November 9, 2025 • 57 mins
Before there was the Marvel Universe… before Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four changed everything in 1961… there was Atlas Comics. It was the 1950s — the so-called “lost decade” for Marvel. The superheroes were gone. In their place came monsters, crime, westerns, romance, and science fiction. But inside those pages, you could already see the DNA of what was coming next.
From artists like Joe Maneely, Bill Everett, and a young Steve Ditko… to Stan Lee’s endless experiments with genre and tone… the Atlas years are the missing link between Timely’s Golden Age and Marvel’s Silver Age explosion. In this episode, we’re diving deep into that forgotten era — the stories, the creators, the rise and fall of the Atlas line, and how those books quietly paved the way for the Marvel Revolution.
From artists like Joe Maneely, Bill Everett, and a young Steve Ditko… to Stan Lee’s endless experiments with genre and tone… the Atlas years are the missing link between Timely’s Golden Age and Marvel’s Silver Age explosion. In this episode, we’re diving deep into that forgotten era — the stories, the creators, the rise and fall of the Atlas line, and how those books quietly paved the way for the Marvel Revolution.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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This month October, we're going to be discussing Birds of Prey,
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Balloon listeners. Very excited to be talking to doctor Michael Vassolo,
who has been shepherding this great run of Atlas comics
(01:31):
that is starting with the career of Joe Mineely for Fantagraphics. Michael,
thank you very much for joining me today.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Happy to be here at John.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Let's put Atlas in perspective. As far as where the
company was in the nineteen fifties, do we know why
they changed from Timely to Atlas.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
The actual name Atlas was really Martin Goodman's distribution company,
and at some point in the early nineteen really about
nineteen fifty one, it became both a distribution logo and
it also became a brand for the company. But he
had used that brand of that Atlas globe on and
(02:12):
off in the nineteen forties on various other periodicals, not
only a couple of comic books, but true crime Detective magazine,
Crime Digest paperbacks, and it just really never stuck, and
in the nineteen fifties it stuck.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
For good Yeah, certainly for the rest of the decade
until the change to Marvel. They and also, you know,
kind of timely Martin Goodwin notorious for lots of different
genres in pulp and comics. I would imagine did they
do any other magazines that weren't storytelling, you know, fiction.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
The comic books were only one part of Martin Goodman's
publishing empire, if you want to call it, which ran
under the Umbrella Magazine management. He started out in nineteen
thirty three, really nineteen thirty four, publishing pulp magazines, and
he took that you've heard of the red circle pulps, well,
(03:14):
those were his Red circle. And then of course he
jumped on the bandwagon with Marvel Comics number one in
nineteen thirty nine, and in no time at all he
was branching out to true crime magazines, girly humor magazines,
a copy of Hugo Gernsback's Sexology type magazines, Reader's Digest,
(03:41):
ripoff type magazines, and then about nineteen forty six he
started with the film in Hollywood magazines also, and they
were a very very large part of his publishing line
into the nineteen fifties and then into the nineteen sixties,
television magazines, the romance magazines, they were just so many
(04:02):
of them, but one of the biggest sellers were the
men's adventure magazines. He really sort of pioneered the market,
you know. He started out with Stead in nineteen forty nine,
and it started out as a magazine that the World
War Two veterans would read. And certainly when the Korean
War started, they had all these war covers and everything,
and after Men after Stair came Mail and Men in
(04:26):
Action and men. He just promulgated the newsstands with these
types of magazines. They were probably his biggest sellers actually,
But you know, running at the same time was the
comic book line. You know, world War Two, he made
a fortune with the Golden Age comic books. But following
the war, for the most part, superheroes, you know, went
(04:47):
into the toilet, and he was right on the spot
already given up on superheroes and branching out into humor comics. Well,
they started early on uman comics, but by nineteen forty
seven he was doing crime comic books, and then in
nineteen forty eight and forty nine came the Delujah, Western's Romance,
(05:07):
and then of course Horror.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Very cool. Yeah, and I know too, going back to
the thirties. Ksar was originally a pulp hero and then
of course later exploited in the cup.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Actually you can't see it, but up on the shelf
there is the three issues of KSAR I can pull on.
That's great if you want to see them.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
That's that's terrific. I remember at the Society of Illustrators
in New York a few years ago, many years ago,
now that I think about it.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It's around the corner from my office.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Oh that's great, man, what a great place. And Blake
Bell was there with Al Jaffe and I know Paul
Levitz was in the audience, and I saw at least
one I don't know if those were your pulp magazines.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
They weren't. I was there also.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Oh that's great man. I'm sorry we didn't know each other.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
That's okay. I was on stage with Blake Bell and
we had Al Jaffe and we had Stan Goldberg there all.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, Goldberg absolutely. Then.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah, it was a nice time.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah, it really was. No, and again, incredibly informative, and
that's why, I'm so glad you're doing this.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
True, that was that was John, That was for this book. Yes,
this book idea that I did with Blake Bell.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Absolutely the Secret History of Marvel Comics for the audio audience. Yeah, yeah, no, honestly, man,
I'm so glad that you and Blake did this, and
I'm really glad you're doing the projects now for fanographics.
You know. So what was stan Lee's role during the fifties.
You know, I'm Martin owned the company, but what was
stan doing?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, stan Lee was the the if you I don't
know if it was an official title editor in chief,
but he was basically the unofficial editor in chief of
the entire line of comic books. There were editors who
were under him. He did some writing, He didn't do
a lot of writing.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
You know, the old sore and he might have even
mentioned it in interviews over the years that he was
before the Fantastic Four appeared, he was writing everything you
know that that Atlas was putting out.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Not so he did some, right, Yeah, he did some writing,
but most of the stuff. There was a huge poulyanx
of freelance writers who wrote for the line.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
And certainly evident as evidenced in this Menaly collection. That
different a lot of the different writers. And you even say,
when you're able to figure out who wrote it, you
huge credit, and that was kind of difficult.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
There are a lot of writers who to this day
are pretty much unknown. You know. Some of the writers
kept their work records, and those work records over the
years have finally come to light, and they kept meticulous
records with story titles, et cetera. And I've had access
to at least three sets of records from three separate writers,
(07:56):
and I've been able to assign hundreds and hundreds of
stories to the outlass stories in the various genres. But
it still doesn't come close to accounting for all the writers.
But I will say one thing, Stan was the only
one who signed the stories that he actually wrote, the
(08:16):
only one.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, and maybe that dual role of you know, was
he also considered the art director as well, or was
there an art director.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
I would say he was considered the art director. There
were probably unofficial art directors, you know, during the nineteen forties,
in the timely years they were in the Empire State Building,
and I would say that the unofficial art director was
probably Sid Shores, who was a little bit older than
a lot of the younger artists that were coming in
(08:45):
and was a mentor to a lot of the young artists.
But I would say Stan probably had the official title
as art director. As a matter of fact, I think
I've even seen in some of the books where there
are some credits his name would be listed as as
art director.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
You know, I noticed too, and you certainly mentioned because Timely,
you know, had their superhero line. As you say, as
they fell out of favor in the forties, they stopped.
They did try briefly in the early fifties to bring
it back, and Maneli did, like you said, I believe
three sub Mariner covers.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah, and then you know, we called the Atlas Hero Revival.
There was an attempt to bring back the Submarin at
Captain America and the Human Torch, and of course they
still had col Bergos doing the Human Torch who created
the character. They had Bill Everett who was still doing
the Submarin and those are beautiful, beautiful stories. There's some
of the best artwork of Bill Everett's career. And you know, Maneely,
(09:46):
who was basically doing every genre there was, did get
the assignment to do three sub Marina covers, and you know,
they're kind of cool because that's really the only superhero
work that he really ever did.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Unless you count the Black Night who kind of was
retrofitted into superhero line in the sixties and stuff. Yeah, no,
it's it's really fun to get to know his work.
