Last November, in our post about Grim Ghost #1, we discussed the origins and early days of Atlas/Seaboard — the comic-book company launched in 1974 by the founder and previous owner of Marvel Comics, Martin Goodman, and his son Charles (aka “Chip”). In this post, we’ll be covering the upstart publisher’s decline and fall, as well as taking a close look at one of Atlas/Seaboard’s very last releases — a comic which, ironically, was not only one of the company’s better efforts, but also one of the very few to have any sort of afterlife following its abrupt demise.
Cover to another early Atlas/Seaboard release, The Scorpion #1 (Feb., 1975). Art by Howard Chaykin.
Cover to one of Atlas/Seaboard’s earliest releases, Phoenix #1 (Jan., 1975). Art by Sal Amendola and Dick Giordano.
As detailed in that earlier post, Atlas/Seaboard hit the ground running in the summer of ’74 with deep pockets and generous creator incentives — including, but not limited to, a higher page rate than what the competition was offering. It certainly wasn’t hard to understand why prominent professionals like Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, Archie Goodwin, Howard Chaykin, and Wally Wood would be willing to work for them. And while there were some definite duds among Atlas/Seaboard’s earliest offerings (e.g., Ironjaw) there were others which, if not exploding with originality, still demonstrated a high level of craft (e.g., Wulf the Barbarian)
There was also a genuine diversity in the genres and artistic styles embraced by the line, even as the advertising copy heralded the publisher as “the new House of Ideas” — a phrase that directly invited comparisons with the Goodmans’ former company. But, as Jeff Rovin — who, along with Larry Lieber, headed up Atlas/Seaboard’s editorial staff — would write over a decade later for a personal retrospective published in The Comics Journal #114 (Feb., 1987) , the senior Goodman seemed determined to not so much emulate the creativity and freshness of approach that had marked Marvel’s ascendancy over the last fourteen years, but rather to imitate the actual content of Marvel’s then-current output as much as was possible:
…Martin became more and more disgruntled as he read more and more of my comics. And what he decided, without having received a single sales report, was that they didn’t look and read enough like Marvel Comics.
“That’s right,” I remember telling him with a mixture of disbelief and disappointment. “Why should they look like Marvels?”
“Because Marvels sell.”
“Sure,” I replied, “but that’s because the characters have had 10 years to establish themselves, not to mention the newsstand clout Marvel has developed –”
“Look,” he snapped, “I don’t want to argue about this. Just do it.” To which end Martin established a hefty warchest and told Larry and me to go out and hire away as many Marvel people as we could.
Cover to another later Atlas/Seaboard release, The Scorpion #3 (Jul., 1975). Art by Jim Craig.
Cover to a later Atlas/Seaboard release, Phoenix #4 (Oct., 1975). Art by Al Milgrom.
Rovin ended up parting ways with Atlas/Seaboard in January, 1975, leaving the whole enterprise — which in addition to the color comic books included black-and-white comics magazines, as well as non-comics periodicals — in the hands of Larry Lieber. Concurrent with the changes in the editorial offices, a number of the creators who’d helped launch the line in the fall of 1974 — Chaykin, Larry Hama, and Michael Fleisher being among them — left the titles they’d helped create. And in many cases, the writers and artists who replaced them proceeded to give those features extreme makeovers which left them looking a lot more like standard Marvel Comics fare of the time — and Marvel superhero comics fare, most of all.
But even as the company’s creative ambitions — not to mention Martin Goodman’s financial largess — appeared to wane, new features developed by new creators (new to Atlas/Seaboard, anyway) continued to appear on the racks. One of the very last of these was Demon-Hunter, conceived by artist/plotter Rich Buckler and brought to fruition with the assistance of writer David Anthony Kraft, who’d recently joined the Atlas/Seaboard staff as an assistant to Larry Lieber.
