain amount of professional courtesy.” ** Yep, that’s how you get Neal Adams… and Wally Wood, and Steve Ditko, and Archie Goodwin, and Howard Chaykin, and other well-known talents… at least for a while.
Of course, not knowing any of that background back in November, 1974, my younger self only had the covers of the first three Atlas comics to judge them by (OK, I might have actually flipped through them briefly while standing at the spinner rack, but that was it). In the end, I passed on Phoenix for reasons no longer remembered, but I did pick up Ironjaw (of which I’ll have more to say towards the end of the post), as well as The Grim Ghost. In regards to the latter book, I’m certain I was drawn in by its cover, which suggested that the main character might be something along the lines of a less technologically advanced Ghost Rider (the flame-headed, motorcycle riding version, that is), or at least in the same general “supernatural superhero” category that included not only GR, but also a number of other characters I was into at the time, such as the Son of Satan, the Phantom Stranger, and the Spectre. It was also a great-looking cover, of course, even if the name of the artist who’d signed it — Ernie Colón — was unfamiliar to me.
Undated self-portrait of Ernie Colón (with friend).
As it happened, I was already somewhat familiar with Ernie Colón’s art, despite my not knowing his name, via Warren Publishing’s Vampirella 1972 Annual, which had reprinted a story he’d drawn called “Forgotten Kingdom” — although he’d signed that one “David StClair” (which allows me some excuse for not making the connection, I suppose). On the other hand, I hadn’t seen any of what was probably his most widely-distributed work — the many strips featuring “Richie Rich” and other characters that he’d been drawing (sans credit) for Harvey Comics since the early 1960s — simply because I’d never read any of those comics, even in my younger days. (Nor, for that matter had I caught his three 1968 issues of Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom, which might well have appealed to me at age 11, if it hadn’t been for a regrettable bias on my part against any Gold Key comics not based on one of my favorite TV shows. Oh, well.)
As for the writer of “Enter the Grim Ghost”, I knew Michael Fleisher as the regular scripter for the “Spectre” strip then running in DC’s Adventure Comics, and I had also read a number of his short standalone stories for DC’s “mystery” anthologies. (I may have been aware of his other regular DC gig at the time — writing “Jonah Hex” in Weird Western Tales — but since, for better or worse, I never bought Western comics, I hadn’t read any of his work there.) In retrospect, Fleisher’s showing up at Atlas/Seaboard at the company’s beginnings was interesting, as he’d previously written only for DC — and, in fact, had fallen into comic-book scripting only after spending a lot of time in the DC office library doing research for his “Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes” project (three volumes of which were ultimately published). Per comments made by DC editor Joe Orlando in a 1975 interview, Fleisher seems to have been encouraged to approach DC’s new competitor by none other than Orlando himself; the editor had previously commissioned the writer to work up a proposal for a sword-and-sorcery series for DC, but had then rejected it, telling Fleisher he was free to shop it to “another market”; Fleisher had done so, and the eventual result was Atlas/Seaboard’s Ironjaw.
As things ultimately turned out, however, Fleisher would work on multiple titles for the new publisher; along with Ironjaw and Grim Ghost, Fleisher scripted the earliest issues of Morlock 2001 and The Brute, as well as the “Tarantula” strip in the first two issues of Weird Suspense. Editor Jeff Rovin recalled Fleisher’s contributions in a 2001 interview for Comic Book Artist #16:
Mike was one of the first people who came to talk to us, and that was a very bold move at the time, because we were pariahs. There was an implicit blacklist of people who came to work for us. We were paying more per page than other companies, and particularly DC rightly figured that people would defect, and they wanted to hold on to their people. Michael was offended by that notion, since he was a freelancer, and came up partly because he had great ideas, and partly because it was an act of defiance just to do it! I really respected that.
As established in this opening sequence, the Grim Ghost’s modus operandi is quite similar to that of that other spectral protagonist of Michael Fleisher’s, with both using their supernatural powers to bring murderous criminals to an immediate, very fatal end, with no concern for due process. Of course, there’s at least one obvious difference between the two, in that whereas Fleisher’s version of the Spectre prefers to deliver his capital punishments in novel, if grisly ways — you know, like by turning a crook into wood and running him through a buzzaw — the Grim Ghost takes a more businesslike approach, simply dispatching the unfortunate miscreants straight to Hell (although, granted, he does allow himself a theatrical flourish or two, as with the bullets-into-roses bit above).