You mentioned sid Shores where there where like you know, again,
these were all freelance guys working.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
For SEE in the nineteen forties. They worked in a
in a bullpen on staff in the fourteenth floor of
the Empire State buildum and they had a very large
staff of adventure artists, which was superhero artists, humor artists
that were churning out crazy comics and comedy comics and whatnot.
(10:41):
But the staff was let go at the end of
nineteen forty nine and everyone went freelance after that, and
within a year it was basically Atlis Comics and everything
was done on a freelance basis. Going was going for Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Was Minealy part of that staff and then work freelance or.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Nearly shows up in nineteen forty nine, So he couldn't
have been on staff because he was still living in
Philadelphia at the time. He was probably taking the train
into New York to you know, make the rounds look
for work. He had started out at Street and Smith Comics,
and he had done about two years work of work
(11:22):
at Street and Smith, but he did it long distance.
He did it through an art service in Philadelphia, and
that's where the work that he did for Street and
Smith was funneled into the city. Well, Street and Smith
shut down their comic book division at the end, was
at some point in nineteen forty nine, and he was
working almost exclusively for Street and Smith and he needed work,
(11:43):
so he started to come into Manhattan and he was
making the rounds and I guess one of the biggest
the first stops he made was Timely Comics, and you know,
they gave him a couple of assignments. He turned them in.
I'm convinced I've spotted him in stories where there are
a lot of diverse hands that you could see because
a lot of the work done on Staff and Timely
(12:05):
was done in an assembly line fashion. So you know,
they were pencilers and there were incers, and there were
even different pencils and different incres on different pages. So
it was just a real assembly line. So I'm pretty
confident that I've spotted me nearly pitching in, as it were,
on some of those some of those Western stories in
(12:27):
nineteen forty nine. But the first story he did solo
did appear in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Okay. And I'm glad you mentioned Street and Smith. I
certainly read that in your introduction, great extensive bio of
Menally in thank you for the book, absolutely and again
the right guy to do it, But mentioning the Street
and Smith stuff, Yeah, people might know. Obviously both the
the pulp and radio hero of The Shadow was a
(12:53):
big Street and Smith. I think Doc Savage as well,
I believe.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Yeah, Actually Joe never act We drew a Shadow story,
but one of his backups were in one of the
issues of Shadow Comics.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Okay. And also ironically, one of the horror Alice stories
in your collection was called The Shadow and having nothing
to do with the public, kind of a classic o'
henry sort of horror that was typical of what Marvel
was putting out as a kid, I know, I was
reading Where Monsters Dwell, which we printed a lot of
(13:28):
the horror stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Well, I can give you a little background how I
got interested in Joe Manneely, just like what you said.
You know, I didn't read comic books in the nineteen sixties.
I was born in sixty one, and there were no
comic books in my house, you know, throughout the nineteen sixties.
I found them on my own in the early nineteen seventies,
you know, at a local candy store. And one of
(13:51):
the things that I liked the best of those comic
book precks, well all those reprints that Marvel was publishing.
So you know you mentioned where Monsters Dwell. They published
so many different horror reprints at that time, you know,
the Vault of Evil and Uncanny Tales from the Grave
and Cryptive No, not Crypto Teror, that's an easy title,
(14:12):
but you know, titles like that, and reading them, you know,
they always had on the bottom a little things that
originally published in and to me it was like, what
are those books? Where are those books?
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (14:26):
And you know, it took a while years later, as
I got older and started getting involved with comic book
conventions and back issue dealers, that I finally found that
those books did exist, and I made it my ambition
to try to track down every single issue of every
single Atlas comic book.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
As you pour through both Timeline Atlas comics, because Goodman
had a reputation of really seeing a trend and jumping
on it, and in fact, a lot of venue people
will see in this Menaly collection some of the horror
books and accidentally mentioning EC they would have a narrator
(15:06):
the way the EC books would The crypt Keeper and
the Like and the Witch.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
It is, without a doubt, based on you know what
you're saying that that Stanley was looking at what EC
was doing. You know, they had one title called Suspense,
which ran about twenty nine issues. It's it was a
licensed off of the CBS radio series and then television series.
(15:34):
You know, the first the first two issues were crime comics,
more close to what the radio show was. But by
the third issue it really became a horror comic. And
on the bomb it always says based on the CBS
television series or radio series. And you know, three quarters
of the way through the run, that little blurb vanished. Interesting, Yeah,
(15:56):
yeah it did. But I forgot where I was going
with this, but I lost my train of thought.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
No problem, man, no, And we were just you know, discussing,
how uh it seemed.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
No yeah, no, yes, I mentioned suspense. Yes, because Stanley
was looking at what EC Comics was doing in that
in those years, in nineteen fifty one, nineteen fifty two, uh,
and even nineteen fifty three. And what stan did really
for the first time is he put a letters page
in suspense. And I mean when you read the letters,
(16:34):
they look like stan wrote most of the letters, and
I think I think even got his wife to write
one of the letters. And the addresses were the addresses
were Stand's house on Long Island and whatnot. And in
the war books during the Korean War, when the war
genre got started, they were looking at what Kurtzman was
doing over at EC and trying to copy. That also
(16:57):
makes sense. Oh yeah, they weren't looking at what he's
he was doing, certainly.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
No, And and again if people when people read this collection,
they will see a similarity to a lot of the
C books. Absolutely was going to ask you about suspense.
I'm an old time radio fan. H Well, you know,
I'm a big just twentieth century pop culture fascinates me.
And I noticed too that not only Marvel or I
should say Atlas, but I know DC had their share
(17:24):
of licensed radio programs. I know, mister Mister District Attorney
was a popular radio show, and I know that was
a DC book.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
So with with with Atolis, they were a handful. There
was suspense. It was my friend irma. Huh, let's see
what else. Oh, Casey Crime Photographer. Yes, yes, yes, those
three will license titles from CBS. And the reason why
(17:53):
they it was all CBS is that Goodman's uh business
lawyer's brother was I think assistant director of publicity at CBS.
So they were you know, they were able to grease
the wheels to get the license fairly easy in that manner.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
That's great. So I'm glad you mentioned Casey Crime Photographer,
another really great radio show. But I know, within the
last ten or fifteen years, you know, they kind of
retconned that fifties period Marvel when they brought the superheroes back,
and you likely know as well, we're almost the same age, Michael.
(18:33):
But when they did a mini series of it wasn't
Steve Rogers. Steve was in the ice supposedly.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, and yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Want to say Carl Keesol wrote a cap mini series
about the replacement Captain America and flash Gun Casey was
one of the side characters in it. Oh really that
was great, absolutely well, And again, being an old radio fan,
I recognized right away and I'm like, absolutely, that's Casey
Crime Photographer.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
That's actually the Casey Crime Photographer. Comic book is pretty good.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Too, that's good to hear.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Well, it all had photo covers I guess taken from well,
not from the radio show, but was there an early
TV show also Casey Crime Photographer.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Well, I know there was that Bronson Charles Bronson initial
called Man with a Camera that I don't believe, you know,
I think it was a different crime photographer, but you
know a lot of times they would do publicity photos
for the radio shows. Yeah, and it could be I
remember the guy's name, because you can't forget a name
like Stotts Cottsworth was Casey, and it wouldn't surprise me
(19:39):
if they made, you know, publicity shots of them. And again,
as you explained the connection to CBS's publicity department, that
makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, very cool man.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Well, I wonder you mentioned to me off the air
that while you're going to focus on the various artists
of the Atlas period, that there's also going to be
a separate track of books. Give me the opportunity.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Yeah, you know, the first one is out already. I
don't know if you saw it. It's Adventures into Terror.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Oh great.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah. This reprints the first eight issues of the of
the title and the second well, I don't at some
point we'll circle around for the next eight issues, but
you know, it might be a year before that happens.