As discussed in our Astonishing Tales #31 post a few weeks ago, Rich Buckler was a very busy man at this time, with a slate that included pencilling the monthly Fantastic Four title and overseeing the production of the bi-monthly Astonishing Tales (featuring yet another Buckler-originated character concept, Deathlok), both for Marvel. Given the trouble he seemed to be having meeting his “Deathlok” deadlines, it’s anyone’s guess as to why or how he thought he’d be able to handle yet another project where he’d be responsible for directing the ongoing storyline as well as providing the art; but that’s what happened. (For the record, Buckler also found the time to draw a number of covers, as well as one additional story — “Man-Monster” in Tales of Evil #3 — for Atlas/Seaboard during this period; in fact, he even managed to squeeze in a few art jobs for DC Comics.)
That’s twenty-seven, count ’em, twenty-seven panels Rich Buckler has drawn on the page above. Maybe not a record, but still, quite impressive.
As he did in his contemporaneous “Deathlok” material, Buckler makes frequent use in this story of the sort of sophisticated graphic storytelling techniques we associate with the work of Will Eisner, Bernard Krigstein, and Jim Steranko — which makes for a very different overall look from the Jack Kirby-emulating (sometimes Jack Kirby-appropriating) style he was employing on Fantastic Four and other Marvel comics during this era. Your humble blogger is inclined to think of this as being Buckler’s “real” style — although, based on statements made by the late artist in various interviews over the years, he himself would probably have referred to it as being just one of several different, but equally valid, styles he regularly employed, dependent on what the particular job he was working on called for.
In addition to being the title of our present story — and the current occupation of its protagonist — “Harvester of Eyes” is the title of a 1974 song by Blue Öyster Cult, a fact that’s acknowledged in the story’s dedication to “Buck Dharma and the boys”. As we’ve noted previously, Rich Buckler was a huge rock music fan who enjoyed seeding his stories with song titles and other lyrical references. (UPDATE, 6/7/25, 5:05 p.m.: Buckler’s writing collaborator David A. Kraft was also a Blue Öyster Cult fan, as acknowledged in an article about this comic written in 2011 by Buckler himself; thus, both the dedication to the band as well as the other direct references to its work could have been initiated by Kraft as easily as by Buckler, though the plotter-artist must surely have been on board with the idea, at least. [My thanks to reader mikebreen960 for bringing up this matter in his comment, below.] For the record, Buckler’s article — unfortunately not seen by your humble blogger prior to the original publication of this post — also credits Aubrey Bradford, Frank Giacoia, and P. Craig Russell with assisting on the inking of this story.)
Along with its employment of unconventional page layouts here and there, the opening sequence of Demon-Hunter’s debut parallels that of Deathlok in another way, as well — in both cases we see our protagonist not only already empowered and “costumed”, but acting as a cold-blooded assassin for hire.
Wavy panel borders are generally used in comics as a way of signifying a flashback, or dream-state, or some other trait that sets the action in those panels apart from those preceding or following them. But that doesn’t really seem to be the case, here, so I’m not sure this was an effective storytelling choice.
I get that Gideon Cross doesn’t have to change out of his spandex onesie to hide his secret identity, due to his magical camouflage powers — but is the thing really so comfortable that he never takes it off, even when relaxing alone? Or are we supposed to think he can’t remove it? If it’s the latter, then of course the same question arises that always does in this kind of situation — namely, how the hell does the guy go to the bathroom?
OK, so Gideon Cross works as a “Harvester of Eyes” for the “Harvesters of Night”. What, exactly, is the difference? And for that matter, why is Gideon’s gig described as harvesting eyes? All we ever see him collect from his victims is blood. In the end, it seems to be a case of Buckler’s picking up on a cool-sounding phrase from a rock song without giving too much thought as to what it might actually mean in the context of his story.
Cross accompanies Damian Severs to his late night rendezvous on the three-miles-out yacht, where he observes a whole lot of cash being exchanged for a whole lot of drugs. He then proceeds on his own to Kennedy International Airport, from where he’s supposed to fly to Jamaica. But our protagonist has become uneasy with his current role as Severs’ assassin, fretting that it “makes me no better than a sniper myself, like Matthews.” (To which this reader can only reply: well, d’uh.) So he determines that before he hands his latest “bloodflask” over to the Cult, he’s going to demand some answers about the reasons for it all..