Still, as will become evident by our story’s end, the Grim Ghost’s true, underlying raison d’être is about as far from the Spectre’s as one can imagine — though the end results of their actions are essentially the same.
Just a quick historical note here regarding coachman Jeremy’s addressing one of his passengers as “your lordhsip”: I’m pretty sure that colonial America didn’t have “lords”, in the formal sense of titled nobility, unless they were visiting from the mother country across the pond. OK, moving on now…
Having cold-bloodedly dispatched the Major, the Grim Ghost proceeds to help himself to the lady’s brooch, casually ripping it from her throat; and then, helps himself to something more…
Within seconds, a party of soldiers out on patrol responds to the sound of gunfire…
The following morning, the latest victims of the Grim Ghost’s depredations — well, the latest ones still living — go to the authorities demanding justice. Lord Braddock is told that all that can be done is being done, but that’s admittedly not much. For one thing, no one’s ever seen the Grim Ghost without his mask, for another, he’s just so damned elusive…
Something tells me Michael Fleisher really wasn’t aware of that “no titled nobility in colonial America” stuff I mentioned earlier. But I’m willing to throw him a bone, and assume that the Braddocks, wealthy English nobility, have built themselves a second home in what will become the U.S., and their party guests are using the formal terms of address of “Lord” and “Lady” out of due respect for protocol. Or something like that.
Lady Braddock’s semi-see-through nightie was fairly daring by the Comics Code-approved standards of 1974… just sayin’…
“Well done, Sarah!” exclaims a delighted Lord Braddock as he breezes into the room. “Now let us see who our Grim Ghost is behind his scarecrow’s mask!”
Able to hear “the tortured screaming of already fallen souls” in the distance, the unfortunate Mr. Dunsinane already knows what Satan’s answer will be (though that doesn’t make it any more welcome, naturally): “Why, you’re going to suffer the tortures of perdition ’til the end of time, Matthew Dunsinae!”
One gets the feeling that Ernie Colón really enjoyed drawing this sequence; perhaps it was nice to finally be able to “let go” with his depiction of Hell and its torments after all those Hot Stuff the Little Devil strips for Harvey…
“FOOM!”? Could that possibly be a nod to (or jab at) Marvel Comics’ official fan club, Friends of ‘Ol Marvel, which that publisher promoted through sound effects in its own comics any chance it got? That seems likely, although it could just be a coincidence, of course…
I’m certain I enjoyed The Grim Ghost #1 when I first read it, if only because of the fond place it still holds in my memories fifty years later; I think that’s largely due to my appreciation of Ernie Colón’s artwork (an appreciation which isn’t due entirely to his facility in drawing attractive women, although that certainly doesn’t hurt). So I’m somewhat surprised that I didn’t buy the second issue when it came out in January, 1975, let alone the third (and, as it turned out, last), released in April, seeing as how Colón drew those as well.
Art by Ernie Colón.
As is usually the case in such situations, I can only speculate as to what drove my point-of-purchase decision-making half a century ago. I suspect that it was at least partly because of the amorality of the series’ basic premise, which, as I suggested earlier, can be seen as turning that of Michael Fleisher’s “Spectre” series at DC on its head; instead of killing criminals in the name of God’s divine justice, as does the ghostly persona of the murdered police detective Jim Corrigan, the shade of the executed criminal Matthew Dunsinane serves the other side, delivering his victims to the Devil to help shore up Hell’s shortage of damned souls. (Sure, I might have felt some queasiness about the Spectre — a charter member of the Justice Society of America, for goshsakes — going around knocking off criminals by such means as stripping the flesh from their bones; but at least DC’s Ghostly Guardian thought he was doing good, right?)
Art by Russ Heath.
Another factor that may have contributed to dampening my enthusiasm for The Grim Ghost was the loss of the colonial American setting following this first issue’s origin sequence. Yes, I understood from the first five pages that this was going to be a (mostly) modern-day story, but by the time I’d reached the story’s end, I realized the colonial stuff was more interesting (and not just because of the 18th-century décolletage — although, again, that didn’t hurt).
