Atlas Seaboard Comics Thread

[Red Oak Kid]

I recently took out a stack of Atlas comics that I have, but never had the time to really appreciate.

I was blown away by reading the first two issues of Wulf the Barbarian by Larry Hama. These are amazing to me. The art is beautiful and the character development is way better than most comics. You can tell that Hama invested a great deal of time and energy into creating Wulf and the world he existed in.

It's a crime that Hama was not allowed to continue this.

I also was impressed by Howard Chaykin's first two issues of the Scorpion. I had read the first ish when it came out, but I don't think I got the second one. This is really top notch work by Chaykin. The art is light years better than his early Grey Mouser art at DC. You can see that his art is a cut above many of the other young turks of the Bronze age.

The Seaboard comics were well distributed in this area of Texas at the time. Wish I had bought more of them.

Anyway, I thought I'd start this thread for anyone who has any memories of these books, good, bad or otherwise.

The Wulf and Scorpion books deserved to have been continued with their original creators.

[rick]

The Atlas books had some really great starts.

The problem was that almost as soon as an issue came out, the editors replaced them with someone else.

Which caused the company to implode in just over a year.

Still, I loved The Grim Ghost and Morlock 2020.

[scratchie]

We had a thread about these last winter, as I recall. There's a lot of great reading at http://www.atlasarchives.com/ (articles about the company, etc.).

I only ever bought two issues off the newstands (the last issues of Tiger-Man and Weird Suspense featuring The Tarantula) but I thought it was cool that there was a new comic book company. Even at age 10, though, I could tell what a rip-off of Marvel they were (e.g. the company logo with the stripe across the top of the cover). Since then (around the time of the aforementioned previous thread) I was able to acquire a complete set of Atlas/Seaboard comics via Ebay. A lot of fun stuff, a few forgotten gems, and a lot of campy 70s goodness. My favorites are The Scorpion and Planet of Vampires.

[Red Oak Kid]

We had a thread about these last winter, as I recall. There's a lot of great reading at http://www.atlasarchives.com/ (articles about the company, etc.).
Since then (around the time of the aforementioned previous thread) I was able to acquire a complete set of Atlas/Seaboard comics via Ebay. A lot of fun stuff, a few forgotten gems, and a lot of campy 70s goodness. My favorites are The Scorpion and Planet of Vampires.

Have you got all four issues of Vicki?

I've also thought it would be cool to collect all the Atlas titles. There are a finite number of issues and I still see plenty of them in good condition and low prices at conventions.

[Stephane Garrelie]

We recently got an Atlas Seabord thread at the Byrne forum, here it is:
www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13851&KW=eeeeeee

[dan bailey]

Have you got all four issues of Vicki?


I don't think I ever buy comics just because they're rare &/or valuable (not because I'm particularly high-minded or anything, but rather because I'm extremely low-funded), but last summer I made an exception when I came across a copy of Vicki #1 in a box of recent (& hence unsorted & -priced) arrivals during a stop at a shop in Birmingham (Alabama, not England). By the time it came out I'd lost interest in Archie & the like, but I thought I'd remembered that it was one of the harder-to-find Seaboard titles, so I figured I'd see what the clerk would charge me ...

Lo & behold, even after glancing at the store copy of Overstreet, he priced it the same as the 3 Planet of Vampires ishes I'd brought to the counter -- $1. (And yeah, he obviously knew how to use Overstreet, because the Ditko Blue Beetle I brought up for him to price certainly proved beyond my wallet's reach.)

[dan bailey]

My favorites are The Scorpion and Planet of Vampires.

I read Scorpion #1 (I think I've estimated elsewhere that I brought probably 75 percent of Atlas Seaboard's output at the time, but for some reason I never picked up this one, even though I distinctly remember seeing it on the 'stands) for the first time just a few weeks ago & liked it.

As it happens, just a few days ago, while finally getting around to going through some stacks of stuff in my living room, I came across a handful of very-low-demand comics (because of torn covers or similar flaws) that had never been put out for sale at my (mostly sports) collectibles store I worked at till it went out of business at the end of July, & that I'd put aside for myself but then forgotten all about. Two of 'em were Atlas -- Police Actions 2 & 3, which I also barely glanced at back in the day (I'm starting to think I ought to scale that 75 percent estimate back a bit).

Looking through them, I see both feature a couple of the oddest-couple pencil-&-inker teams I've ever come across -- Al McWilliams on Mike Sekowsky, & Mike Ploog embellished by Frank Springer. The same was true of ish 1, the GCD tells me.