Cross quickly decides on a change of destination — and so, when he flies out of Kennedy, it’s en route not to Jamaica, but rather to Nigeria…
Watching all this from his hiding place, Demon-Hunter knows now without a doubt that the Cult is evil — and that if he’s not going to be one of them any longer, then he can only be against them. “From now on, I’ll believe in myself!” he silently declares.
It’s kind of an odd way to end this first chapter of Demon-Hunter’s saga, at least if the idea is to build suspense, since presumably all Gideon has to do to spoil the Cult’s subterfuge is to turn his head slightly to the right. But, setting that and the story’s other bobbles aside, this is a pretty solid set-up for an ongoing series — one that, to quote from one of Tom Brevoort’s two (!) blog posts about this comic, came across in 1975 as “a strong synthesis of all of the disparate elements then popular in mainstream culture: occultism, gun-slinging men’s paperback characters, the Godfather and its sequel, and super heroics.”
Following the story’s last page is the Atlas/Seaboard version of a Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page — complete with a knockoff of Stan Lee’s famed “Soapbox” column by his younger (and rather less ebullient) brother, Larry Leiber:
I’m not sure exactly when this “Here’s What’s Happening with Atlas” page was put together — though whenever it was, the publisher obviously still had a lot of comics in various stages of production. By the time Demon-Hunter #1 reached stands on June 3rd, however, most of the projects touted here as being “current and upcoming” had already come out — some by as much as a couple of months. And those that were still on the horizon, such as the third and fourth issues of The Barbarians, or Man-Monster #1, were destined never to appear at all.
Cover to Savage Combat Tales #1 (Jul., 1975). Art by Rich Buckler.
There would in fact be just one more publication released by Atlas/Seaboard: Savage Combat Tales #3, which came out exactly one week after Demon-Hunter #1. And that was that; “the new House of Ideas” was closed for good.
According to just about all accounts (several of which can be found here), the decision to pull the plug on the enterprise came down to finances; in the words of one of the publisher’s latter-day writers, Gary Friedrich, “Martin just saw the numbers. After a year or so of losing money, Martin was not the type of guy to continue to throw good money after bad.” It also seems to have happened relatively abruptly, although the final shuttering of the operation took at least a few weeks, and even at the very end there was a certain amount of ambiguity; David A. Kraft (who’d already left his staff job, but was still writing for the company as a freelancer) was simply told that the comics line was being “suspended”, which suggested that the company might regroup and make a comeback.* On the other hand, artist Terry Austin later recalled that “Walt [Simonson] and I walked to the Atlas/Seaboard offices and asked for our artwork back. My recollection is that the receptionist denied that the company had ever published comics.” A number of finished stories and covers by those two artists and others, including Neal Adams and Russ Heath, were evidently never recovered.
The legacy of Atlas/Seaboard may fairly be described as “mixed”. On the one hand, Jeff Rovin probably knew what he was talking about in 1987 when he characterized the publisher’s story as “the text-book example of how not to run a comics company”. On the other hand, as Rovin himself acknowledged, the company was a pioneer in the sort of incentives it offered creators; beyond the higher page rates, Atlas/Seaboard also made a policy of returning artwork, as well as giving creators a contract enabling them to share in the profits for characters they created. True, a lot of the artwork was apparently lost or stolen before it could be returned, and none of the characters remained in print long enough for anyone to make any profit off of them; nevertheless, a precedent had been set.
Relevant to that last point, the post-collapse history of the Atlas/Seaboard IP over the last half-century has been pretty underwhelming. Back in 2011, Martin Goodman’s grandson Jason attempted to revive the brand with a small line of titles released through Ardden Entertainment; none of the titles, which included reboots of Grim Ghost, Phoenix, and Wulf, as well as a “team” book called Atlas Unified, made it past seven issues (which, admittedly, is three more than any original Atlas/Seaboard title ever got). Much more recently, in 2024, Jason Goodman began another run at it, joining forces with SP Media Group to unveil plans for an “Atlas Cinematic Universe”, merchandise, and more. And, indeed, four action figures from Mego — Grim Ghost, Phoenix, the Dragon (from Hands of the Dragon), and Devilina (from Atlas/Seaboard’s black-and-white comics line) — have evidently been manufactured and shipped, and are available for your purchase, somewhere. Your humble blogger must admit to having a ginormous amount of skepticism regarding the overall financial prospects of a multi-movie franchise based on properties that were published for less than a full year a full half-century ago, and which 99 percent of currently living humans have never even heard of — but, hey, I’ve been wrong before, and if any of the old Atlas/Seaboard creators (or their heirs) are able to make a few bucks out of all these shenanigans, good for them.