In any event, I wouldn’t get around to checking out Grim Ghost #2 and #3 until decades later, at which time I discovered that… outside of Colón’s art, I really hadn’t missed all that much. That said, the series’ second writer, Tony Isabella (who’d taken over from Fleisher with #3), had at least had the good sense to bring Lady Sarah Braddock back on board, as a ghostly emissary sent by Satan to assist Matthew Dunsinane in his soul-harvesting work, whether he wanted her around or not. So, maybe things would have started to look up soon… but due to the early demise of both this title and Atlas/Seaboard itself, we’ll never know.***
Before leaving Grim Ghost #1 behind, here’s a look at a couple of non-story pages from the issue that should help give some additional flavor of the Atlas/Seaboard line at the time of its launch. First up is a full-page house ad, illustrated by Ernie Colón:
Pictured here are eight of the headliners from the initial batch of titles offered by “the New House of Ideas”. Going clockwise from top left, we have: Morlock 2001: one of the human heroes of Planet of Vampires; Devilina; Ironjaw; Phoenix; the Comanche Kid and Kid Cody, Gunslinger, both of whom had their own solo features in Western Action; and Wulf the Barbarian.
And here’s the editorial text page (probably written by Jeff Rovin) that, like the house ad, ran in most of Atlas/Seaboard’s premiere releases:
Something that probably didn’t faze my younger self in late 1974, but stands out quite sharply now, is this piece’s description of Martin and Chip Goodman as “the men who created Marvel Comics”. Even if the anonymous writer meant to refer only to the “modern” Marvel Comics that had kicked off in 1961 with the publication of Fantastic Four #1, and not the company that had been producing comic books under various names (e.g., Timely and Atlas) since 1939, that was a risibly outrageous claim, given that Chip was only twenty years old in ’61 and, based on everything I’ve read, was still in school (he eventually did work for his dad, of course, but not until mid-decade). Frankly, Rovin’s fellow editor, Larry Lieber (another possible author of this column), had a better claim to having co-created Marvel than Chip; he’d at least been an active freelancer for the company at the time, and, what was more, had served as the scripter for the earliest appearances of Thor, Iron Man, and Ant-Man.
But setting that aside, what stands out for me from both the text page and the house ad is that, even as they both evoke Marvel (the OG “House of Ideas”), they evidence a commitment to genre diversity across the line, rather than going all in on what Marvel was best known for — i.e., superheroes. To some degree, that may be reflective of Marvel’s publishing output circa ’74, which (especially if you figure in the reprints) was considerably more diverse than many of today’s fans may realize. But it’s probably also indicative of an interest on Rovin’s part (if no one else’s) to have Atlas Comics be its own thing, with its own personality. Just going by the lineup of features and creators the company started out with, he and Lieber might have made it work, given enough time — but, in the end, it wasn’t to be.
Earlier in the post, I promised I’d have a few more words to say about the other Atlas comic I picked up at or around the same time as Grim Ghost #1 — Ironjaw #1, which, behind that fine Neal Adams cover, featured art by the decidedly less exciting (to me) combo of Mike Sekowsky and Jack Abel… as well as a script by our old friend Michael Fleisher.
Assuming you’re not already familiar with Ironjaw, you’ll likely have already deduced it was a sword-and-sorcery comic. As such, buying the first issue was pretty much a no-brainer for my younger self in late ’74, regardless of who had drawn or written it, since I was heavily enough into the heroic fantasy genre that I’d at least sample anything that any company put out that seemed to fit within its bounds. (The sole exception to this rule was Gold Key’s Tales of Sword and Sorcery Featuring Dagar the Invincible,; see my earlier comment about “regrettable bias”.)
So what, if anything, set Ironjaw apart from his barbaric brethren? Well, the most obvious was his partially metallic physiognomy, which echoed that of a Golden Age villain from Lev Gleason’s Boy Comics named, um, Iron Jaw. Another was that it was set in a distant, post-apocalyptic future, rather than in an imagined prehistoric past. And then there was Ironjaw’s personal ethos, which made that of Conan the Barbarian look like Sir Galahad’s in comparison; the panel shown at right tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the guy’s attitudes not only towards women, but life in general.