If we ever have (or have had) a thread on strange-bedfellow pencil-inks combos, I know my first 2 nominations ...

Otherwise, I second the earlier praise for Larry Hama's Wulf the Barbarian, which almost certainly was my favorite of the first few Atlas titles to hit the spinner racks. I well remember the afternoon I found the first 3 Atlases -- Phoenix, Ironjaw & Grim Ghost -- at the drugstore after school, & some 32 years later it seems to me that Wulf came out the following week (probably with another 2 titles ... maybe Weird Suspense & Morlock 2001, or maybe Tales of Evil?*).



*I knew I never should've gotten rid of that daily log I used to keep in pencil during my mid-teens of every comic, zine & sf, fantasy or horror book I got at the store or in the mail ...

[MichikoS]

I'm sure you are both aware of this, but the 4 issues of VICKI published by Atlas/Seabord are re-dos of the TIPPY TEEN (25 issues + special edition) title published by Tower (THUNDER AGENTS) several years before. I seem to recall places where Tippy's name is not changed in the dialogue balloons...?

Anyway, Tippy Teen, her friend Go-Go West, Go-Go's boyfriend Animal and the rest of the gang also had spinoff comic titles: TEEN-IN (4 issues) and TIPPY'S FRIENDS GO-GO AND ANIMAL (15 issues).

I think it's a little ironic that this little teen title outlasted all the better-known Tower superhero titles by a very wide margin.

And I don't see anyone clamoring for an Archive edition of TIPPY TEEN!

Michi

[dan bailey]

Oh, & thanks for that link, Stephane. Glad to see that Byrne addressed the question that immediately came to mind when I saw it -- that is, whether he'd tried to catch on with the new company, since that would've been precisely the period when he was breaking in with Charlton.

[dan bailey]

And I don't see anyone clamoring for an Archive edition of TIPPY TEEN!

Maybe after I get a Harvey Archives of Bunny ...

[Allan Harvey]

If we ever have (or have had) a thread on strange-bedfellow pencil-inks combos, I know my first 2 nominations ...

You want strange? Check out Morlock 2001 #3 -- pencils by Steve Ditko, inks by Bernie Wrightson?!!

[dan bailey]

You want strange? Check out Morlock 2001 #3 -- pencils by Steve Ditko, inks by Bernie Wrightson?!!

Indeed. That's one of the Atlases I made a point of grabbing fairly recently (probably via an online seller, though possibly from the short stack of Atlas titles that popped up in one LCS' dollar bin recently, which was the source of my copies of the aforementioned Scorpion 1 as well as Destructor 1).

[Allan Harvey]

Destructor was a rather lovely series. The first two Scorpions were great too. The Rich Buckler one is worth seeking out, Demon Hunter... Devil Slayer... something like that.

Anyone got the magazines? At least one of those is supposed to be a bit of a classic with Adams, Simonson, et al.

[dan bailey]

You're referring, I believe, to Thrilling Adventure Stories 2, which the above-linked-to Atlas Archives site describes as

probably one of the all-time gems of black and white publishing. Starting with the Neal Adams cover (obscured Warren-style with vapid copy), the issue contains an Archie Goodwin/Walter Simonson samuari story (circa the Manhunter work) and additional pieces by Jack Sparling, Russ Heath, John Severin... and Alex Toth !

I never owned either ish of that title, but did pick up all issues of Movie Monsters & Weird Tales of the Macabre. The debut issue of the latter is the only one I own now; I sought it out because of vivid memories of the rather grotesque (or so I saw it at the time) art by Leo Summers on one story, as well as a really nice Pat Boyette piece & an impressively minimalistic Jeff Jones cover.

(For what it's worth, the GCD lists Summers with a scant 13 credits -- 5 in Seaboard's b&w mags, one in Wulf #3, & 5 more in issues of Creepy from '74-'75 ... then one in Creepy #123 from 1980 & a final one in Renegade's Murder #2 from '86. Interesting, that. Makes me wonder if the two much-later stories were inventory items from his mid-'70s career, such as it was.)

[scratchie]

Destructor was a rather lovely series. The first two Scorpions were great too. The Rich Buckler one is worth seeking out, Demon Hunter... Devil Slayer... something like that.Yeah, it's Demon Hunter, but it's the exact same character as Marvel's Devil Slayer. Devil Slayer's first appearance (in Marvel Spotlight #33) is a direct continuation of Demon Hunter #1, with the character stepping off a plane from Jamaica (where he was last seen in the Atlas book).

