scratchie
02-24-2006, 06:46 AM
PHOENIX #1 / Atlas Comics / Jan 1975
In Jeff Rovin's article about Atlas Comics (http://www.atlasarchives.com/articles/cj114.html), he makes much of the fact that he strove to give Atlas its own identity while founder Martin Goodman's motto was basically "Make Mine Marvel". As one of Atlas' earliest releases, written and edited by Rovin, Phoenix #1 could easily be taken as an illustration of the sort of comic Rovin would have wanted to publish at Atlas, if given a free hand. The mis-spellings and grammatical mistakes, however, do not speak well for Rovin's editorial abilities (either to proofread his own work or to hire a copy editor).
One of the conflicts Rovin describes is over the magazines' covers: As it turned out, covers proved to be the bloodiest battleground at Atlas. Martin wanted covers with lots of text, word balloons, and close ups of snarling villains or monsters. I, on the other hand, preferred covers with panoramic action and as little text as possible. The whole question of cover design is fascinating. If I had to guess, I would say that the reason to put lots of words on a cover is to encourage people to hold onto it, to read all the text as they try to figure out what it's about. The longer they hold it, the more likely they are (if only slightly) to buy it.
http://www.agitators.com/images/phoenix1.jpg
Phoenix #1, obviously, was designed to suit Rovin's tastes. It's not a bad cover, and while it doesn't include a single caption or speech balloon (only the curiously familiar subtitle "The Man of Tomorrow"), it's dramatic and fairly self-explanatory in its own right, which is more than can can be said for the comic's interior.
Scott Amendola gives us a few good panels, such as the initial splash page featuring an explosion on a space station, but overall, the art suffers from an "unfinished" quality. Perhaps it's supposed to be "artistic" but, with the exception of a few panels, it just looks awkward and rough, and to an average comic buyer in 1975, it probably just looked like crap.
Still, the art should probably be considered the high point of this particular issue. Rovin's story consists mostly of sci-fi cliches ("We are here only to observe! We must not interfere!", "I'll kick your moldy kissers from here to Antares!", etc.) and bizarre plot twists. The lone survivor of the aforementioned exploding space station is rescued by aliens, who first debate whether or not it is ethical to save his life and then put him on "trial" to determine whether he dies or spends the rest of his life in the aliens' compound. After voting to save his life, the aliens then inform the human that, in a curiously-familiar plot twist, they were actually the ones who caused the first humans to evolve from their ape-like ancestors but that the experiment was a failure, so they're going to kill all the humans and start over again! Kind of makes you wonder why they spent all that time debating this one earthman's fate, but I guess they needed to fill a couple of pages.
Moving right along, the earth dude is given some fancy living quarters, but the aliens (who have been observing humankind for millenia) don't bother to lock his door because they don't think he's any kind of threat (he's already flipped out on them at least twice at this point). This conveniently allows him to poke around one of their science labs, where he uses his knowledge of "nuclear physics" to create a super-hero-suit out of "atomic transistors". These little devils (look out, Tony Stark!) allow him to fly on a "small stream of neutrons" and shoot blaster rays out of his hands. Thus equipped, he breaks out of the aliens' base and finds himself in a part of Reykjavik, Iceland inhabited by people named "Mitch" and "Steve".
It's all downhill from there. Instead of the exciting flying-saucer shoot-out depicted on the cover, the climax actually consists of a couple of underground explosions and an "atomic holocaust" back at the aliens' base (triggered remotely by the earth guy, somehow). This, however, only kills a few of the aliens so the rest are around to raise trouble in future issues. Finally, as an example of the "outre and experimental" characters that Rovin hoped to populate his Atlas titles with, our hero muses on the final page "...and my wife! What kind of anguish must she be going through? Man, I wonder if FLASH GORDON ever had problems like these?" Yeah, with "hard bitten and schizophrenic" characters like that, it's a wonder this company didn't survive!
The ads in the magazine include a nice Ernie Colon full-page ad featuring most of Atlas's characters and the curiously-familar slogan "The NEW House of Ideas!!" Rovin mentions in his article that one of his major qualifications for the job was his experience in mail order, and this issue bears that out, featuring ads from the "Seaboard Monster Group" for Super-Hero model kits, Star Trek model kits, Flintstone model kits, Planet of the Apes model kits, glow-in-the-dark monster model kits (I had one or two of those!), Planet of the Apes Super-8 films and assorted "monster home movies".
All in all, not exactly a deathless or historical comic (which is not to say that Atlas's complete output was dross; the first issue of The Scorpion, by contrast, is a typically great Howard Chaykin piece that prefigures his later work like "Cody Starbuck"). This is more of an example of a run-of-the-mill Atlas release, and a reminder that it takes more than money and good intentions to create a memorable piece of fiction.