An editorial text page in the first issue provided a manifesto of sorts for what Michael Fleisher was attempting to accomplish in his Ironjaw stories:
IRONJAW was created and scripted by author Michael Fleisher… It was his idea to create a barbarian character different from any other currently on the market, and we think he has succeeded most thoroughly! IRONJAW, unlike most other comic book characters, is a real human being. What he thinks, what he says, how he reacts are all gauged by what Mike feels a real man, placed in that same situation, would do.
Presumably, Fleisher followed the same “real human being” philosophy when it came to writing the women of this imaginary world as he did the men; if so, then he evidently believed that they would readily submit to sexual violence when perpetrated by “a real man”, as the young woman in the panel above does, just a few pages later. Fleisher’s predilection for protagonists whom no one would ever describe as “goody-two-shoes heroes” (a phrase he would use decades later to describe the kind of comics heroes he didn’t care for, in an interview published in Back Issue #42 [Jul., 2010]) — already evident in his work on the Spectre, Jonah Hex, and, of course, the Grim Ghost — was taken to another level here. My fellow comics blogger thatdarnedcolinsmith wrote in 2019 that Ironjaw #1 was “the single most poisonously explicit expression of rape culture that I’ve ever seen in a mainstream American comic”, and I’m inclined to second him.
I’d like to tell you that my seventeen-year-old self was so disgusted by Ironjaw #1 that he never bought another issue; alas, such is not the case. Despite my thinking that the lead character was a creep and not somebody I felt at all comfortable rooting for, I nevertheless came back for issue #2 — and for #3 and #4 (the final issue), and even for the one-shot The Barbarians #1, in which Ironjaw was one of the two lead features. (For the record, the last two Ironjaw stories mentioned were scripted by Gary Friedrich, rather than by Michael Fleisher.) The best excuse I can offer is that the art took a decided upturn with issue #2, as the Sekowsky-Abel team was replaced by the much better-suited Pablo Marcos (whose cover for #4 is shown at left)… though, if I’m to be completely honest, Fleisher delivered an unexpected, and amusing, subversion of the “lost prince” trope in issue #2, where Ironjaw turns out to be the rightful heir to a civilized kingdom — but, after violently ascending the throne, finds the life of a ruler to be so tedious and restrictive that, after a few days, he chucks the whole thing to return to his carefree life of “adventure”. Fleisher could unquestionably be clever, and funny; though his humor generally had a dark undertone to it
In the end, I suppose the siren call of swords and sorcery was just too much for me to resist… which made it all but inevitable that I’d buy the other barbarian fantasy comic released by Atlas/Seaboard in November, 1974. Thankfully, that one, if not as “original” as Ironjaw, was a lot less likely to make you feel like you needed a shower after reading it; I look forward to sharing it with you in a near-future post.
*Per Mike’s Amazing World of Comics, Atlas/Seaboard’s initial foray into black-and-white comics magazine publishing, Weird Tales of the Macabre, made it to newsstands on October 22nd, three weeks ahead of the first color books. Additionally, a movie monster magazine, called Movie Monsters, came out on October 15th, and a non-comics fiction magazine, Gothic Romances, was released on November 1st.
**As I don’t personally have access to any issues of Mediascene, I’m pulling these quotes from Jon B. Cooke’s invaluable article, “Vengeance, Incorporated: A history of the short-lived comics publisher, Atlas/Seaboard”. Archived online here, this piece originally ran in Comic Book Artist #16 (Dec., 2001), where it fronted an entire issue focused on the ill-fated company, featuring interviews with Jeff Rovin, Ernie Colón, Sal Amendola, Larry Hama, and others — all of it essential reading for anyone who wants the whole Atlas/Seaboard story (or as much of it as we’ll ever likely know, anyway).
***For the record, the Grim Ghost was briefly revived over three decades later, in a title that ran for seven issues in 2010-12; published by Ardden Entertainment (a company founded by Martin Goodman’s grandson, Jason), it featured a re-imagining of the character and his milieu, rather than a continuation of the previous series.
I think Demon Hunter was the only Atlas comic I picked up. I glanced at several on the stands without enthusiasm. Given my fondness for pulps, I’m surprised I didn’t jump at Chaykin’s Scorpion.
My brother bought Grim Ghost, so I read it. Enjoyed it, but I was bugged by the premise: wouldn’t collecting evil people early make Earth less evil? If you killed a serial killer wouldn’t that be good for the world, for example?
