Since most people don't collect Atlas books I thought the boards might be interested in seeing some interior art and reading some stories. I'll try and post one every Friday afternoon for your reading pleasure.

Mike

From December 1953 to June 1954 Timely published five issues of Young Men (24-28) which included stories featuring the Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and Captain America. Although this attempt at a superhero revival didn't catch on, some people consider these books to be the start of the Silver Age (others consider them to be the last gasp of the Golden Age). I particularly like the Captain America story in #25. The last panel is a laugh and very representative of the 50s mentality.

As pointed out by Golden Age Kid below, the cover is by Carl Burgos, not Joe Maneely.




So many great artists got their start on Atlas books that it is hard to name them all. This specific issue is from the pen of John Romita. Here is a brief summary of his work under the Atlas logo (copied from Wikipedia).


Romita's first known credited comic-book art is as penciler and inker on the six-page story "The Bradshaw Boys" in Western Outlaws #1 (Feb. 1954) for Marvel's 1950s predecessor, Atlas Comics. He went on to draw a wide variety of horror, war, romance and other comics for Atlas. His most notable work for the company was the short-lived, 1950s revival of Timely's hit character Captain America, in Young Men #24-28 (Dec. 1953 - July 1954) and Captain America #76-78 (May-Sept. 1954). He also was the primary artist for one of the first series with a Black star, "Waku, Prince of the Bantu" — created by writer Don Rico and artist Ogden Whitney in the omnibus title Jungle Tales #1 (Sept. 1954), and starring an African chieftain in Africa, with no regularly featured Caucasian characters. Romita succeeded Whitney with issue #2 (November 1954).


These scans are taken from a volume of Marvel Masterworks.

Looks like a Carl Burgos cover to me.


I'll post an Atlas War story in a second.

A nice little Maneely 4-Page story to convince kids that even the the people under Communist Control wanted us to win.

EXCELLENT posts/threads, Mike! Keep it up.

This thread is making for some great reading. Thanks, GA Kid!

Found another source crediting Burgos.

Mike

Found another source crediting either Maneely or Burgos.

Here is a story which I find very similar to the book from which Planet of the Apes was made (La planète des singes by Pierre Boulle). In the book the astronauts actually go to another planet which is ruled by apes and then return to earth.

The cover is by Harry Anderson. I searched around a lot, but couldn't find much info on him. He was an artist in the 1940's and early 1950's, never signed his work for Stan Lee, drew pre-code horror stories and illustrated about one cover a month for Atlas from cover date Apr/54 through Nov/54, including the classic MENACE #11 "broken neck" cover.



There is also a fairly famous illustrator named Harry Anderson, but I don't believe they are the same person.

Any way, here we go.



The story itself was drawn by another fairly unknown artist named Bill Walton (not the basketball player). William Walton was an artist who worked for American comic books during the 1940s and 1950s. In the late 1940s and early 1950s he worked through the Simon/Kirby Studio. He drew crime features as well as 'Bert and Sue' and 'Mr. Risk' for Ace Periodicals, 'Buck Ranger' and romance stories for Better Publications, stories for New Heroic Comics by Eastern Color Printing, romance stories for Feature Comics and horror for Fiction House. He was a regular on Lev Gleason's 'Black Diamond' as well as their crime titles in the first half of the 1950s. He was on the Atlass/Marvel staff in the second half of the 1940s doing humor features. He later did art on war, crime and mystery titles for the company.



In the Planet of the Apes book the astronaut returns to earth, but due to time dilation it is 100s of years later and our own planet is controlled by apes.

I've always been a DC 1st kind of guy but all this info and examples on Burgos, Romita, Maneely (!!!) is really whetting my appetite.

This week's story is from the very end of the Atlas/pre-hero period. Taken from Strange Tales 99 and drawn by Kirby and Ayers, two the greats. Monsters, robots and aliens, what more could you want!

