The Problem Of Satan: 31 Days Of Atlas #5

So, Seaboard/Atlas appears to have at first gone out of its way to associate its new line of comics and magazines with Marvel Comics. (See here.) And as discussed here, the initial editorial content from Atlas had insisted that their books would actually outstrip Marvel’s in terms of new ideas and, presumably, storytelling approaches. So […]

To Be (Marvel Comics) Or Not To Be?: 31 Days Of Atlas #4

If Atlas Comics ever had a clear sense of what we’d today label, with perhaps something of a shudder, a brand identity, then it struggled to transmit whatever that might have been. At first glance, Marvel was the company that Atlas appeared to be modelling itself upon. As I wrote about in yesterday’s post, part […]

First Blood, “Movie Monsters”: 31 Days Of Atlas #3

According to the invaluable Mike’s Newsstand, Movie Monsters #1, the very first release from Seaboard/Atlas, was propelled into the comics marketplace on November 15th 1974. It was, to say the least, an odd choice with which to kick off the Goodman’s new venture. Within its covers, no mention of the company’s coming products awaited the […]

The Creators Of Marvel Comics?: 31 Days Of Atlas #2

Atlas/Seaboard’s publishing schedule began with every appearance of caution. In October 1974, the company debuted two new magazine titles, Movie Monsters and Weird Tales Of The Macabre. Each trod exceptionally well-trodden paths, and, as a consequence, each could have passed, at first glance, as the products of several other companies. (It had always been the […]

The Death Of Atlas Comics: 31 Days Of Atlas: #1

A mere year after the Lilliputian British fan press had picked up on the formation of Seaboard Publishing and its Atlas Comics imprint, the company was, in the worlds of UK fanzine The Panelologist, “stone dead”. In terms of shipping product to the marketplace, Seaboard/Atlas had been active for just 9 months, from October 1974 […]

On Frances Castle’s “Stagdale Part 1”. (3 of 3)

concluded from here. 7 That gap, between pristine myth and overripe reality, is constantly on display in Stagdale’s pages. A double-sided spread of the town centre – see above for part of it – looks at first like the kind of rural Shangri-la that estate agents would haul each other viciously through any […]

On Frances Castle’s “Stagdale Part 1”. (2 of 3)

contccontinued from here; 5. At first glance, the very format of Stagdale Part 1 suggests a gently nostalgic read. Although hardly commonplace in 2019, Stagdale‘s particular shape and size – roughly that of a medium-formatted paperback turned on its side – was frequently used in the post-war decades, and indeed right up until the Eighties, […]