This was around the time I started reading Conan and I’d already read Sword of Sorcery. Nothing about Ironjaw grabbed me.
I assume that the Atlas/Seaboard line did not sell well. A lot of copies turned up in the UK in 1975/76. These, I assume, were remainders that were shipped over here by a distributor as an alternative to having them take up warehouse space. The upside for me and other UK collectors was an opportunity to put together the entire output of a defunct company.
The first couple of issues of each title were the best. The third and fourth issues, when the Atlas editorial staff had been instructed, essentially, to ‘copy Marvel’, were the weakest. The top talent was leaking away by then.
An interesting experiment, but a bad time to launch a comics company, which you’d think a savvy businessman like Martin Goodman would have realised.
From what I recall reading about Atlas, Goodman anticipated an FF#1 impact with instant acclaim and sales (HE was the guy who created Marvel! HE was the guy who’d brought it to Number One!). When he didn’t get it—none of the books were that good and the market was tougher—he panicked and started the “more like Marvel” move.
I remember seeing loads of Altas/Seaboard comics in the newsagents too. They seemed to hang around in the spinner racks and shelves for many months after they first appeared. I don’t think there was any returns system for American comics in the UK so they remained until someone eventually bought them or the shop owners got rid of them. None of the titles ever attracted me, I had just committed to buying all of Marvel’s superhero output a few months previously (in addition to the DC titles that I had been buying for the past few years) so didn’t have the spare cash to splash out on another publisher’s output. I remembered that most of the titles didn’t make it past issue 3 or 4 and always wondered what the story behind them was. Thanks Alan for filling in the gaps.
East Midlands Airport, summer of ’76. I happened across a two foot high stack of assorted Atlas issues in the airport newsagent. An air traffic controller’s strike delayed our holiday flight for 18 hours. Guess what I spent the time doing?
😁😁😁
Lots of “gunning down” there , grim , indeed. And a personal appearance from Satan , which
just happens to be an anagram of “A Stan”. Another dig at Marvel via Stan Lee perhaps ?
/sarcasm
The Atlas books were an odd beast for me. Being mainly a DC guy who only read certain Marvel titles on a monthly basis, the Atlas books were more of an interesting intrusion into my comics life more than anything else. I remember Iron Jaw and Wulf. Did I buy them? I don’t think so. Same with Grim Ghost, which reminds me more of Zorro (probably the costume and the horse) more than it does The Spectre. I think the only Atlas book I bought–at least the only one I remember–was Phoenix, simply because it looked the most like a super-hero book. That’s how I remember it, anyway. Honestly, I’m not even sure I bought that one, but it’s the only title that really resonates with me. God, the memory really is like a piece of swiss cheese fifty years after the fact!
Regardless, I’ve always liked Colon’s work and might have bought this one if I’d seen it on the racks and cracked the cover, if only for the renderings of the lovely but diabolical Lady Braddock. As for the story, I’ve no idea what I’d have thought of it in 1974, but in 2024, I find it thin and lacking in any real characterization. Not Fleischer’s best work.
All in all, a nice memorial to a blip in the comics mainstream that was never meant to be. Alas, poor Atlas! We hardly knew ye. Thanks, Alan!
Our Atlas output was pretty spotty. The only copies I ever had were given to me by my aunt, who would pick up some random comics for me whenever she came to visit. I had the first issue of Ironjaw, which I hated. The art was really not to my liking and neither was the character. The other one was The Scorpion, the updated version, not the Chaykin character.
I remember seeing the glut of Atlas comics on the racks, and was curious enough to skim through a few at the racks, but my meager economics at the time, never actually purchased any. Back then I had no idea about the background of the company or even that Atlas had once been the name of the company that became Marvel. It wasn’t until I read Roy Thomas’ editorials in the first few issues of The Invaders that I even became aware that although the first comic published by the company was titled Marvel Comics, the name of the company at the time was Timely. Anyhow, by now I’ve a lot more about this incarnation of Atlas and the company has a bit of a strange legacy. Seems Goodman was doing all he could to attract top talent, including greater pay, return of artwork, and apparently little in the way of editorial oversight, presumably at least as long as it wasn’t likely to arouse the ire of the CCA. This was the first entirely new comics company I’d ever become aware of, ground zero for a new universe of characters, and if I’d been the sort to find that sort of thing exciting, to think I could be in on something from the very beginning, that might have gotten my attention. But that didn’t even enter my mind. I’d grown to trust Marvel with my money to provide fodder that reasonably entertained me and might every so often even enlighten me.