Opening splash page from the first “Dominic Fortune” story, as published in Marvel Preview #2 (Jun., 1975). Text by Len Wein; art by Howard Chaykin.
In the meantime, if we want to talk about comic-book characters that managed to survive the demise of the original Atlas/Seaboard Publications — if not quite exactly in their original form — then we actually need to go back way, way past 2024, or even 2011 — all the way back to April, 1975, in fact. Yes, that’s actually two months prior to when Atlas/Seaboard shipped its final releases. But it’s also the month that the company brought out its third issue of The Scorpion, which found Howard Chaykin’s original character — an immortal adventurer whose pulp-style exploits were set in the 1930s — replaced by a present-day spandex-clad superhero… as well as the month that Marvel Comics released Marvel Preview #2, a black-and-white comics magazine feature a strip by Chaykin and writer Len Wein about Dominic Fortune — a not-so-immortal adventurer whose pulp-style exploits were set in the 1930s. Not exactly the same guy, no… but pretty damn close. Chaykin’s reworking of his “Scorpion” concept (which was even more on-the-nose than his slightly earlier reinvention of DC Comics’ “Ironwolf” as the creator-owned “Cody Starbuck”) would go on to a long, if not necessarily prominent, role in the larger Marvel Universe; which, if nothing else, is a lot more than you can say about either incarnation of Atlas/Seaboard’s Scorpion, at least at this time of writing.
Cover to Marvel Spotlight #33 (Apr., 1977). Art by Rich Buckler and Klaus Janson.
In similar fashion — and, in the context of this particular blog post’s primary subject, much closer to home — Rich Buckler and David Anthony Kraft would bring back Gideon Cross, Demon-Hunter, as Eric Simon Payne, Devil-Slayer at Marvel Comics, a couple of years following his ill-fated initial outing. Pretty much only the names and the costume color-scheme were changed for this one, with the “new” character making his debut in Marvel Spotlight #33 (Apr., 1977) as an antagonist to that other Buckler hero, Deathlok the Demolisher, before proceeding on to a stint with Marvel’s “non-team”, the Defenders, whose adventures were then being scripted by Kraft. There’s a very good chance that some of those comics will be the subjects of their own blog posts in the next few years, so we’ll refrain from going into more details at this time — and will simply note that, like Dominic Fortune, Devil-Slayer would continue to have a place in the Marvel Universe in the years and decades to follow, even if he never became a breakout star.
Cover to Galaxia Magazine #1 (Jun., 1981). Art by Rich Buckler and Dick Giordano.
But the saga of Demon-Hunter doesn’t even end there. Four years after the introduction of Devil-Slayer at Marvel, Rich Buckler dusted off his original character concept for one more go — this time as a fully creator-owned project — in the pages of the black-and-white Galaxia Magazine #1 (Jun., 1981), released in the dawning days of the “direct market” as the first and only offering of the independent publisher Astral Comics. In this incarnation, the hero’s codename was Bloodwing; but his backstory remained the same, as did his “real” name, Gideon Cross. He kept the same costume, as well, albeit with yet another color-scheme switch-up (although since the book’s 8-page Bloodwing story was printed in b&w, that factor was only relevant in regards to the cover).
I didn’t buy this one back in the day, so the chances of it getting its own post from me in 2031 are nil — however, if you’re curious, Tom Brevoort has blogged about it, too (though just once, at least so far), and his coverage will likely tell you all you might want to know. So, thanks, Tom!
*Kraft’s account of Atlas/Seaboard’s final days was first published in the fanzine Deadspawn #1 (Jul., 1975), and later reprinted in Comic Book Artist #16 (Dec., 2001).