Coming out in April is a book I'm really waiting for,
not me, but the public is waiting for. I finally
(20:29):
put together the second half of the run of the
title of Venus, so we're calling it Venus Volume two.
Volume one novel published maybe about ten years ago, and
they were going to do volume one in volume two,
but I guess the sales on volume one were not
up to par, and I guess the sales in the
(20:50):
line itself was not up to par, and they just
stopped publishing them. But the world was waiting for Venus
Volume two because volume two seven issues written and drawn
by Bill Everett, and there's some of the wildest comic
book stories you could ever see. And you know, over
the years, people would ask me, when is Marvel going
(21:11):
to do Vena's Volume two, and I would just shrug
my shoulders and say, I don't know. But now it's done.
The book is done. It'll be out in about a
month and a half.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
That's terrific. And you know, where would you say, I mean,
I'm not expecting a headcount from you, per se. But
how big is the interest in these pre Silver Age
era books?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I don't know. I mean, there is a large group
of collectors who love this stuff. Obviously, I know Marvels
sales were not up to par on what their silver
and Bronze a stuff was, and I'm sure that's the
reason why. Also, I think there might have been a
little more expensive to put together because a lot of
the art had to be restored. To see, the way
(21:57):
we're doing it is, I'm actually scanning my own books
in high in high resolution. And then and then you know,
a friend of mine, Alan Harvey and and and someone
also with fanographics also digitally is cleaning up these these
high resolution scans. So and we're not recoloring them. It's
the original coloring. Also, and the fans really like that.
(22:19):
They they they didn't like the garish recoloring that the
Marvel master works had personally, I didn't care. I mean,
I was happy to even see those books. But you know,
but but a lot of people did not like them.
And and they were printed on very you know, glossy
right paper and and you know, again I liked them.
But but but a lot of folks you know, did not. Uh.
(22:43):
But there you know, the reports back on this first
book and also the me Nearly Bok because they loved
the way the artwork looks. You know, people have said
it's the best reproduction of vintage material that they've seen
so far. And I'm happy. I'm happy to that because
I see some of the reprint books that are done
on the cheap and while it's nice to have that material,
(23:06):
you know, it looks muddy.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
I so agree with you, man, And I've loved what
id W has done with newspaper strips and clover press
as well. I think they do a good job. And no,
I'm I'm really glad that care is being taken. And
mentioning colors, you know, we always they were always known
as four color books. I don't know how many colors
were in the was it only sixteen originally? I don't
(23:32):
even know.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
It's out of my comfort zone.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
I don't know, Okay, okay, I remember talking to Neil
Adams and I think it was he gave Saul Harrison
credit for like doubling the color scheme, or he worked
with Harrison to make that happen at DC and everything.
But even no, and you mentioned because I think of
when Neil was remastering a lot of his old stuff
and putting new colors on it. Yeah. Man, no, it
(23:57):
kind of takes away the charm. I mean, just as
I'm sure your room and what you've got behind you
and stuff has that wonderful, decomposing comic book smell that
we all love in a great vintage job.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
You know this, this is the Library of Congress here,
this is the room at the end of Indiana Jones
where they take the art more. There's more molding pulp
paper here than you can imagine. John, That's fantastic pulps,
comic books, old newspapers, magazines, you name it. I'm surrounded
(24:31):
by it.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
That's excellent. Behind you in the frame next to your bookcase,
is that a pulp cover? Is that a comic cover? Astonishing? Yeah,
let's see. Oh there you go.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Image.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Also, that's that original image. That's fantastic, is it? Is
it the original?
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Uh? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (24:52):
And and was that reproduced in some way to make
the cover for the Mini Lely collection or.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
No, the the cover was the Manealy book was shot
right from the actual comic book.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
That's excellent, man, Yeah, now that's great. I love this collection.
It does cover so many genres and that's great. And
I mean, you know, his work in westerns was really cool.
The fact that he was doing contemporary Korean war stories
while the war was happening is pretty cool, all of it.
And again top to bottom, the sci fi and the
(25:25):
horror stuff too.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
But we're making the rounds on these books. What I
mean by that is the first book was a horror book.
The second book is Venus, which everyone is waiting for.
The third book is going to be Space Opera. So
Adalys published two science fiction book ROGERI type series is
Space Squadron and Speed Carter Spacemen and there are six
(25:47):
issues each. And I didn't know what to do because
you know, we're fitting eight issues into these types of books,
and that comes to you know, one is six issues.
You could put it together, it's twelve issues. But god,
bless fanographics. They just said we'll do all twelve issues
in one volume. So you're going to get all twelve
issues of both serieses in one volume that should be
(26:11):
out in May, I think June.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Okay, and they're back. Then was it sixty four pages
for ten cents? Was it forty eight pages for no?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
No? No? The standard Atlas comic was thirty six pages
for ten cents in nineteen fifty they some of the
books expanded to fifty fifty two pages, and you know,
they're thicker. And in the Venus book, we had that
problem because the first issue a volume of Venus was
(26:42):
I think issues one through nine, and the second volumn
is going to be issues ten through through nineteen. And
when you throw in the first one or two issues
of double size issues, it's a lot of pages. But
like I said, we're running them all in there, the
entire things. That's going to be a thick, thick book.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And then, and maybe this was just a golden age thing,
but those a lot of comics would have a two
page text piece, and I know, in fact, Stanley's first
writing for Timely was a two page Captain America.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Actually every comic had a two page text piece. It
was required for for for postal reasons. I guess you
couldn't get a certain type of postage unless it was text.
It was a magazine or something like that. So they
the magazine rate for posts. Yeah, exactly, so they had
(27:39):
to include them. And yes, Stanley's first thing was a
text piece in Captain American number of three.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
And and did that continue through the fifties as well,
that they would still have a really wow you know
when that stopped? It it stopped in the sixties.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
It continued into the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
So I'm trying to think, you know, years of reading
silver Age Mardel at some point, at some point it
was abandoned in this in the nineteen sixties. Memory tells
me I couldn't tell you exactly when, but it did
continue into the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
And Joe's career, man, And it's such a shame. And
I'll let people read about Joe and they they can
learn more. I want to get people obviously, you know,
not only reading the comics but your great work as well.
But there was that period, and I suppose that it
kind of was part of the era in which Joe
was doing his Atlas books where Martin Goodman saw that
(28:35):
there was so much back unpublished stories, and that's kind
of when all the everyone was fired. No, so yeah,
clarify that for you. Yeah, I'll put the timeline together, Okay,
that that story, and whether it's one hundred percent true
or not, I don't know. There might have been a
lot of reasons why Martin Goodman wanted to disband the
(28:57):
staff at timely. There may have been tax reasons. There
might have been insurance reasons.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
I don't know. But the story is he opened up
a cabinet and saw, you know, hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds of pages of unused artwork, and he flipped his
lid and said, fire everybody and start using this stuff up,
et cetera. I don't know if the story is one
hundred percent true or not, but that's what led to
the staff being fired in nineteen forty nine and everyone
(29:24):
going freelance. Now, the other thing you might be thinking
of is the Atlas implosion, which happened in nineteen fifty seven.
That's a completely different matter. In fifty six, what he
did is that he dismantled his self distribution network, the
Atlas News Company, and went on from the advice that.
(29:44):
I guess his business manager with the American anc the
American News Company, which is one of the largest at
the time magazine distribution networks. They were in all the
train stations, and it probably sounded like a great idea,
except that behind the scenes there was problems with that company,
(30:05):
and within a year's time they just went belly up.