Reading Fleisher’s comments about what he thought made for “gripping” entertainment, however, makes me shudder. I read that interview in The Comics Journal long ago, although I can’t recall my reaction to it. The only series of his I ever read regularly was his run on Ghost Rider, which I found sufficiently entertaining and don’t recall as excessively disturbing. Appraising the scenes from this premiere issue of the Grim Ghost, the character is clearly a sort of inversion of the Specter, an executed criminal become an agent of the devil to dispatch other baddies to Hell rather than a murdered cop become an agent of god to, uh, dispatch baddies to Hell, often in rather gruesome ways as chronicled by Fleisher. Given the extent of their powers, even more so than with Superman seems to me each series would be devoid of much in the way of serious drama aside from seeing whatever horrors are committed by the culprit(s) of the month and the circumstances under which they would be dispatched to eternal torment. Somewhat amusing that the Grim Ghost doesn’t have that particularly grim a demeanor. The little bit I’ve seen and read about Iron Jaw actually repels me, particularly given that it seems intended to appeal to the prurient and authoritarian immature interests of young (and not so young) males, rather like John Norman’s Gor novels (my brother Terry, 10 months my junior, collected those when we were in high school I read a couple of them, and felt rather dirty for having done so!). More so than in his writing for DC or Marvel, Fleisher appeared to unleash his id when writing for Atlas.
It occurs to me that Atlas may have found more lasting success if it had been launched about 7 years later, as comic book stores became more prominent in sales of comics, and the CCA’s power was further diminished. Also notable to me that aside from a couple of characters that were renamed and recreated as part of Marvel’s stable, albeit to only lukewarm success, as far as I’m aware, none of the Atlas characters were purchased by other firms to be given second chances after Atlas collapsed. Can’t tell if that was due to Seaboard or whoever owned them refusing to sell them or no one feeling they were worth purchasing or picking up cheap after the trademark rights had fallen out. At least not until the present when it appears someone is trying to make some use of some of them.
I purchased Wulf the Barbarian numbers one and two, and still like Larry Hama’s art on them. Those and the first two Thrilling Adventure Stories magazines were the highlights of Atlas for me. Wish the company could have hung in there a bit longer.
I read a lot of the Atlas stuff at the time.
Because of the covers of The Phoenix #11md 2 (Giordano) and Iron Jaw # 1 and 2 (Adams & Giordano [?]), I initially assumed Continuity / The Crusty Bunkers were driving this. In actuality, Giordano left fairly fast after his The Brute # 2 Cover got butchered to “make it look more like a Marvel comic.”
At the time, DC was seemingly losing a lot of talent to Marvel and this tended to slow (and even reverse) the process.
Iron Jaw, from what I read here, started out as a concept for an Ironwolf comic revival that Fleischer did for Joe Orlando. (I can’t see how the Iron Jaw book that was printed came from the Ironwolf IP, which is either good wiring or a vigilant and proactive IP lawyer.
I bought the first two issues of The Phoenix and thought was an interesting 1970s take on Green Lantern. with some thought behind it (what if GL got his powers from bad guys and what id Green Lantern gets powers and doesn’t die because the bad guys are ambivalent about what they have
to do to survive).
The problem is there was no place to go after the first two stories (as the third and fourth issues showed).
This also illustrates what one reader pointed out in a letter column: it wasn’t an integrated universe, which 1974-.75 readers were used to from Marvel (and even before that from Schwartz and Weisinger’s DC books). For example, you could not easily do a Pheonix/Destructor story.
I really liked the first three issues of The Destructor by Goodwin and Ditko (the first two inked by Wood and the next by Giacoia). It was a clever idea, do a Vigilante (like Don Pendleton’s The Executioner, popular at the time) as a slightly more violent Marvel street-level superhero. I don’t think Ditko added much to the plotting but his street cred in being the guy who drew Spider-Man (the Ur-Marvel street-level superhero) and his work on vigilantes like Mister A and The Question were off the charts.