To start, here is a short piece from Wikipedia on Kirby's return to Atlas and his pre-hero days:

Kirby returned to work with Stan Lee at Timely, now called Atlas Comics, in the late 1950s. Inker Frank Giacoia approached Lee for work, but when informed that Atlas artists inked their own pencils, suggested he could "get Kirby back here to pencil some stuff." Kirby was still working on DC's Challengers of the Unknown, but also searching for work from other publishers, with little success. Continuing with DC on such titles as House of Mystery and House of Secrets, Kirby drew occasional stories for Atlas, including the Lone Ranger-like Black Rider and the Fu Manchu stand-in Yellow Claw.

Kirby began working at Atlas. Because of the poor page rates, Kirby had to spend 12 to 14 hours at his drawing table at home, producing eight to ten pages of artwork a day. His first published work at Atlas was the cover of and the seven-page story "I Discovered the Secret of the Flying Saucers" in Strange Worlds #1 (Dec. 1958). Initially with Christopher Rule as his regular inker, and later Dick Ayers, Kirby drew across all genres, from romance to war comics, crime stories to Westerns, but made his mark primarily with a series of supernatural-fantasy and science fiction stories featuring giant, drive-in movie-style monsters with names like Groot, the Thing from Planet X; Grottu, King of the Insects; and Fin Fang Foom for the company's many anthology series, such as Amazing Adventures, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense, and World of Fantasy. His bizarre designs of powerful, unearthly creatures proved a hit with readers.

Jeez, Mike. I see the email notification for this thread, run and grab a beer to sit for another great story and find this!?



This had better be good!

I used to sit in front of the tube looking at
that pattern awaiting the morning broadcast of
TODAY ON THE FARM
Ahhhhhh..Sweet memories !

Yeah, it's hard to believe now that there was actually a time when TV was not a 24/7 thing. Try to tell one of the last couple generations that and they'll think you're full of it. With their 3 or 4 jillion round-the-clock channels and all that.

The show getting ready to start?

Great story. Those sci-fi monster books are a blast and were still good as back-up features until their 1964 cancelation.

Great stuff, thanks again, Mike! Til next Friday's offering...

The first issue of the Atlas super-hero revival was Young Men 24. The cover for this issue was appropriately done by Carl Burgos, the creator of the Human Torch.


Carl Burgos (né Max Finkelstein, April 18, 1916, New York City, New York; died 1984) was an American comic book and advertising artist best known for creating the original Human Torch in Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939).

Following his return from the war, Burgos attended City College of New York to study advertising and drew a small number of stories for Timely. Segueing out of full-time comics work, Burgos eased into a career in advertising and commercial art while freelancing frequently for Atlas Comics, the 1950s iteration of Marvel, primarily as a cover artist across all genres from jungle-girl to war comics, though fellow Atlas artist Stan Goldberg, who joined the company in 1949, recalled in 2002 that "Burgos was on staff most of the time I was there".

His most prominent comics work during this time came during Atlas' mid-1950s attempt at reviving the dormant superhero field with Timely stars the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, and Captain America, with Burgos drawing the Human Torch stories in Young Men #25-28 (Feb.- June 1954), as well as the covers of Young Men #24-25 (Dec. 1953 - Feb. 1954) and of the short-lived relaunch Human Torch #36-38 (April-Aug. 1954); he also redrew at least the Human Torch figure in the first panel of artist Russ Heath's story nine-page story "The Return Of The Human Torch" in Young Men #24.





The first story in Young Men 24 is entitled ‘The Return of…The Human Torch’. Interestingly, it is drawn by Russ Heath rather than Burgos. Apparently Burgos redrew the figure of the Human Torch in the first panel, although I could never have figured this out on my own. A few interesting tidbits:
- The story includes a short history of where the torch had been since the end of the war. This background story includes an atomic explosion.
- Some revisionist history states that Toro only joined the Torch in 1949.
- We see the Torch incinerating Hitler in his bunker in 1945. I guess that this was meant to fit in with Hitler’s body having been cremated.