And Goodman had ramped up his production to the point
where by you know, early nineteen fifty seven, there were
sixty five to seventy titles at one time, not at
one time on the newsstand, but sixty five to seventy
titles in total that were being churned out, and all
(30:28):
of a sudden he had no way to get them
to the newsstands. So, you know, we call it the
Atlas implosion. But what happened is that they just canceled everything,
and he immediately looked for another way to get some
of his books onto the newsstands. And I guess not,
I guess he went on. He signed on with Independent News,
which was his rival DC, and you must have said
(30:52):
something like, yeah, we'll take you on, but you're not
taking on sixty books. You know, you can do eight
books a month or something like that and that was it,
and it nearly it decimated the freelancers because everybody freelanced
for Martin goodmane there were so many titles. When all
(31:14):
of a sudden there was no more place to freelance,
people left the industry in droves.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
It is amazing.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
And to get back to what you were saying, is
that Goodman had inventory at that time, so they stopped
buying new work. And I believe it was in April
of nineteen fifty seven, and they subsisted on inventory for
about ten months and there was nothing new. There was
no more work at Martin Goodman's comic book division. Stanley
(31:45):
was all by himself in a cubicle putting books together
with inventory for ten months and then at some point
and then at some point the call went out again
to start buying work again, and Joe Maneely did come back.
He took over two gun Kid. I think he got
about five issues out and then he died. Yeah, and
(32:09):
that's a whole other what if type.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Of a.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Scenario.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah, you would imagine much like some of the guys
that came from that late fifties period and went onto
the silver age, and that the nearly likely would have
gotten some sort of superhero assignment.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Well, there's there's there's different ways of looking at it,
and I don't think there's a right answer at all.
You know, the way I put it in the introduction
was just musing. You know, it's just opinion of mine
based on what I've seen with the industry and you
know in the nineteen fifties and and and whatnot. But
but there is a business document that's dated within a
(32:49):
week after Joe died, where Martin Goodman was going to
close down the comic book division, and in no time
at all he reversed and all of a sudden, science
fiction titles, you know, tales of suspense, tales to astonished,
strange worlds, and and Jack Herby was interviewed once and
(33:11):
it might have been in the Art of Jack Kirby,
and he said that he had heard that Martin Goodman
was closing down his comic book division and he raced
over there and Withstan they sort of talked him into
keeping it open. And I would say that he probably
had ideas for new titles, you know, can do all
the science fiction. He had been doing that at DC,
(33:33):
and he was doing you know, he was doing the
science fiction newspaper strip also, so that's what he knew.
Martin Gooden did not like science fiction, you know. To me,
it always seemed a little strange that he would just say, hey,
let's put out some science fiction books, you know, a
genre that never sold for me. I can only think
that it was Jack Kirby who sort of cajoled him into,
(33:56):
uh maybe through just the force of his will, to
start heading towards science fiction. Plus, you had the Twilight
Zone on TV, and you had all those things, you know,
you know, that was starting. And of course and once
that happened, within a few years we had Fantastic four,
you know, number one. But what if Joe had not died,
(34:18):
was Goodman going to then shut down the company? Their answays?
I don't know, you know, no one will ever know.
We don't know. And if he doesn't die, and he
just keeps doing two Gun Kid, and Goodman just keeps
doing what he had been doing, there's no marvel age
of comics in the nineteen sixties now, mind you people
will subscribe to It was stan Lee who was, you know,
(34:40):
pushing the superheroes and whatever. And I'm not going to
get into that, you know, right, now here at all.
But but you know, to me, it was always Jack
driving that company, and I think it was his impetus
that launched the marvel age of comics.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Well. And also in that science fiction period of the
late fifties, you still had tons of movies B movies
coming out, So that's true. And uh yeah, I mean,
good lord, I'll I'll make the connection. And I'm sure
you would agree that the Challenges of the Unknown that
Jack was doing at DC is a direct through line.
Especially I mean look at that early Fantastic four number
(35:18):
one cover and compared to some of the Challenges covers
and stuff. Yeah, and that's great. I mean again, there's
there's a there was a lot of uh you know,
uh uh uh genres sharing and then ideas that were
born from other other comics and stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
I love discovering the heap, the big uh the big
swamp thing like character, that man thing and swamp thing certainly. Yeah. Yeah,
so no, it's it is fascinating. Now. Also, Stan kept
trying to break into the comic strip business, and he
and Joe had their comic strip correct.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Yeah. Yeah, Actually, at the time of Joe's death, he
was working on Missus Lyons Cubs a gentle humor type. Yeah,
Cups Cups, scout strip and you know when Joe died,
Al Hartley took it over and it ran for a
few more months and then you know that was that
was the end of it. It was cool to Joe.
(36:16):
Joe was doing Joe was doing Missus Lyon's Cubs, and
he was doing two Gun Kids and assorted covers all
over the line.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
It's cool. Yeah, no, And I'm glad you even have
some strips in the Menealy book as well, uh, to
reflect that work. You know, it's really really interesting. So
now you say that, you know, Jack obviously might have
been the through line in terms of pushing him into
sci fi? Is there is there a line out there
as far as and I don't know if you ever
got a chance to talk to Stan about Manealy.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
I did. I knew Stan, not well, but I had
his email address for at least fifteen years before he
passed away, and before he stopped answering his email, and
and he knew my name from the Marvel master Works
and whatever. I ran it dam in San Diego a
few times, but I always I would pick his brains,
(37:08):
but I would pick his brains about old stuff, so
he felt comfortable with me. I wasn't going to bring
up any of the controversial stuff, so I would ask
him about some of the earliest stuff when he broke
into the business at Timely, what he remembered about so
and so person and whatnot. And you know, his memory
(37:30):
about that old, old stuff was better than you would
have thought. He did recall a lot of that stuff. Actually,
he had no idea how I knew all about that stuff.
He would, you know, he would say I knew more
about Timely and Atlas than he did.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
That's which is probably true. Well again, and you you know,
you were sifting through the grains of sand and getting
a lot of the stuff that I'm sure was just
day to day and in his brain and out of
his brain. So no, I can appreciate that. Definitely. Of
Manealy's genres, my favorite stuff he was doing, based on
(38:05):
what I read in the book, was the Westerns, obviously,
and I really really really appreciate it. Do you have
them that he did?
Speaker 2 (38:12):
In particular, you asked me what my favorite might be.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah, but continue your thought that you were going to.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Say, I like it all. I mean, he was so versatile. Obviously,
the first thing that I was aware of of him
was was The Black Knight when they were reprinting that,
and then of course it was the horror comics in
those early nineteen seventy Marvel reprint reprint books. And it
was only after, you know, when I was already older,
(38:38):
going to conventions and finding out what Marvel actually published
before the Fantastic Four, that I realized that he had
done just work in every single type of book there was.
And I like the humor stuff. He was a very
good cartoonist. You know, you see that Dennis the Menace parody,
(38:58):
you know that's there, which was just spot on. It
was really really good. I can imagine him even going
over to Mad Magazine if he had lived also, you know,
he could have been He did go over, and he
was in the first five issues of Crack the magazine.