The Conway/Ditko/Milgrom fourth issue (an attempt to “Marvelize” the IP rather than a fresh take on a Marvel trope added little. However, I would suggest this as a place to start if you wanted to do Atlas again.
There were a lot of nice one-off things they did,
Police Action, featuring Lomax (art by Sekowski and Williams, and Luke Malone, Manhunter, a private eye series by Mike Ploog that is one of the few “hardboiled PI” things to work in comics) was work no one should be ashamed of. The third issue of Morlock 2001, an otherwise notably bad book had brilliant art by Ditko and Wrightson that was amazing and a clever story (possibly because the writer knew there probably would not be a next issue and he did not have to figure out what came next).
The Scorpion Is an illustrative book.
Most people think Chaykin’s two issues are the best two comics that Atla published. However, I only read the first issue. It was a great comic, but it was not based on an existing IP (as Doc Savage, The Shadow and The Avenger/Justice Incorporated were) and there were too many extraneous elements (The Scorpion’s possible immortality) that were jarring and seemed to go nowhere. (Chaykin dropped those things when he did his Dominic Fortune take on this concept at Marvel.)
Unlike everyone else in the world, I bought (and liked) Scorpion # 3, a very derivative 1970s.marvel-type street-level superhero story.
What I liked about it was that the author found a clever use of The Scorpion’s possible immortality (which also created an armature on which to hang the backstory of an integrated “Atlas Universe”). It also introduced a character who could plausibly meet other Atlas heroes, including, since he was an immortal, the Western and WWII heroes).
Martin Goodman learned the hard way that fans had changed and it was no longer enough to flood the zone with popular genres (even with some nice material).
I liked the look and modus operandi of the Grim Ghost, although the working for the devil bit turned me off at the time. The later revival, written by Tony Isabella, was pretty good. I wish it had continued.
I liked the art in IRONJAW 1, enough to buy a page several decades ago, but I can’t argue with the criticisms of the tone. In fact, my page has a paste-up that I removed, revealing that for one scene at least, the original intent was even more rapey than what was printed. Sigh. Not a page I display, but it is my only piece of Sekowsky art, so I hang on to it.
Funny to suddenly have you age up to not only a teen but nearly an adult. I just discovered your wonderful site a month ago and have been step by step following your discovery of comics and reliving my own thanks to our similar ages (just yesterday my inner 5-year-old had made it up to listening to you having only just discovered Marvel).
Seaboard was an interesting discovery for me back in the day. Other than the occassion Six Million Dollar Man and other TV drama adaptions Charlton and Gold Key put out, DC and Marvel were the only “real” comics on the PX shelves or drug store spinner rack (which never spun) each week. Charlton’s action heroes were known but just from yardsales, along with a ton of “long dead” company’s. For some reason my town just never stocked anything else until it had come and gone. So seeing Seaboard, an actual 3rd and modern company with what peomised to be new ongoing series each week stood out then and still. That said, I was put off by the art, disliked the unheroic nature of its supposed superheroes and then found it gone before I finished deciding on if it was going to be worth my quarters regularly. In fact, it was so out the norm and brief that it seemed like just a fever dream over the years and then, about a decade ago, once I realized it had been real, I chalked up its brief stay on our shelves to be the result of the town’s PTA and church ladies’ black listing (it how Marvel’s black and white magazines along with movies like the Exorcist went sight unseen for my generation).
It wouldn’t be until Archie brought back the Shield in the very early 80s that I got to enjoy (also too briefly) the power of “a third universe” as my noggin saw it. But I do like that idea, even now with millions of company’s having sprung up since. Enough so that this past decade I’ve likely read every single issue (comic not magazine) that Atlas/Seaboard had put out. There’s something about that exact size of material that’s appealing. It’s not overwhelming (not that I was one of those pro-Crisis people who had any trouble keeping all of Marvel and DC’s canon straight) and yet its not underwhelming either (I’m looking at you, Dell’s Super Heroes). You can sit back and enjoy the tales, while also getting to slowly piece together a view of this Seaboard Earth content in knowing that at some point (unfinished story arc’s withstanding) you’ll have the full picture. It’s almost like one elaborate multichapter novel…specifically a non-franchised one.
Okay, I’ve written my novel-sized comment. Now, back off to 1966. I’ll let your elementary school self know you said ‘Hi’ and have been doing well holding down the fort.