Thrilling Adventure Stories #2 - Atlas/Seaboard

For the holiday, I thought I'd post a veritable feast of comic booky goodness today. This is Thrilling Adventure Stories #2, from the briefly-existing Atlas Comics line (I implore anyone interested to pick up Comic Book Artist #16 for an exhaustively-deep look at the history of the company). Like a lot of comic companies at the time, Atlas tried their hands at black and white magazines, none better than this.

After the beautiful cover by Neal Adams, you have the story "The Temple of the Spider" by the ever-reliable team of Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson, which is a samurai/horror story combo and very effective.

Next is "The Kromag Saga" by Gabriel Levy and Jack Sparling, which is nothing to write home about but not bad, either. After that is "Tough Cop" by John Albano with beautiful art by Russ Heath. After that is an article about the film The Towering Inferno (why? good question, wish I had an answer, other than it was a cheap way to fill a page or two), and then a war story, "Town Tamer" by Steve Mitchell and the legendary John Severin. Severin did war comics best, I think, and he turns in some great work here.

It all wraps up with a another police story, set in the distant era of 1990(?). Written by Richard Meyers, its drawn by none other than Alex Toth, who I think never did a bad drawing in his life. It's a great, tough story, with a downbeat ending so prevalent in books and movies of the time.

So let's review...five stories, art by Adams, Simonson, Heath, Severin, and Toth, for $1.00. Could this possibly be the best single issue comic book ever published? This book is found on ebay easily (surprisingly), and not for a lot of money (ditto x2); any comic fan should buy a copy and find out for themselves.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!