So and then of course he did that that Mad
Magazine copycat that Atlas did snaff wu Y, which two
(39:21):
issues of that, And I mean, whether it's you think
it's that funny is another matter. But the artwork was phenomenal,
if the parodies were phenomenal. He was extremely versatile. He really,
really was, so, I guess. And I like the war
stuff also. The war stuff is really really good. But
I think he's probably best known for the Westerns because
(39:42):
his his his attention to detail on the Westerns. You know,
you saw some of the photos I show there. He
had all these ancient guns on the wall there. He
had all these like model sheets that you know that
he had made up for every type of gun and
saddle and and button. Uh. There was so much detail,
(40:05):
you know, he put into all that stuff that someone
who like, like like even Jack Herby, who I love
who I love his Western work too, he was not focusing,
you know, on those details at all, but Joe was.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
That's really cool, no, I I also appreciate John Severn's
Western stuff from that area.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
John Severn and Joe. John and Joe were close friends.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
And and Severn was out with Joe that night, uh,
you know, saying goodbye to him, you know, the night
that Joe the night that Joe died. I did not
get a chance to interview and speak with John Severn,
and it's something I regret to to this day. You know,
he he was always around, he was always I'll get
to it, you know, I'll get to it, and then
(40:50):
it was just and then it was too late.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
That happened with me and Joe Kubert. Uh, Jimmy Palmiatti
and Amanda Connor were very kind introduced me to him
at a show, and it was great. I knew about
his saint John's work, I knew about him being friendly well,
Norman Mauer, his folk collaborator, marrying into Mo Howard's family. Yeah,
(41:13):
Mo Howard started from three Stooges, so yeah, I mean, yeah,
we totally bonded over just talking about the Stooges and
things like that. And I regret never having him on
word below and it's like, ah, yeah, so close. So
I can I can absolutely appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Joe, Joe and John Severn occasionally would even trade off
pages of stories. You know, you could find Western stories,
you know, by John Sever and you can say, oh,
these panels, there's Joe Meneely in this panel, and you
can look at some Joe Meneely westerns and say John
Severn was doing work here too. So I think John,
in an interview somewhere even said that they would pass
(41:48):
pages between them and and and and do that and.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Again mentioning Cubert too I felt like there's one war
story that it takes place in the rain, and it
felt like a Cubert kind of our choice and everything
the way that Meneely drew it. Now, really again, I
think this is really interesting stuff and I'm I'm so
glad that you're doing this, and I also look forward
to whatever other atlas. Uh, you know, artists, you you
(42:16):
have planned spotlights of I think it's going to be great,
and I don't whatever you want to say as far
as who might be coming up, and if you don't.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Well, unfortunately we're only going to get one artist edition
a year.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
So so I mean I have a litany of people
who I want to do and and you know, I
run them by fanographics, and of course they might not
always agree with me. They're thinking in terms of what's
a better name, you know, a name that might sell
or and I understand that, you know, certainly, the bottom
line is they got to you know, they got to
(42:48):
sell books. But but we have we have some good
people and if as long as the books keep getting bought,
I'll keep making them.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
That's great, man. And and for give me because I
didn't realize I don't buy because I don't have the
If I had the bank, I would certainly buy a
lot more omnibuses and master works and the like. So
you did do a lot of work on those Marvel
Silver Rage master works.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
I wrote the introductions to, not Silver Age, the Atlas
master works. Oh I see, okay, Atlas master Works, not
the issues that did the Atlas Hero revival. Roy Thomas
wrote okay introductions, but all the genre stuff. I wrote
all the introductions to them. And I also did all
(43:35):
the credits for Marvel also, so that was my contribution.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
I see. And again back in the Minealy book, you've
got the first appearance of and forgive me everybody, but
this is what he was called back then, the Yellow Claw,
now now just the Claw, but it was, you know,
kind of a Fu Manchu mastermind character. I'll yeah, right
about the Claw.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Well, I was going to say it was a full
man chew. And if you look at the Yellow Claw's niece,
it's basically Anime Wong from the nineteen.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Oh yes, the Great Asian actress.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Absolutely, yeah, it even looks like kr Sure. I think
Daughter of the Dragon. I think the film was so
it's basically Daughter of the Dragon. And yes, Al Felstein
did write the first issue. Now, I did speak to
Al about that, and I asked them, I said, how
did you ever get to write the first issue of
(44:32):
Yellow Claw? And he told me. You know, it was
at the lowest ebb of his career. He had left
Gains and I guess he showed up at Stan's door.
Stan either asked him if he had any ideas or
maybe gave him and threw ideas at him, and he
scripted the first issue. And as soon as the first
issue was done, he immediately went back to helm Man
(44:55):
and I asked them, I said, what was the reason that,
you know he went back. You know what happened? He
just wanted to pick his brain and he said, well,
I don't know. You could ask the artist who took
who who did it? And I said, the artist died,
you know, so say, he wasn't even aware of anything
that was going on. He didn't know anything about Joe
(45:16):
and Neely, he didn't even know Joe had died or
anything like that. But it was Jack Kirby who took
over the series for the for the last three issues,
and of course he completely turned it around. It was
no longer a you know, Yellow Peril, cold War intrigue anymore.
It became a science fiction uh, the type of a series,
and it was good in its own in its own way.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
I didn't read the story yet, and I should have
because was Jimmy Woo the secret agent in Yellow Claw books.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Was his FBI agent.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Yeah, that's great, I mean, and certainly now.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Now now he's considered Shield agent.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Right, and I'm yeah, I'm aware of that well, and
it's great because Ken right, no, not can long darn
it the Korean actor that plays him in the Marvel
Cinematic movies now, but I'm so glad I listen. I
love Jimmy Woo. There was that great, as you know,
because again we're close enough in the same age that
what if issue that postulated in nineteen fifties Avengers, and
(46:22):
then they became the agents of Atlas, of course, and
my good friend Jeff Parker wrote that series that oh god, yeah, man,
And that's why it's like, hey, that's really cool that
Jimmy Woo came out of this Yellow Peril look that
you know, some might blanche at today, but it had
a positive byproduct in creating Jimmy Woo. Yeah, yeah, good stuff, man, no. Yeah,
(46:45):
And of course the Black Knight, those many early stories
look great. The design is so great.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
You can tell he really put extra care into those,
into those stories. And you know the point I make,
you know, towards the end of the introduction, and you know,
online for years there's always been a debate if Joe
had lived. And let's just say it's some in some
way he participated in the Marvel in the Marble universe.
(47:11):
You know, I remember reading comments saying, well, you know,
he couldn't have he didn't have a style to do
superheroes or something like that. And I don't believe that
I agree at all. You know, we only saw nearly
one point zero and he was gone. And you know,
if you compare him to his contemporaries of the time,
(47:32):
who later in the Silver Age were very, very big
stars in the fifties, he was already considered better than
all of them. So in the nineteen sixties he would
have just upped this game, just as day up there.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Game we saw a bit of a progression, don't stories
into that last period of its eight years of attless
work and or nine years of attless work. Yeah, and
I would imagine not just like Dick Ayris, who obviously
did a ton of Westerns, but still, you know, was
doing Sergeant Fury and also other superhero stuff. I have
(48:04):
a Dick Airs Iron Man that I asked him to
draw with that very brief time where Tony had the
face plate where the points came at the front of
the face plate. You know, I think I saw that
for the first time in Marvel's Superheroes cartoons, and I'm
just like, I love that design. So yeah, that's what
I got from Dick Airs and everything. But yeah, I
(48:25):
love I Yeah, I just do love that fifties period.
And I completely agree with you. No, there's well even
Captain Comet in the fifties, those early stories, whoever was
drawing that, I think there's a similarity to Minnealy's style.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
Yeah, I don't know who was drawing.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
I don't either, but yeah, I mean yeah, I just
think they would adjust and there was enough room when
you consider who that original silver Age group of artists
were at Marvel. You know, it wasn't just Ditko and Kirby.
It was Dick Airs, it was and now I'm blanket
on something. And well, certainly Everett. Everett did that first
issue at dared Devil, you.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Know, and then and then and then you got Gene
Cole and you got John Ramieder.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
Absolutely yeah, did you talk to John Senior at all
about me? Neelie was where they could tell you I did.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
He told me the same tour, the same story he
told a lot of people, which was a real cool story.