Russell Heath, Jr. (born September 29, 1926, New York City, New York) is an American artist best known for his comic book work — particularly his DC Comics war stories for several decades and his 1960s art for Playboy magazine's Little Annie Fanny featurettes — and for his commercial art, two pieces of which, depicting Roman and Revolutionary War battle scenes for toy soldier sets, became highly familiar bits of Americana after gracing the back covers of countless comic books from the early 1960s to early 1970s. Heath's drawing of a fighter jet being blown up, in DC Comics' All American Men of War #89 (Feb. 1962), was the basis for pop artist Roy Lichtenstein's 1962 oil painting Blam.

In 1947 Heath landed a $75 a week staff position at Timely Comics, the 1940s predecessor of Marvel Comics. Heath drew a corral-full of Western stories for such Timely comics as Wild Western, All Western Winners, Arizona Kid, Black Rider, Western Outlaws, and Reno Browne, Hollywood's Greatest Cowgirl. As Timely evolved into Marvel's 1950s iteration, known as Atlas Comics, Heath expanded into other genres. He drew the December 1950 premiere of the two-issue superhero series Marvel Boy, as well as scattered science fiction anthology stories (in Venus, Journey Into Unknown Worlds, and Men's Adventures); crime drama (Justice); horror stories and covers (Adventures into Terror, Marvel Tales, Menace, Mystic, Spellbound, Strange Tales, Uncanny Tales, the cover of Journey into Mystery #1), satiric humor (Wild, Mad), and war stories. Heath produced combat stories both for the wide line of Timely war titles but also for the first issue (Aug. 1951) of EC Comics' celebrated Frontline Combat. Other 1950s work includes "The Return of the Human Torch" (minus the opening page, drawn by character-creator Carl Burgos) in Young Men #24 (Dec. 1953), the flagship of Atlas' ill-fated effort to revive superheroes, which had fallen out of fashion in the post-war U.S.

Here is a story from Men's Adventures #25 - cover by Syd Shores and story by Joe Sinnott. I guess you know that it is pre-code when people are eaten by sharks and shot in the back with harpoons.


Sydney Shores (September 4, 1913 - June 3, 1973) was an American comic book artist known for his work on Captain America both during the 1940s and during the 1960s Silver Age of comic books.

Syd Shores was educated at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute and after working seven years at his uncle's whiskey bottling plant until it closed down in 1940, he became an assistant at the Harry "A" Chesler's studio, under comics artists Mac Raboy and Phil Sturm. After four months he tried his own hand at work, doing a seven-page piece called 'The Terror'. It held enough promise that it saw print in Mystic Comics #5 (March 1941) from Timely Comics and editor Joe Simon hired Shores as the fledgling company's third employee. Shores initially worked as an inker, embellishing some of the earliest pencil work of industry legend Jack Kirby. After the Simon & Kirby team moved on following Captain America Comics #10 (Jan. 1942), Shores and Al Avison became regular pencilers of the hit title, with one generally inking over the other. Shores was inducted into the U.S. Army in early 1944 and, after his military discharge in Jan. 1946, Shores returned to Timely as art director. At post-war Timely and at the company's 1950s successor, Atlas Comics, Shores was among the artists on the company's superhero stars (the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner), the Western titles (The Black Rider and Kid Colt Outlaw), the jungle series (Jann of the Jungle and Jungle Action), the war comics (Battle Action and Battle Brady), and many others including Blonde Phantom.

Going freelance in 1948, when virtually all of Timely's staff positions were eliminated, Shores drew for Atlas, Avon Publishing, and Orbit Publications. With Mort Lawrence, who succeeded Bill Everett on The Sub-Mariner, and Norman Steinberg, another Atlas artist, Shores co-founded a comic-art studio in 1952, first in Hempstead, Long Island, and later in nearby Freeport. But with Steinberg's death in the mid-1950s and Lawrence's decision to leave the field, Shores returned to individual freelancing, adding magazine illustration to his repertoire.