I was the worst kind of completist back then. I have always disliked Buckler’s art and thought less of his writing so I stuck with Deathlok to the end but nothing could have made me buy a second issue of this drek. Heck, most of Atlas’ books that effectively became different properties with just the name retained managed to defy my completism after seeing how bad the first exposure with that turned out to be. I don’t think I ever again picked up a new series featuring Buckler’s art in its premiere after that. It was one thing if he took over art in a series I already bought because I was already on board but I was always glad to see him go later.
The Art here, sort of seems like a penciller trying to evoke Kirby (with some Toth/Krigstein/Steranko page layouts) and an inker doing Adams-style inking.
I liked Buckler’s work. He had real talent: vast energy and a gift for story-telling (see, e.g., the first few Pages of Avengers # 103).
However, unlike his protégées, like Gorge Perez and Arv Jones, Rich Buckler always seemed derivative.,
Some of his Secret Society of Supervillains/CPT Comet stuff in the 1970s and his Spider-Man stuff in the 1980s with The Death of Jean DeWolf stuff seemed like he was beginning to develop his own style,
I am still struck by Jim Steranko lauding Buckler;s work on Giant-Sized FF#3 as one of the most dynamic super hero stories he had ever seen on Twitter/X when Buckler died.
Perhaps there was more there than we saw. .
Is there some Adams and Buscema figures in there as well, not just an Adams influence in the inking?
It appears from the credits that Buckler inked this himself, but it’s all a bit sketchy to tell what he was aiming for.
I agree that derivative is probably a good description of what Buckler considered his own art style. I can’t point to any specific swipes without more research than I’m inclined to do on a Saturday evening, but the punch in the first panel of p. 12 certainly looks familiar.
As to Steranko’s opinion of GS FF #3 (“perhaps there was more there than we saw…”), perhaps he saw more than what was there.
Wasn’t ‘Xenogenesis’ also the title used in the Defenders’ arc by DAK? Wasn’t it also DAK who was constantly referencing Blue Oyster Cult in the Defenders, so maybe the title and dedication was from him?
And just scrolling back through, I caught the ‘lesser’ demon’s real name ‘Namremmiz’ – Bob Dylan’s real name (Zimmerman) spelt backwards? Definitely former ‘rock and roll journalist’ DAK’s influence at work…
That seems very likely, mike!
Thanks for bringing this up, mike. I had forgotten about all those additional references to BOC in DAK’s Defenders issues, as well as about his music journalist background. My attribution of the references in Demon Hunter #1 to Buckler was based on his general pattern of dropping musical allusions into his stuff (as in Deathlok, for example) as well as on an interview in Comic Book Artist #7 where, in the context of a discussion of DH #1, he was asked if he was a Blue Oyster Cult fan and he answered, “Big time.” Not exactly a slam dunk, but it seemed a reasonable assumption.
I did a little more digging around on Goggle today and found an article about Demon Hunter written by Buckler himself which I’d somehow missed while doing my earlier research for this post. It includes this relevant section:
“My collaborator/writer, David Kraft, wrote the dialogue and narration from my story notes. We were both Marvel guys and fans of the rock band Blue Oyster Cult, but I think between the two of us, I was the only one who understood the alchemical and Freemasonic origins of much of their material. Who knows how much of the occult meanings were actually understood by the songwriters in the band? That’s anybody’s guess.”
The whole piece can be found at https://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2011/01/swash-buckler-saturdays-xenogenesis.html . I’m going to update the post with a brief note about Kraft’s likely involvement with the Blue Oyster Cult stuff in this story (with another link to Buckler’s article there).
My recollection of the problem with Atlas was less that it was disparate genres than that it lacked any kind of central focus. Put more simply, there was no potential for cross-overs since all the characters were separately created by talented people working on their own.
“The Marvel Universe” had been a complex, interconnected whole since the Hulk was referenced in FF #6 (and Namor introduced in FF#3. come to think of that). Arguably, DC had been doing this since Showcase #4, where Jay Garrick was introduced (as a comics character) at least in the Julie Schwartz edited books.