And and that is when he was a young artist
and he was starting to contribute to this to the line,
Stan basically said, go spend a day with with with
Joe in his studio. And that's when I found out
that Joe had a studio in Flushing, right at the
(49:37):
end of the seven train line off Northern Boulevard. And
it makes sense because when he moved to New York,
he lived in Bayside, which is also in Queen's so
he didn't always work out of his house. He had
a studio in Flushing. And John told the story that
you know, he took the train, he got out, he
went over to Joe's studio and he watched Joe pencil.
(50:01):
Actually Joe really really didn't pencil. He basically put down
stick figures and then he drew an ink, which was
that's how assured he was of his ink line and
he just watched Joe, you know, barely paying attention, do
two entire pages in ink while he was chatting it
up for you know, for two three hours, and he
was just blown away by it, you know, just just
(50:23):
how good he was and how fast he was also.
So yeah, John Romita really really liked Joe's work. We
mentioned and if you compare and if you compare the work,
because John did a lot of work for Atlas in
the nineteen fifties, and if you look at the work
it it doesn't hint at what John did in the
nineteen sixties. So right, there is just proof you know
(50:46):
that Joe would have been fine in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Understood, absolutely, Man. You know, I'm really glad you included
the shot of Joe's studio and all the Western reference
photos and things I know to you dedicate your work
and the book to Joe's youngest daughter.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Right, yeah, yeah, Nancy, Yeah, So do they.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Have a lot of original art and you know, different
things that Joe might have happened.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
A lot was lost through the years through various floods.
I was told this certainly was a bit of it. Yeah,
But the book was a labor of love. You know,
I've been wanting to put this book together for her
for a very very long time, and I'm still I
wanted to do a larger biography, you know. I've written
two thirds of a biography, an art biography, you know,
(51:35):
similar to what Blake Bell did with the with the
Bill Everett type type of a book. Sure, so I
have that on the horizon also, I'm hoping to do
that too in the future.
Speaker 1 (51:47):
That's great, Michael, because truly, since the nineties every gesture
has been documented because of video and things, and it
is that three nineties because even I would say the
might even have a few things that might have slipped
through the cracks history wise. So it's really important that
people like yourself are out there filling in the gaps.
(52:08):
I know, a lot of podcasts with the best intentions
will get things wrong and it's like no, no, no, man.
People need to talk to you and the surviving artists
and writers that are still out there, and they're sadly
dwindling every year.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
Well, you know, to what you're saying. In the late eighties,
I started to track down artists, but I purposely stayed
away from the big names who everybody who went to
the conventions and everything like that, and I tracked down
the guys I would see in the Atlas comics as
(52:44):
I was indexing them. You know, I have a huge
Alice collection. I have almost everything that was ever published.
But I've also indexed the contents to every single book
I have into a huge database. So I discovered tons
of names that I never heard before. And these people
just sort of fell through the cracks, and a lot
(53:05):
of them were still alive in the late eighties and
in the nineteen nineties, and I started to I just
would pull them on the phone and track them down
introduce myself. Some of them were shocked to even be remembered.
Some of them seemed a little suspicious of what my
intentions were, and some of them were just absolutely thrilled
(53:26):
to be remembered. And I don't know if you're familiar
with Alan Bellman, you know, I found him down in Florida.
He was just a completely forgotten comic Golden Age comic
book artist, and yet he's someone who drew timely superheroes
during the Second World War, and he became the last
(53:47):
man standing. And I'm just so happy how the last
fifteen years of his life turned out he was just
feeded at conventions all around the country, and he went
to every convention that he was invited to. And it's
things like that that really make me happy.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
I hear you, man. No, I got the chance to
meet Martin O'Dell when he was still doing the rounds
of conventions, and he had a Chicago convent or a
connection because of his advertising work at Leo Burnett and
creating the Pillsbury dough Boy, in addition to all the
great comic book works.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
That he did.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
And no, it really it's important. I mean, do you
do work with the Tomorrows guys as far as there
you know Roy's Alter Ego, andeah.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
I'm a contributor to Alter Ego I've had. I used
to write some of the obituaries when the Atlas artists
would die. Matter of fact, the first large article on
Joe Manealy I did for Alter Ego number twenty eight
a long time ago, and that sort of was my
putting Joe out there for the world to see for
the very first for the very first time. And so yeah, yeah,
(54:57):
I work with Roy and occasionally would John Morrowls Yeah.
Speaker 1 (55:01):
Sure, No, John's a great guy, and Roy's a great
guy and I and I'm glad that those magazines exist.
The Kirby Collector as well. Yeah, great stuff, absolutely and
again and filling in the gaps of these men and
women that should be forgotten. I forget the mystery writer
that Stan briefly dated, that wrote a bit for Marvel
or Timely. I can't think of her name now, but
(55:23):
it was to mention.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
Yeah, yeah, it'll come to me. I know, you mean,
she she did show up, and she did do some writing.
Patricia Patricia Stranger on the train.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
Right the Hitchcock thing, isn't it Patricia Higsmith. I think
Patricia Heismith, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and of course
Mickey Spillane had Mario Puzzo. I don't know if he
wrote comics, but I know he wrote for the Men's Adventure.
Speaker 2 (55:49):
Yea, he didn't. He didn't write any comics, but he was.
He wrote for the Men's Adventure. He was on staff,
I believe, at Martin Goodman's Men's Adventure magazine. He was
riding the Godfather while he was on Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
Yeah, and I know it was like serialized before it
was turned into the novel and everything that got Father yeah,
it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (56:08):
No.
Speaker 1 (56:08):
I again, it is these little things that excite you.
And I I mean I'm an armchair I would even
just say student of comics sistory. I would not. I
would never claim to be a story in per se.
But I mean you're doing you guys are doing the
real hard work man, you know, but I and it
is fun and I'm glad you're doing it. And truly
that's what's great about the men Ealy book. And if
(56:31):
you don't mind holding it up one more time for
the video audience from fanographics. Everybody there, it is so yeah,
the Atlas Artists Edition Volume one Joe Maneely and great stuff.
Great look at that. Oh there, as you go, there's
name war. Fantastic of an early name war, right there,
everybody outstanding. Well, that's why people have to watch the
(56:52):
video and not just listen to the audio version of
word Balloon. Michael. Honestly, man, this has been great. I'd
love to have you back as you're releasing these books.
I mean the nitty gritty of you know, this, this
chapter of Marvel that sometimes gets forgotten between the time
leads and the Marvel age.
Speaker 2 (57:10):
No, I'd be happy to come back I can talk
about this stuff forever.
Speaker 1 (57:15):
That'd be great, man. Thanks a lot for talking today,
very well today, and we'll point everybody to the book
by Fantagraphics that when when is the release date?
Speaker 2 (57:25):
Oh, it's out already, Oh it's out all right, it's
out either right now. So it's out about two two
and a half weeks.
Speaker 1 (57:32):
If your store doesn't already have it, make sure to
ask them to order it for you, or grab it
through Amazon and the online bookstore.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
Amazon, the fanographics website, Barnes and Nobles, you name it.
Speaker 1 (57:46):
That's great. No, thank you very much for your time
today mine.