In the 1960s, Shores found a new audience at Marvel Comics, where he inked many issues of Kirby's Captain America; Gene Colan's Daredevil and Colan's backup feature "The Watcher" in Silver Surfer #1 & #6; Dick Ayers's and Don Heck's Captain Savage and a variety of other titles. Despite this seeming steady stream of work, fellow Golden Age and Silver Age artist Joe Giella recalled that, "Syd later became a taxi cab driver; that was so sad. I happened to see him while I was on jury duty back in the early '70s, and he told me he was driving a cab because he couldn't find work".




Joe Sinnott (born October 16, 1926, Saugerties, New York, United States) is an American comic book artist. Working primarily as an inker, Sinnott is best-known for his long stint on Marvel Comics' The Fantastic Four, from 1965 to 1981 (with a brief return in the late 1980s), initially over the pencils of industry legend Jack Kirby. Years before, he had inked Kirby's Fantastic Four #5, the issue introducing Dr. Doom, plus a science fiction monster story in Strange Tales #95. During his fifty-plus years as a Marvel freelancer and then salaried artist working from home, Sinnott inked virtually every major title, with notable runs on The Avengers, The Defenders and The Mighty Thor.

Discharged from the army in 1946 at age 19, and after working two-and-a-half years in a cement plant's rock quarry, Sinnott decided to pursue illustration as a career. In 1948, he was accepted into the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (now the School of Visual Arts) in New York City, attending on the GI Bill. There teacher Tom Gill asked Sinnott to be his assistant on his freelance comics work. With classmate Norman Steinberg, Sinnott spent nine months drawing backgrounds and incidentals on, initially, Gill's Western-movie tie-in comics for Dell Comics. Sinnott's first solo professional art job was the backup feature "Trudy" or "Trudi" (sources differ) in the St. John Publications humor comic Mopsy #12 (Sept. 1950).

Branching out professionally, Sinnot met with Stan Lee who assigned him a three page Western filler which was the first of a multitude of stories in many genres Sinnot would draw for Timely/Atlas. During a 1957 economic retrenchment when Atlas let go of most of its staff and freelancers, Sinnott found other work in the six months before the company called him back. He began doing such commercial art as billboards and record covers, ghosting for some DC Comics artists, and a job for Classics Illustrated comics. Former EC Comics artist Jack Kamen, now the art director of Harwyn Publishing's 12-volume, 1958 Harwyn Picture Encyclopedia for children, had Sinnott join a roster of contributors that included many celebrated EC artists. Sinnot also began a long association with publisher George Pflaum's Treasure Chest, a Catholic-oriented comic book distributed in parochial schools.

As usual great stuff Mike!

A short story this week, but I find it to be quite good. Cover by Joe Maneely and story by Jim Mooney from April 1958.




James Noel "Jim" Mooney (August 13, 1919 – March 30, 2008) was an American comic book artist best known as a Marvel Comics inker and Spider-Man artist, and as the signature artist of DC Comics's Supergirl, both during what comics historians and fans call the Silver Age of comic books. He sometimes inked under the pseudonym Jay Noel.

Mooney went to New York City in 1940 to enter the fledging comic-book field. Following his first assignment, the new feature "The Moth" in Fox Publications's Mystery Men Comics #9-12 (April-July 1940), Mooney worked for the comic book packager Eisner & Iger, one of the studios that would supply outsourced comics to publishers testing the waters of the new medium. He left voluntarily after two weeks: "I was just absolutely crestfallen when I looked at some of the guys’ work. Lou Fine was working there, Nick Cardy . . . and Eisner himself. I was beginning to feel that I was way, way in beyond my depth. . . ."

