Thursday, September 23, 2004

More on Atlas Comics

Tom Lammers writes (and I am grateful to him for this data)...

The Atlas globe logo appeared on the cover while Goodman's books were still distributed by Kable News. The Atlas globe logo was added to covers beginning with the November 1951 issues. Kable News' "K" logo and the North American map that symbolized the independent distributor's union to which Kable belonged remained on the covers through the August 1952 issues. This 10-month co-existence of the Atlas and Kable symbols suggests to me that Atlas was not just a distributor's mark. The fact that it continued to appear on covers through Oct 1957 cover date, even though Goodman closed his distributorship down on 1 Nov 1956 in favor of distribution by American News. The interior page bottom margin blurbs ("For the best in [whatever] tales, look for the Atlas globe on the cover!"] also supports Goodman's intention to use it as a product identity.

I didn't mean to suggest that Goodman never intended "Atlas" to be a company brand-name...but he didn't push that notion a lot; not to the extent DC or Harvey or EC or almost any other company put a big company logo on all their books.

Years ago, the late Don Rico (who was an editor there for many years) explained to me why Goodman listed some of his comics as published by Canam Publishing and some by Vista Publishing and so on. I didn't fully understand the reason and don't remember enough of it to give a coherent recapitulation...but it had something to do with a New York state law back then that gave certain tax advantages to small businesses. It apparently saved money for Goodman to claim he had fifty or sixty small businesses, as opposed to one large one. Rico also said — and this may have been a theory on his part — that Goodman was out to separate his assets so that if some grouping of titles lost too much money, he could declare bankruptcy for the "company" that published them without impacting the rest of his line. In any case, he may have not played up the Atlas insignia too much because he wanted to be able to claim he really did have separate companies that just happened to have the same owner, same offices, same staff and same distribution. Like I said, I don't fully understand this.

However, if he added the Atlas symbol to his covers ten months before Atlas began distributing his own titles through his own company, that suggests to me he did intend it primarily as a distributor's mark. He must have known a year before he shifted distribution that it would happen so, I'm assuming, he slapped the Atlas name on there to begin establishing the identity of his forthcoming distribution company. He left it on when he shifted to American News Service because, by then, it did have that value for product identity...but when American went under and he moved over to Independent News, he chucked the Atlas name. So at that point, it was more important to get rid of it to disassociate himself with his old distribution than to keep it to denote his product line. And to those of you who come here for the non-comic book postings, my apologies...but this is the kind of thing some of us think is important.

• Posted at 7:50 PM · LINK

Atlas Without a Shrug

Before Marvel Comics was Marvel Comics, it was a company of many monikers. A man named Martin Goodman owned it, though he had some of its components in his wife's name. In the early forties, most of its publications were the output of Timely Publications. Eventually, for some obscure legal reason, Goodman's comics were published by an array of at least 59 front companies ranging from Animirth Comics to Zenith Publications, Inc. The distribution company he owned was named Atlas and since its logo appeared on all his covers, fans took to referring to the company as Atlas Comics. Even after he changed distributors and the Atlas seal disappeared, readers referred to the line as "Atlas" until such time as the Marvel logotype was established on his covers. (Within the industry, almost no one used the Atlas name, by the way. Artists and writers would say they were working for "Timely" — a name that remained on the office door, long after it was off the comics — or they'd say, "I'm doing a story for Goodman" or "I'm doing a job for Stan Lee.")

Atlas published thousands of comics of all kinds: ghost comics, westerns, war, funny animals, etc. For the most part, Goodman's modus operandi was to see what was selling for his competitors, then to clutter the stands with like product, crowding others off the newsracks. Most of his comics were concocted under the editorial supervision of Stan Lee but, generally speaking, and with occasional exceptions, the stories in them were of minimal interest — never very bad but rarely very good. That may have been less because of the competence of the writers than the restrictions of format, which called for short, non-connected tales with simple premises and, wherever possible, gimmicky endings where the punishment fits the crime.

Of more interest today is the artwork in these comics. Goodman did not pay well but in a time when the comic book industry was wildly unstable and included some less-than-honest publishers, he usually had work available and his checks always cleared. As a result, just about everyone who worked in the New York comic book talent pool passed through his titles and some of the better artists — men like Bill Everett, Joe Maneely, Russ Heath and Dan DeCarlo — did an awful lot of pages. This makes a lot of their comics fun to collect and study...and if you can't afford to collect, you can at least study covers at two online galleries. Nearly 3000 cover images can be viewed at the Atlas Tales site and another 600 (including much overlap) are at The Timely-Atlas Cover Gallery. The scans don't always do justice to the material but they may give you some idea of how good some of the artistry was on some of their books...and you'll get a sense of Goodman's "flood the stands" style of publishing.

And there's a large point of irony to be noted: Goodman sold Marvel in the late sixties, though he planned to stay on and run it with his son, Charles Goodman. Both Goodmans were squeezed out and in the mid-seventies, they launched a new company and called it Atlas Comics. DC and Marvel promptly increased the number of titles they published and neatly crowded the new Atlas off the newsstands, just as efficiently as the old one had smothered many of its smaller competitors. It was another of those gimmicky endings where the punishment fits the crime.

• Posted at 2:28 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

Darren Margolis writes...

Mark, it seems that the Nation article (and you probably should have disclosed for the benefit of most people who don't know that The Nation is a very far left viewpoint magazine) is misleading in saying that Ashcroft is 0 for 5000. That implies that all 5000 have actually been tried and out of 5000, there have been no convictions. I don't know at this point how many have been tried. A more accurate statistic would have been to state the zero convictions figure as a function of how many have actually been tried.

But the vast majority have never been tried and will never be tried. They get detained, perhaps kept in a cell for an extended period without benefit of counsel, cited as an example of the superb job the Justice Department is doing, rounding up dangerous evildoers. And then, at some point, they're quietly released — because the authorities know they don't have enough evidence to make any sort of case. In most cases, they probably didn't have enough to warrant arresting these people in the first place.

I don't know why this doesn't bother people, including those who believe in an aggressive policy towards domestic terrorist suspects. But then I'm also amazed at how many people who favor the Death Penalty are unbothered by the number of folks who are apparently convicted in error. It's like the goal here is to make sure the government pursues the "right" course of action, and it doesn't really matter if they do it with a great deal of competence.

• Posted at 1:52 PM · LINK