Now, there was a solution to that problem for Atlas with Chaykin’s (apparently immortal) The Scorpion. He could have met the Western characters in the 19th Century and he could met the WWII Heroes (a few years later from his book) and could have run into the contemporary superheroes in some form or identity (or they could have run into things he ran into in the 1930s in the 1970s)..
Also, whatever made The Scorpion immortal could be a hidden theme in all the books (the Gestapo and Abwehr Nazi bad guys seeking it in interrogations and SIGINT intercepts in the war books; Native American shamans hinting at it in the Westerns; wizards trying to discover it in ancient tomes in the S&S books; and even The Combine investigating it through corrupt cops in The Destructor, Lomax, NYPD and Luke Malone, Manhunter).
Also, why wasn’t The Combine the “big bad” for all three and maybe Tigerman and an important (and malign) force operating at the periphery in The Phoenix?.
The Scorpion and that plot point cold have been the connective tissue to Atlas as MotherGoddess/Unity was for Valiant almost 20 years later. Come to think of it, as The White Event was for Marvel’s “New Universe” in 1986. (Did Shooter do what he did [after some false starts] at Valiant based on how Atlas failed?)
in the real world, nothing fits so neatly, but that is part of why people like fiction. As Vonnegut said,
“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder ‘why, why, why?’
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”
See also the Ultraverse where the Jumpstart triggered many of the heroes and many of them knew about each other even before they met.
Then again, shared universes aren’t magic. It was the quality of Marvel and DC’s Silver Age books that attracted people — the connections were cool but they were icing on the cake. A better lineup of Atlas books wouldn’t have suffered.
Conversely, given that Goodman wasn’t wiling to give them any chance to grow readers (from what I’ve read, he anticipated making an FF#1-level impact and lost faith when tht didn’t happen) it’s unlikely a shared universe would have boosted sales enough to change things.
I remember the Atlas line, and I remember sampling a few titles, but nothing could make me come back for this poor storytelling, not even the sometimes decent art, which was always the draw (you see what I did there?) for me, anyway. My only actual memories involve Phoenix Protector, Wulf and Ironjaw, but there may have been others I read as well. Not this one, however. I had no interest in demon-slaying comics in 1975 and would have given this one a wide berth.
You call this one of Atlas’ better efforts, Alan, and maybe you’re right, but really it was just over-written and way too complicated. You ran down a list of all the different influences it contained and it was just too much for one comic to hold. Gangsters and cults and assassins and magic and military and what have you was just too much for one story, at least it was the way this one was told. Since Gideon didn’t discover his demon-hunting calling until after he’d worked for the Cult for a while, why did he wear a costume when he was only a lowly psychic? Why did the Cult give him the extra-dimensional cloak? Where did it come from? Just too many questions and nowhere near enough answers. One can assume Buckler would have answered them eventually, but we’ll never know.
Martin Goodman may have obsessed over Marvel’s success and wanted to duplicate it in every way, but he left out the one ingredient that might have saved his company: he needed to make sure the books were GOOD; that they were entertaining and worth reading. He didn’t, and now Atlas is gone, lost in the folds of Gideon Cross’ enigmatic cape. Thanks, Alan!
Funny, I think the stuff you didn’t like is what drew me to it — the complicated mythology made it more intriguing than, say, Tiger-Man or Morlock and the Midnight Men. Demon-Hunter ended up the only Atlas book I bought (my brother had a few).
In some ways it’s “urban fantasy” which explains part of what clicked with me. Though your point about the plot holes is valid.
Thanks Alan.
I didn’t discover the Atlas line of comics until 1976, by which time they’d come and gone. I picked up a few in secondhand bookshops, but they never grabbed me – I found them derivative, exploitative and schlocky. I never saw Demon-Hunter at the time, but it’s no exception. There’s an exquisite Alex Toth story in one of the war comics, and the second and final issue of the B/W mag Thrilling Adventure Stories has some nice work, but otherwise there’s little to admire.
Larry Lieber’s editorial reproduced above is interesting in two respects – first, the very explicit acknowledgement that Marvel is the model for Atlas, and second, the remark that “Jack Kirby just drew.” I hope for the sake of Kirby’s blood pressure that he never saw that.