Speaker 2 (57:48):
You're welcome. John
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(01:05):
This month October, we're going to be discussing Birds of Prey,
the first volume that Kelly Thompson did. That's all happening
if you're a Patreon subscriber at patreon dot com. Slash
word Balloon, thank you for your support, League of Word
Balloon listeners. Very excited to be talking to doctor Michael Vassolo,
who has been shepherding this great run of Atlas comics
(01:31):
that is starting with the career of Joe Mineely for Fantagraphics. Michael,
thank you very much for joining me today.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Happy to be here at John.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Let's put Atlas in perspective. As far as where the
company was in the nineteen fifties, do we know why
they changed from Timely to Atlas.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
The actual name Atlas was really Martin Goodman's distribution company,
and at some point in the early nineteen really about
nineteen fifty one, it became both a distribution logo and
it also became a brand for the company. But he
had used that brand of that Atlas globe on and
(02:12):
off in the nineteen forties on various other periodicals, not
only a couple of comic books, but true crime Detective magazine,
Crime Digest paperbacks, and it just really never stuck, and
in the nineteen fifties it stuck.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
For good Yeah, certainly for the rest of the decade
until the change to Marvel. They and also, you know,
kind of timely Martin Goodwin notorious for lots of different
genres in pulp and comics. I would imagine did they
do any other magazines that weren't storytelling, you know, fiction.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
The comic books were only one part of Martin Goodman's
publishing empire, if you want to call it, which ran
under the Umbrella Magazine management. He started out in nineteen
thirty three, really nineteen thirty four, publishing pulp magazines, and
he took that you've heard of the red circle pulps, well,
(03:14):
those were his Red circle. And then of course he
jumped on the bandwagon with Marvel Comics number one in
nineteen thirty nine, and in no time at all he
was branching out to true crime magazines, girly humor magazines,
a copy of Hugo Gernsback's Sexology type magazines, Reader's Digest,
(03:41):
ripoff type magazines, and then about nineteen forty six he
started with the film in Hollywood magazines also, and they
were a very very large part of his publishing line
into the nineteen fifties and then into the nineteen sixties,
television magazines, the romance magazines, they were just so many
(04:02):
of them, but one of the biggest sellers were the
men's adventure magazines. He really sort of pioneered the market,
you know. He started out with Stead in nineteen forty nine,
and it started out as a magazine that the World
War Two veterans would read. And certainly when the Korean
War started, they had all these war covers and everything,
and after Men after Stair came Mail and Men in
(04:26):
Action and men. He just promulgated the newsstands with these
types of magazines. They were probably his biggest sellers actually,
But you know, running at the same time was the
comic book line. You know, world War Two, he made
a fortune with the Golden Age comic books. But following
the war, for the most part, superheroes, you know, went
(04:47):
into the toilet, and he was right on the spot
already given up on superheroes and branching out into humor comics. Well,
they started early on uman comics, but by nineteen forty
seven he was doing crime comic books, and then in
nineteen forty eight and forty nine came the Delujah, Western's Romance,
(05:07):
and then of course Horror.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Very cool. Yeah, and I know too, going back to
the thirties. Ksar was originally a pulp hero and then
of course later exploited in the cup.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Actually you can't see it, but up on the shelf
there is the three issues of KSAR I can pull on.
That's great if you want to see them.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
That's that's terrific. I remember at the Society of Illustrators
in New York a few years ago, many years ago,
now that I think about it.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It's around the corner from my office.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Oh that's great, man, what a great place. And Blake
Bell was there with Al Jaffe and I know Paul
Levitz was in the audience, and I saw at least
one I don't know if those were your pulp magazines.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
They weren't. I was there also.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Oh that's great man. I'm sorry we didn't know each other.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
That's okay. I was on stage with Blake Bell and
we had Al Jaffe and we had Stan Goldberg there all.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, Goldberg absolutely. Then.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah, it was a nice time.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah, it really was. No, and again, incredibly informative, and
that's why, I'm so glad you're doing this.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
True, that was that was John, That was for this book. Yes,
this book idea that I did with Blake Bell.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Absolutely the Secret History of Marvel Comics for the audio audience. Yeah, yeah, no, honestly, man,
I'm so glad that you and Blake did this, and
I'm really glad you're doing the projects now for fanographics.
You know. So what was stan Lee's role during the fifties.
You know, I'm Martin owned the company, but what was
stan doing?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, stan Lee was the the if you I don't
know if it was an official title editor in chief,
but he was basically the unofficial editor in chief of
the entire line of comic books. There were editors who
were under him. He did some writing, He didn't do
a lot of writing.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
You know, the old sore and he might have even
mentioned it in interviews over the years that he was
before the Fantastic Four appeared, he was writing everything you
know that that Atlas was putting out.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Not so he did some, right, Yeah, he did some writing,
but most of the stuff. There was a huge poulyanx
of freelance writers who wrote for the line.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
And certainly evident as evidenced in this Menaly collection. That
different a lot of the different writers. And you even say,
when you're able to figure out who wrote it, you
huge credit, and that was kind of difficult.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
There are a lot of writers who to this day
are pretty much unknown. You know. Some of the writers
kept their work records, and those work records over the
years have finally come to light, and they kept meticulous
records with story titles, et cetera. And I've had access
to at least three sets of records from three separate writers,
(07:56):
and I've been able to assign hundreds and hundreds of
stories to the outlass stories in the various genres. But
it still doesn't come close to accounting for all the writers.
But I will say one thing, Stan was the only
one who signed the stories that he actually wrote, the
(08:16):
only one.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, and maybe that dual role of you know, was
he also considered the art director as well, or was
there an art director.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
I would say he was considered the art director. There
were probably unofficial art directors, you know, during the nineteen forties,
in the timely years they were in the Empire State Building,
and I would say that the unofficial art director was
probably Sid Shores, who was a little bit older than
a lot of the younger artists that were coming in
(08:45):
and was a mentor to a lot of the young artists.
But I would say Stan probably had the official title
as art director. As a matter of fact, I think
I've even seen in some of the books where there
are some credits his name would be listed as as
art director.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
You know, I noticed too, and you certainly mentioned because Timely,
you know, had their superhero line. As you say, as
they fell out of favor in the forties, they stopped.
They did try briefly in the early fifties to bring
it back, and Maneli did, like you said, I believe
three sub Mariner covers.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah, and then you know, we called the Atlas Hero Revival.
There was an attempt to bring back the Submarin at
Captain America and the Human Torch, and of course they
still had col Bergos doing the Human Torch who created
the character. They had Bill Everett who was still doing
the Submarin and those are beautiful, beautiful stories. There's some
of the best artwork of Bill Everett's career. And you know, Maneely,
(09:46):
who was basically doing every genre there was, did get
the assignment to do three sub Marina covers, and you know,
they're kind of cool because that's really the only superhero
work that he really ever did.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Unless you count the Black Night who kind of was
retrofitted into superhero line in the sixties and stuff. Yeah, no,
it's it's really fun to get to know his work.
You mentioned sid Shores where there where like you know, again,
these were all freelance guys working.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
For SEE in the nineteen forties. They worked in a
in a bullpen on staff in the fourteenth floor of
the Empire State buildum and they had a very large
staff of adventure artists, which was superhero artists, humor artists
that were churning out crazy comics and comedy comics and whatnot.
(10:41):
But the staff was let go at the end of
nineteen forty nine and everyone went freelance after that, and
within a year it was basically Atlis Comics and everything
was done on a freelance basis. Going was going for Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Was Minealy part of that staff and then work freelance or.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Nearly shows up in nineteen forty nine, So he couldn't
have been on staff because he was still living in
Philadelphia at the time. He was probably taking the train
into New York to you know, make the rounds look
for work. He had started out at Street and Smith Comics,
and he had done about two years work of work
(11:22):
at Street and Smith, but he did it long distance.
He did it through an art service in Philadelphia, and
that's where the work that he did for Street and
Smith was funneled into the city. Well, Street and Smith
shut down their comic book division at the end, was
at some point in nineteen forty nine, and he was
working almost exclusively for Street and Smith and he needed work,
(11:43):
so he started to come into Manhattan and he was
making the rounds and I guess one of the biggest
the first stops he made was Timely Comics, and you know,
they gave him a couple of assignments. He turned them in.
