Thrilling Adventure Stories #1 - Atlas

I wanted to post something a little off-brand from the b/w monoliths of Warren and Marvel, and you can't get more off-brand than Atlas Comics, that shooting star of comics publishers from 1975.

Atlas jumped into the pool hip-deep, and even published some black and white titles like this and Weird Tales of the Macabre. Ironically, while most of the their color comics were obvious knock-offs of Marvel books, it was with the b/w line that they really formed(or at least tried to) their own identity.

The second--and last--issue of this title was so good that it one of the first titles I reviewed, and in fact I agree with Comic Book Artist's assessment that its one of the finest b/w single issues of the seventies, so I thought it was long past time to talk about the first issue!

Past the nice cover by Ernie Colon(whose work for Atlas was uniformily top-notch) we open with a story of Tiger-Man, one of their color comic stars, called "Flesh Peddlers", written by John Albano with art by Colon. Tiger-Man takes on pornographers who prey on young girls, complete with a bad-guy-who-falls-into-a-pool-of-piranhas ending. As derivative as Atlas' superheroes might have been, you never saw Batman take on bad guys like this.

Next is "The Sting of Death" by Albano and Leo Summers, about survivors of a plane crash who now have to deal with the locals...cannibals! Yeeesh!

Third is "Kromag the Killer" by Gabe Levy and Jack Sparling. Kromag was Atlas' Conan-as-caveman character, so we get him taking on dinosaurs, a sabretooth tiger, and making sweet love to nekkid cavewomen. 'Nuff said. (oops, wrong company)

Then we get a text piece on the Films of Alistair Maclean, whose books like The Guns of Navarone, The Satan Bug, and Where Eagles Dare were all turned into films in the last few years. Not sure what this has to do with comics, but I guess Atlas was going for whole stories-of-adventure thing.

The next story is a wonderful tale of "Lawrence of Arabia" by Jeff Rovin and superb art by Frank Thorne, which uses the character from the legendary film for its own purposes. Lots of good, high-adventure fun!

After two pages of pin-ups of the stars of Atlas Comics, "The New House of Ideas!"(cough) by Colon, we have another text piece on the Doc Savage movie(yeah, cause nobody's done that before!). Then we wrap up the issue with "Escape from Nine By 1" by Russ Heath, a great, hard-bitten Great Escape-esque tale.

All in all, a solid issue and a good start to the magazine. They would really hit the mark with the second issue, and then that would be it(*sniff*), so Thrilling Adventure Stories' batting average was around 1000%!

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!