I perused through a few Atlas samplings on the rack at the NEX wherein I got my comics during this period, as I occasionally did some DC titles, but never actually purchased any. Admittedly, even if Demon Hunter had been a Marvel comic, I most likely still wouldn’t have purchased it as I was still fairly conservative in how I spent my meager funds on comics and mostly stuck with those I’d already become attached to although every so often I’d get something outside of my usual picks. It wouldn’t be until a little over a year later that I’d significantly expand my purchases, but another six years before I started getting any non-Marvel titles.
This does make me ponder how Marvel transformed itself from a fairly lowkey company in early 1961, seemingly just barely hanging on into a real powerhouse in the industry by 1965, with several other companies over the next decade trying to emulate its success but none succeeding, with Atlas being the most prominent, launched as it was by the very man who had been the original publisher of Marvel, but who also had rather limited creative input to the various elements that made Marvel a success and would have been difficult to replicate, even if he had somehow managed to get Lee & Kirby onboard, along with Leiber & Ditko. Martin Goodman appears to have wanted instant success, but even just taking the publication of Fantastic Four #1 as the starting point, Marvel took a few years to really develop and gel into something truly unique and compelling over most of its superhero line. But FF #1 stood out in its time because even given its similarities to Challengers of the Unknown and apparent intent to emulate the success of the Justice League of America, it had various elements that weren’t like other super-hero titles of the era, mainly with the heroes arguing and fighting with one another, and one of them transformed into a monstrous-looking being and having a very bad temper. Even the Human Torch, although based on an older super-hero, as drawn by Kirby in that first issue, looked more like an actual flame in vaguely human shape than a human covered in flames, as he would evolve into in later issues. Even Mr. Fantastic, the leader of the gang, looked rather freaky when using his powers. For a time, Lee & company seemed to try to emulate more typical superhero titles of the era, with, say, early Thor & Ant-Man, but their next big success turned out to be Spider-Man, wherein once again, they did things rather differently, with a young hero who was sometimes shown to make major, consequential screwups, was beset by financial issues and other real-life problems, but learned from hard lessons and strove to do better. Gradually, Lee and his cohorts learned that a primary attraction of their comics to many fans was the human frailties of their fantastic characters, even of the godly Thor, who despite all his powers, still had frustrations in romance and in dealing with his father and adopted brother. Also significant, I think, was when the stories expanded into multi-issue epics that allowed them to escape standard formulas and for more intense drama than single-issue stories could typically provide. The multi-issue storyline involving Thor’s ferocious, jealousy-stoked fight against Hercules, which he wound up losing, but later redeemed himself in fighting for Hercules against the hordes of Hades, was filled with pathos and drama that just couldn’t have been crammed into a one-issue story and worked as well. Same with the Master-Planner trilogy in Spider-Man and the Galactus trilogy in the FF. None of that happened overnight or even within a single year but built up between late 1961 and 1966.
Goodman seemed to look at things in a very simplistic manner and probably all those sort of aspects of Marvel that made it stand out in the mid-60s went entirely over his head. He wasn’t involved in making any of that happen, aside from not standing in the way as it happened and proved ever more popular and profitable. He seemed to think he could instantly replicate the Marvel success story by publishing new comics that outwardly resembled Marvel’s style but without the substance that was much harder to copy. At least that’s my take.
A good assessment of Marvel’s growth. I agree, by ’65 they’re at an entirely new level compared to what they were doing when FF#1 and Hulk #1 hit the stands.
Goodman (again from what I’ve read) seemed to have convinced himself he was the real creative genius. It helped that greenlighting the flood of early 1970s reprint books was what pushed Marvel to #1 in sales.
I remember reading a few Atlas comics and being very uninspired. I wonder what Stan Lee thought of his brother working at a direct competitor of Marvel? Especially one that’s trying to create Marvel “knock offs?” I’d have loved to be at that Thanksgiving dinner. Oh sure people bounced back and forth all the time between DC and Marvel but this is different. As you point out, Goodman’s goal was to copy Marvel right down to the granular level. If Sergeant Stryker isn’t Nick Fury and the Howling Commandos with a new title , what is it then? I have to wonder too if Goodman was so smart a publisher he must have known that if you copy Marvel and produce subpar Marvels, aren’t the buyers simply gonna BUY Marvel instead?