[scratchie]

Have you got all four issues of Vicki?Yes I do. They were among the hardest to find, but far from impossible. Looking at my spreadsheet (geek alert), it looks like I started buying Atlas comics at the end of January, and got the last issue of Vicki in the middle of April.

This was also one of the first indications I got of just how completely incaccurate Overstreet could be for obscure comics. He has these issues listed at $6.00 for VG and $32 for NM-. The highest I paid was $5.99 for issue 1 (in Fine or better condition), and I got a nice, minty copy of #2 for 99c.

One issue was from a collector who was selling off a bunch of stuff and trying to pay for his wedding (I probably helped pay for part of one dinner roll). I felt a little bad because he told me "I have a lot more Archie comics to sell if you're interested" and I had to tell him that I was only interested in the one knock-off title he had.


I've also thought it would be cool to collect all the Atlas titles. There are a finite number of issues and I still see plenty of them in good condition and low prices at conventions.That was my reasoning. Here's a "complete" collection that is easily within my grasp, marginally historic in an offbeat way, and fun to boot.

If anyone is looking for Atlas titles, I actually wound up with a bunch of duplicates when I was picking these up. Drop me a private message if interested. Mostly less-desireable titles (e.g. no dupes of the Ditko/Wood issues of Destructor), but if you're looking to complete a collection, I can help. I'd be glad to trade them or sell them cheap.

[Captain Jim]

I think I had pretty much all of them when they first came out (well, not Vicki). Most of them were pretty enjoyable, but my biggest recollection is that not only were the titles short-lived, some of them completely changed direction from one issue to another.

[Lone Ranger]

Back when I started visiting my LCS on a regular basis (circa 1979), titles like Wulf the Barbarian and The Brute were regular denizens of the 10 cent rack.

I always tried to strectch my $1.00 allowance as far as possible so, needless to say, my comic book collection began with a disproportionate number of Atlas-Seaboard books.

About 10 years ago, I recalled this funny little company and started to track down as many books as possible (there were still under $1 at that stage). I accumulated probably 80% of the entire run before losing interest and focusing my efforts elsewhere. I never did get my hands on Vicki!

There is a certain charm to these titles and several of the books aren't half bad. I would have loved to see more Grim Ghost, Wulf and Chaykin's version of the Scorpion. Although it makes my Spidey sense tingle, I actually like the Desctructor, especially since #1 is a very cheap alternative to Amazing Fantasy #15. Hey, it's Ditko. I can't complain.

The war books are also pretty good, one of them has a Toth story, IIRC.

In terms of the Mags, I still pick them up when I see them. I had a copy of Movie Monsters #1 as a kid, but it's been lost and I've never seen a copy again. I've got a Devilina and a Weird Tales of the Macabre, and they are bad at all. Thrilling Adventures Stories #2 is awesome - I blogged about it last year: http://seductionoftheindifferent.blogspot.com/2005/09/all-aboard-atlas-seaboard.html

[Kid Monster]

Atlas - Seaboard comics kick a**. They have such a weird, unique feel to them. Like early 70's Marvel comics, except... "off", somehow. If the Marvel universe had an Earth-2, it would feel like the Atlas Universe.

I have read that all of these characters are public domain now... it seems incredible to me that in the modern American comic book industry, where everything gets cannibalized and re-launched sooner or later, that these properties have pretty much just sat there gathering dust for three decades.

[Red Oak Kid]

I don't know if this is true, but Howard Chaykin needs to snap up the Scorpion rights and do some more stories.

[Kan-Man]

I had been reading this thread and some of these titles sounded familiar. Sure enough, I have the first issues of The Cougar and The Destructor.

Not sure what compelled me to buy The Cougar but I'm guessing it was the Ditko/Wood art that got me to pick up The Destructor.

[T GUy]

I have read that all of these characters are public domain now...

And I have read to the contrary, more specifically that Martin Goodman's successor-in-interest, as I believe they say, will sell the characters/series at $10, 000 apiece (discount for quantity available).

[scratchie]

If I'm not mistaken, don't the articles over at the Atlas Archives say that the creators owned their characters? Wasn't that one of the enticements to work for Atlas?