Mooney went on staff at Fiction House for approximately nine months and became friends with colleagues George Tuska, Ruben Moreira (a future Tarzan comic-strip artist), and Cardy. He began freelancing for Timely Comics, working on that company's "animation" line of funny animal and movie-cartoon tie-in comics. As Mooney describes his being hired by editor-in-chief and art director Stan Lee,

“ I met Stan the first time when I was looking for work at Timely. . . . I came in, being somewhat young and cocky at the time, and Stan asked me what I did. I said I penciled; he said, 'What else?' I said I inked. He said, 'What else?' I said, 'Color.' 'Do anything else?' I said, 'Yeah, I letter, too.' He said, 'Do you print the damn books, too?' I guess he was about two or three years my junior at that point. I think I was about 21 or 22.”

In 1946, Mooney began a 22-year association with the company that would evolve into DC. He began with the series Batman as a ghost artist for credited artist Bob Kane. Mooney branched out to the series Superboy, and such features as "Dial H For Hero" in House of Mystery, and Tommy Tomorrow in both Action Comics and World's Finest Comics. He also contributed to Atlas Comics, the 1950s iteration of Marvel, on at least a handful of 1953-54 issues of Lorna the Jungle Queen. Most notably, Mooney drew the backup feature "Supergirl" in Action Comics from 1959 to 1968.

Yet another great informative piece Mike. Love the story too!!!

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mystic 37 (May 1955)

Cover credited to Carl Burgos.




Cover by Pete Tumlinson.

Howard Peter "Pete" Tumlinson (June 7, 1920 - June 5, 2008) was born in Glasgow, Montana. He was an American book illustrator and a comic book artist whose work appeared from the late 1940s through the 1950s in titles published by the Marvel Comics predecessors Timely Comics and Atlas Comics. Tumlinson was a regular on the company's crime, romance and war titles. His work with Marvel Comics includes most of the stories of the Western hero Kid Colt.

While working on his undergrad at Texas A&M, Tumlinson is credited with creating the cartoon character Ol' Sarge, which still represents the University's long-standing military history to the latest generation of Aggies. Portrayed as a rough, tough-looking corps drill sergeant, "Ol' Sarge" remains an unofficial mascot of Texas A&M. Tumlinson said numerous times he was not the first person to draw Ol' Sarge, but Tumlinson's renditions of the character were the ones that endured through the years.

Tumlinson, along with a majority of his class, enlisted to serve in World War II. Tumlinson participated in the war as an aviator, and did not return to A&M to resume his education until 1945. He graduated one year later and moved to Bryan. Despite no longer being enrolled at Texas A&M, Tumlinson continued his comic strip until he was eventually hired to work as a cartoonist in far away New York.

Mike I think what you're doing with this thread is fantastic and it's a joy to see you take the time to share your passion of these great comics !!

Thanks. Happy holidays Paul.

M

Merry Christmas and thanks for the reading !!

Here's a nice little Atlas Horror story from Adventures Into Terror #29 (Mar. 1954) Artwork by Myron Fass.

Great story. I didn't see that specific ending coming. Here is some info on Myron Fass:

Myron Fass began his career as a comic book artist and later became famous as an editor and publisher of pulp magazines. After some public relation jobs during World War II, he worked in the field of comic books from 1948 to 1955. He illustrated western, crime, horror, romance and jungle girl comics for companies such as Atlas, Trojan, Gleason and Toby Press in comic books like 'Tales of Horror', 'Adventures Into Terror', 'Astonishing', 'Uncanny Tales', 'Great Lover Romances', 'Black Diamond Western', 'Crime Smashers', 'Western Crime Busters' and 'Atomic Spy Cases'.

He then began his own magazine called Lunatickle, one of the first MAD imitators which featured work by Joe Kubert, Russ Heath and Theodore S. Hecht. At the end of 1964 Fass started his tabloid paper National Mirror which ran until 1973. By then, Fass was one of the foremost publishers of sleazy pulp magazines, including Official American Horseman, Hall of Fame Wrestling, True War, Official UFO, Show Dogs, Terror Tales, Horror Tales, Rock, Hard Rock, Super Rock, Punk Rock, Acid Rock, Groupie Rock, Son of Sam, Shotgun Journal, Homicide Detectives and Movie Lies.