Did Lieber do any other work for Marvel after that?
Since je became editor of Marvel UK in about 1977 and wound up drawing the Spider-Man and Hulk comic stripes, it seemed like there were few bad feelings . . . .
I seem to remember that on his return to Marvel the welcome announcement on the Bullpen Bulletins page included a slightly barbed reference to his time at Atlas. As well as editing the Marvel UK line, he drew quite a number of the covers, including many for Captain Britain, the first title to include non-reprint material.
Stan Lee seems to have been fairly forgiving about this sort of thing. In addition to taking brother Larry back, he also welcomed a returning Sol Brodsky after *his* new comics company, Skywald Publications, crashed and burned in ’74-’75.
I just read the Secret History of Marvel Comics and how Goodman’s thing even pre Marvel was to copy whatever was popular at the time . He kinda got lucky with the talent he had assembled in 1961, they somehow made something fresh, yet there he was reverting to type and copying his former success. I hardly recall Atlas, but unlike Marvel where you got an immediate sense of joining a bigger imaginative universe , these sorts of obviously derivative comics seemed to have come fully formed without a past and had no future that was worth investing in.
Spot on.
I wonder if that was why Shooter did the Valiant books around one central event (Unity)? It might even drive the “White Event” in Marvel’s “New Universe ” in 1986.
As I said above, I liked this one, the only Atlas comic I bought. In a sense it shows some advantages of a non-shared universe — I kept wondering what the Grim Ghost would do if he guest starred (the cult is unleashing evil on Earth which should please Satan, yet Satan would want the GG to collect their souls, ending the unleashing) but that wasn’t an issue.
You have a point, Alan, about “Harvester of Eyes” but cults and even secular organizations have so many weird titles, I’m comfortable writing it off as ceremonial only.
Reading the Demon Hunter comic today I found it rough, but was done with passion and had some promise. I liked the Demon Hunter character ( ok more costume and powers, rather than personality), but only discovered him later in the decade when Devil Slayer appeared in the Defenders for its last decent story arc. (I wonder if Kraft asked Bucker for his blessing to bring back his character then?)
The story showed plenty of ideas, and I am tempted to track down a copy of Galaxia to see if Bucker further developed the storyline there. Artwise I find Buckler’s figures generally stiff; he could have done with a few training sessions with Kurtzman on how to loosen up. The inking style is functionary, and if I was kind, I would say in certain places it demonstrated a certain Kubert style. But overall it held together.
Alan, you have done several posts on Atlas. Did you never come across Gray Morrow’s Red Circle line? This I thought a better and worthier effort than Atlas’.
Alas. Spirit, I didn’t discover the Red Circle line until some years after the fact. 🙁
Some nice art, (Morrow, Giordano, Chaykin & Wood) but no continuing characters. Why Morrow did not catch on in comics, I don’t know.
The stories seemed like “Big 2” (and maybe Golden Key) rejects . . . .
Was this the Red Circle with the MLJ Heroes reboot? Or something else with the same brand?
I assume that Spirit is referring to the mid-’70s period when Archie used the imprint for Code-approved horror. I’m not sure whether Gray Morrow worked on the later MLJ heroes revival, where I believe Rich Buckler was the editor-in-chief. (I do have some of those but only remember Alex Toth’s Black Hood with any real fondness. 🙂 )
Thanks. Yes, I remember Buckler being involved. I only picked up Mighty Crusaders which was pleasant though hardly standout.
Ah, yes. That three issue early 80s Black Hood was an artistic gem of a comic. Covers and The Fox backup strips by Toth. Plus great work by Morrow, Boyette, Spiegle, Wildey, and McWilliams. Sheer bliss.
The comics I am referring to are Sorcery #3-11, and Madhouse #95-97 from ’74 and ’75. Well worth checking out!