[MWGallaher]

There were some fun series there, but I don't think any of the properties' copyrights are worth $10K. I mean, what would you do with them? None of the series lasted long enough to put together an attractive reprint collection. If you bought the titles so you could continue it with new adventures, well, there aren't a lot of people left out there eagerly awaiting more Tiger-Man adventures. The trademarks are all either dead or have been claimed (for example, Marvel now claims the trademark to "Phoenix" for use in comic books), so if you just wanted a (currently unused) title such as "The Brute", but were willing to make it about something other than a resucitated blue caveman, you'd be free to do so (and we've all seen plenty of reboots that retained little but the name of the series, such as "The Losers"). And you could probably get away with creating a new series about a resucitated blue caveman if you didn't call it "The Brute" (after all, Rich Buckler revived his one-shot Atlas character "Demon Hunter" as "Devil Slayer" for Marvel)!

[Zenith23]

Wulf was cool but i really loved Iron Jaw, I've got a few others like the weird post apocolypse Planet of the Vampires, Target and one called something like Morlock were the guy went around infecting people with some disgusting fungus infection.
for some reason i've always been rather found of Atlas Seaboard comics.

[JKCarrier]

I don't know if this is true, but Howard Chaykin needs to snap up the Scorpion rights and do some more stories.

He did go on to do a virtually identical character -- Dominic Fortune -- for Marvel. Of course, some would say that all of Chaykin's heroes are pretty much interchangeable anyway. :D

[Jeremy A. Patterson]

He did go on to do a virtually identical character -- Dominic Fortune -- for Marvel. Of course, some would say that all of Chaykin's heroes are pretty much interchangeable anyway. :D

You can use either of those guys for a pulp era fanfic!


J.A.P.

[Jeremy A. Patterson]

Back when I started visiting my LCS on a regular basis (circa 1979), titles like Wulf the Barbarian and The Brute were regular denizens of the 10 cent rack.

I always tried to strectch my $1.00 allowance as far as possible so, needless to say, my comic book collection began with a disproportionate number of Atlas-Seaboard books.

About 10 years ago, I recalled this funny little company and started to track down as many books as possible (there were still under $1 at that stage). I accumulated probably 80% of the entire run before losing interest and focusing my efforts elsewhere. I never did get my hands on Vicki!



The same can be said of the Red Circle Comics/Archie Adventure Series horror & superhero books from the 1970s & 1980s!

J.A.P.

[Lone Ranger]

The same can be said of the Red Circle Comics/Archie Adventure Series horror & superhero books from the 1970s & 1980s!

J.A.P.

For some reason, I don't recall ever seeing those on the 10 cent rack at my LCS.

It was mainly Atlas Seaboard with some less than successful DC and Marvel books like Devil Dinosaur and Beowulf.

I don't think I ever saw any of those Archie books until I as a full grown collector. I don't know if they had lesser distribution to Canada - we certainly got our fair share of Archie humour books (both regular sized and digests).

[benday-dot]

I recently took out a stack of Atlas comics that I have, but never had the time to really appreciate.

I was blown away by reading the first two issues of Wulf the Barbarian by Larry Hama. These are amazing to me. The art is beautiful and the character development is way better than most comics. You can tell that Hama invested a great deal of time and energy into creating Wulf and the world he existed in.

It's a crime that Hama was not allowed to continue this.

I also was impressed by Howard Chaykin's first two issues of the Scorpion. I had read the first ish when it came out, but I don't think I got the second one. This is really top notch work by Chaykin. The art is light years better than his early Grey Mouser art at DC. You can see that his art is a cut above many of the other young turks of the Bronze age.

The Seaboard comics were well distributed in this area of Texas at the time. Wish I had bought more of them.

Anyway, I thought I'd start this thread for anyone who has any memories of these books, good, bad or otherwise.

The Wulf and Scorpion books deserved to have been continued with their original creators.

Hey ROK... I remembered reading your praise on this thread, and I just picked up Wulf Barbarian #2 today for 1.00 Canadian dollar... that's what about 85 Texas Lincolns... at my LCS. Truly a bargain... as you said amazingly good stuff. Larry Hama had it going on all cylinders here. I note the inks attributed to Crusty Bunkers... I know you are rather of a Neal Adams Adams ace... Do you think NA have a hand in this art?

I often look to the eyes and lips to spot some Adams... and it sure looks at places like his pen at work. But there were a lot of Bunkers at work in that studio so I'm not sure.