In Jeff Rovin's article about Atlas Comics (http://www.atlasarchives.com/articles/cj114.html), he makes much of the fact that he strove to give Atlas its own identity while founder Martin Goodman's motto was basically "Make Mine Marvel". As one of Atlas' earliest releases, written and edited by Rovin, Phoenix #1 could easily be taken as an illustration of the sort of comic Rovin would have wanted to publish at Atlas, if given a free hand. The mis-spellings and grammatical mistakes, however, do not speak well for Rovin's editorial abilities (either to proofread his own work or to hire a copy editor).
One of the conflicts Rovin describes is over the magazines' covers: As it turned out, covers proved to be the bloodiest battleground at Atlas. Martin wanted covers with lots of text, word balloons, and close ups of snarling villains or monsters. I, on the other hand, preferred covers with panoramic action and as little text as possible. The whole question of cover design is fascinating. If I had to guess, I would say that the reason to put lots of words on a cover is to encourage people to hold onto it, to read all the text as they try to figure out what it's about. The longer they hold it, the more likely they are (if only slightly) to buy it.
http://www.agitators.com/images/phoenix1.jpg
Phoenix #1, obviously, was designed to suit Rovin's tastes. It's not a bad cover, and while it doesn't include a single caption or speech balloon (only the curiously familiar subtitle "The Man of Tomorrow"), it's dramatic and fairly self-explanatory in its own right, which is more than can can be said for the comic's interior.
Scott Amendola gives us a few good panels, such as the initial splash page featuring an explosion on a space station, but overall, the art suffers from an "unfinished" quality. Perhaps it's supposed to be "artistic" but, with the exception of a few panels, it just looks awkward and rough, and to an average comic buyer in 1975, it probably just looked like crap.
Still, the art should probably be considered the high point of this particular issue. Rovin's story consists mostly of sci-fi cliches ("We are here only to observe! We must not interfere!", "I'll kick your moldy kissers from here to Antares!", etc.) and bizarre plot twists. The lone survivor of the aforementioned exploding space station is rescued by aliens, who first debate whether or not it is ethical to save his life and then put him on "trial" to determine whether he dies or spends the rest of his life in the aliens' compound. After voting to save his life, the aliens then inform the human that, in a curiously-familiar plot twist, they were actually the ones who caused the first humans to evolve from their ape-like ancestors but that the experiment was a failure, so they're going to kill all the humans and start over again! Kind of makes you wonder why they spent all that time debating this one earthman's fate, but I guess they needed to fill a couple of pages.
Moving right along, the earth dude is given some fancy living quarters, but the aliens (who have been observing humankind for millenia) don't bother to lock his door because they don't think he's any kind of threat (he's already flipped out on them at least twice at this point). This conveniently allows him to poke around one of their science labs, where he uses his knowledge of "nuclear physics" to create a super-hero-suit out of "atomic transistors". These little devils (look out, Tony Stark!) allow him to fly on a "small stream of neutrons" and shoot blaster rays out of his hands. Thus equipped, he breaks out of the aliens' base and finds himself in a part of Reykjavik, Iceland inhabited by people named "Mitch" and "Steve".
It's all downhill from there. Instead of the exciting flying-saucer shoot-out depicted on the cover, the climax actually consists of a couple of underground explosions and an "atomic holocaust" back at the aliens' base (triggered remotely by the earth guy, somehow). This, however, only kills a few of the aliens so the rest are around to raise trouble in future issues. Finally, as an example of the "outre and experimental" characters that Rovin hoped to populate his Atlas titles with, our hero muses on the final page "...and my wife! What kind of anguish must she be going through? Man, I wonder if FLASH GORDON ever had problems like these?" Yeah, with "hard bitten and schizophrenic" characters like that, it's a wonder this company didn't survive!
The ads in the magazine include a nice Ernie Colon full-page ad featuring most of Atlas's characters and the curiously-familar slogan "The NEW House of Ideas!!" Rovin mentions in his article that one of his major qualifications for the job was his experience in mail order, and this issue bears that out, featuring ads from the "Seaboard Monster Group" for Super-Hero model kits, Star Trek model kits, Flintstone model kits, Planet of the Apes model kits, glow-in-the-dark monster model kits (I had one or two of those!), Planet of the Apes Super-8 films and assorted "monster home movies".
All in all, not exactly a deathless or historical comic (which is not to say that Atlas's complete output was dross; the first issue of The Scorpion, by contrast, is a typically great Howard Chaykin piece that prefigures his later work like "Cody Starbuck"). This is more of an example of a run-of-the-mill Atlas release, and a reminder that it takes more than money and good intentions to create a memorable piece of fiction.