Here are a couple of refresher scans

[Red Oak Kid]

Hey ROK... I note the inks attributed to Crusty Bunkers... Do you think NA have a hand in this art?

I often look to the eyes and lips to spot some Adams... and it sure looks at places like his pen at work. But there were a lot of Bunkers at work in that studio so I'm not sure.



The checklist on the Neal Adams site also says he had a hand with the art on this issue. Nothing jumps out as 100% Adams to me. The pages are not numbered, but pages 13 and 14 of the story seem to have the most evidence of Adams inks IMO.

One thing that jumped out at me was the face of the lead female, Berithe. She actually looked like a real person, not a generic comic book female. It was amazing to me how consistant her face looked throughout the book. It looks like her face was inked by the same Crusty on all the panels she appeared in. Maybe she was someone's girlfriend.

Also, note the Vampire woman on the cover. This was an example of the Goodman's not liking the fine line art of the Neal Adams clones. According to interviews in the Seaboard issue of CBA, either Martin or Chip Goodman insisted on having the Vampire Woman pasted onto the original cover, tho she did not appear in the story. Incidents like this are why artists like Chaykin, Hama, Amedola, and the original editor Jeff Rovin, quit and Larry Leiber was asked by the Goodman's to take over all the editing chores on the entire line.

[benday-dot]

The checklist on the Neal Adams site also says he had a hand with the art on this issue. Nothing jumps out as 100% Adams to me. The pages are not numbered, but pages 13 and 14 of the story seem to have the most evidence of Adams inks IMO.

One thing that jumped out at me was the face of the lead female, Berithe. She actually looked like a real person, not a generic comic book female. It was amazing to me how consistant her face looked throughout the book. It looks like her face was inked by the same Crusty on all the panels she appeared in. Maybe she was someone's girlfriend.

Also, note the Vampire woman on the cover. This was an example of the Goodman's not liking the fine line art of the Neal Adams clones. According to interviews in the Seaboard issue of CBA, either Martin or Chip Goodman insisted on having the Vampire Woman pasted onto the original cover, tho she did not appear in the story. Incidents like this are why artists like Chaykin, Hama, Amedola, and the original editor Jeff Rovin, quit and Larry Leiber was asked by the Goodman's to take over all the editing chores on the entire line.

Great anecdote. Nice comments regarding the Berithe character. She stood out for me, as well, as being Adamsesque. Likewise, the face of Zemba on page 13 seemed to evoke an Adams influence. I should have mentioned to others that the book itself credits one of my favourite inkers, Klaus Janson with thanks to a host of others. GCD ommits mention of Janson, and goes with Crusty Bunkers on inks. Wulf's hair does remind me of some Janson work.

But back to those petulant Goodman boys. What knuckleheaded interference. Perhaps their juvenile insistence on having that vampire woman make her token appearance on the cover, even at the expense of the coherent whole, related to some misguided sense that the book had to have a Marvel look to succeed. The little paste-on certainly has a 70's Marvel aesthetic, and their mutual abhorence of the fine line may have been an indication that their heads were stuck in the early glory years of their Marvel roots, when Kirby's bold look fetched them oodles of cash.

[Blake K]

When I was a kid, my parents had bought meThe Encyclopedia of Superheroes, edited by Jeff Rovin. It was chock full of Atlas art and had me very intrigued. I did manage to pick up all three issues of Planet of the Vampires, but the one thing I truly have wanted to buy were the rights to ALL the characters. I have this crazy dream to publish new stories, on newsprint paper no less, with a $1.00 cover price and bring comic book goodness into the world.

But it's just a dream. Unless someone here can point me in the right direction...

[Rod G]

When I was a kid, my parents had bought meThe Encyclopedia of Superheroes, edited by Jeff Rovin. It was chock full of Atlas art and had me very intrigued. I did manage to pick up all three issues of Planet of the Vampires, but the one thing I truly have wanted to buy were the rights to ALL the characters. I have this crazy dream to publish new stories, on newsprint paper no less, with a $1.00 cover price and bring comic book goodness into the world.

But it's just a dream. Unless someone here can point me in the right direction...


I have a similar dream.Maybe someday . . .

[T GUy]

Blake,
the one thing I truly have wanted to buy were the rights to ALL the characters. I have this crazy dream to publish new stories, on newsprint paper no less, with a $1.00 cover price and bring comic book goodness into the world.
But it's just a dream. Unless someone here can point me in the right direction... I third that motion.