I'm convinced I've spotted him in stories where there are
a lot of diverse hands that you could see because
a lot of the work done on Staff and Timely
(12:05):
was done in an assembly line fashion. So you know,
they were pencilers and there were incers, and there were
even different pencils and different incres on different pages. So
it was just a real assembly line. So I'm pretty
confident that I've spotted me nearly pitching in, as it were,
on some of those some of those Western stories in
(12:27):
nineteen forty nine. But the first story he did solo
did appear in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Okay. And I'm glad you mentioned Street and Smith. I
certainly read that in your introduction, great extensive bio of
Menally in thank you for the book, absolutely and again
the right guy to do it, But mentioning the Street
and Smith stuff, Yeah, people might know. Obviously both the
the pulp and radio hero of The Shadow was a
(12:53):
big Street and Smith. I think Doc Savage as well,
I believe.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Yeah, Actually Joe never act We drew a Shadow story,
but one of his backups were in one of the
issues of Shadow Comics.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Okay. And also ironically, one of the horror Alice stories
in your collection was called The Shadow and having nothing
to do with the public, kind of a classic o'
henry sort of horror that was typical of what Marvel
was putting out as a kid, I know, I was
reading Where Monsters Dwell, which we printed a lot of
(13:28):
the horror stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Well, I can give you a little background how I
got interested in Joe Manneely, just like what you said.
You know, I didn't read comic books in the nineteen sixties.
I was born in sixty one, and there were no
comic books in my house, you know, throughout the nineteen sixties.
I found them on my own in the early nineteen seventies,
you know, at a local candy store. And one of
(13:51):
the things that I liked the best of those comic
book precks, well all those reprints that Marvel was publishing.
So you know you mentioned where Monsters Dwell. They published
so many different horror reprints at that time, you know,
the Vault of Evil and Uncanny Tales from the Grave
and Cryptive No, not Crypto Teror, that's an easy title,
(14:12):
but you know, titles like that, and reading them, you know,
they always had on the bottom a little things that
originally published in and to me it was like, what
are those books? Where are those books?
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (14:26):
And you know, it took a while years later, as
I got older and started getting involved with comic book
conventions and back issue dealers, that I finally found that
those books did exist, and I made it my ambition
to try to track down every single issue of every
single Atlas comic book.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
As you pour through both Timeline Atlas comics, because Goodman
had a reputation of really seeing a trend and jumping
on it, and in fact, a lot of venue people
will see in this Menaly collection some of the horror
books and accidentally mentioning EC they would have a narrator
(15:06):
the way the EC books would The crypt Keeper and
the Like and the Witch.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
It is, without a doubt, based on you know what
you're saying that that Stanley was looking at what EC
was doing. You know, they had one title called Suspense,
which ran about twenty nine issues. It's it was a
licensed off of the CBS radio series and then television series.
(15:34):
You know, the first the first two issues were crime comics,
more close to what the radio show was. But by
the third issue it really became a horror comic. And
on the bomb it always says based on the CBS
television series or radio series. And you know, three quarters
of the way through the run, that little blurb vanished. Interesting, Yeah,
(15:56):
yeah it did. But I forgot where I was going
with this, but I lost my train of thought.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
No problem, man, no, And we were just you know, discussing,
how uh it seemed.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
No yeah, no, yes, I mentioned suspense. Yes, because Stanley
was looking at what EC Comics was doing in that
in those years, in nineteen fifty one, nineteen fifty two, uh,
and even nineteen fifty three. And what stan did really
for the first time is he put a letters page
in suspense. And I mean when you read the letters,
(16:34):
they look like stan wrote most of the letters, and
I think I think even got his wife to write
one of the letters. And the addresses were the addresses
were Stand's house on Long Island and whatnot. And in
the war books during the Korean War, when the war
genre got started, they were looking at what Kurtzman was
doing over at EC and trying to copy. That also
(16:57):
makes sense. Oh yeah, they weren't looking at what he's
he was doing, certainly.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
No, And and again if people when people read this collection,
they will see a similarity to a lot of the
C books. Absolutely was going to ask you about suspense.
I'm an old time radio fan. H Well, you know,
I'm a big just twentieth century pop culture fascinates me.
And I noticed too that not only Marvel or I
should say Atlas, but I know DC had their share
(17:24):
of licensed radio programs. I know, mister Mister District Attorney
was a popular radio show, and I know that was
a DC book.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
So with with with Atolis, they were a handful. There
was suspense. It was my friend irma. Huh, let's see
what else. Oh, Casey Crime Photographer. Yes, yes, yes, those
three will license titles from CBS. And the reason why
(17:53):
they it was all CBS is that Goodman's uh business
lawyer's brother was I think assistant director of publicity at CBS.
So they were you know, they were able to grease
the wheels to get the license fairly easy in that manner.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
That's great. So I'm glad you mentioned Casey Crime Photographer,
another really great radio show. But I know, within the
last ten or fifteen years, you know, they kind of
retconned that fifties period Marvel when they brought the superheroes back,
and you likely know as well, we're almost the same age, Michael.
(18:33):
But when they did a mini series of it wasn't
Steve Rogers. Steve was in the ice supposedly.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, and yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Want to say Carl Keesol wrote a cap mini series
about the replacement Captain America and flash Gun Casey was
one of the side characters in it. Oh really that
was great, absolutely well, And again, being an old radio fan,
I recognized right away and I'm like, absolutely, that's Casey
Crime Photographer.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
That's actually the Casey Crime Photographer. Comic book is pretty good.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Too, that's good to hear.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Well, it all had photo covers I guess taken from well,
not from the radio show, but was there an early
TV show also Casey Crime Photographer.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Well, I know there was that Bronson Charles Bronson initial
called Man with a Camera that I don't believe, you know,
I think it was a different crime photographer, but you
know a lot of times they would do publicity photos
for the radio shows. Yeah, and it could be I
remember the guy's name, because you can't forget a name
like Stotts Cottsworth was Casey, and it wouldn't surprise me
(19:39):
if they made, you know, publicity shots of them. And again,
as you explained the connection to CBS's publicity department, that
makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, very cool man.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Well, I wonder you mentioned to me off the air
that while you're going to focus on the various artists
of the Atlas period, that there's also going to be
a separate track of books. Give me the opportunity.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Yeah, you know, the first one is out already. I
don't know if you saw it. It's Adventures into Terror.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Oh great.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah. This reprints the first eight issues of the of
the title and the second well, I don't at some
point we'll circle around for the next eight issues, but
you know, it might be a year before that happens.
Coming out in April is a book I'm really waiting for,
not me, but the public is waiting for. I finally
(20:29):
put together the second half of the run of the
title of Venus, so we're calling it Venus Volume two.
Volume one novel published maybe about ten years ago, and
they were going to do volume one in volume two,
but I guess the sales on volume one were not
up to par, and I guess the sales in the
(20:50):
line itself was not up to par, and they just
stopped publishing them. But the world was waiting for Venus
Volume two because volume two seven issues written and drawn
by Bill Everett, and there's some of the wildest comic
book stories you could ever see. And you know, over
the years, people would ask me, when is Marvel going
(21:11):
to do Vena's Volume two, and I would just shrug
my shoulders and say, I don't know. But now it's done.
The book is done. It'll be out in about a
month and a half.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
That's terrific. And you know, where would you say, I mean,
I'm not expecting a headcount from you, per se. But
how big is the interest in these pre Silver Age
era books?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I don't know. I mean, there is a large group
of collectors who love this stuff. Obviously, I know Marvels
sales were not up to par on what their silver
and Bronze a stuff was, and I'm sure that's the
reason why. Also, I think there might have been a
little more expensive to put together because a lot of
the art had to be restored. To see, the way
(21:57):
we're doing it is, I'm actually scanning my own books
in high in high resolution. And then and then you know,
a friend of mine, Alan Harvey and and and someone
also with fanographics also digitally is cleaning up these these
high resolution scans. So and we're not recoloring them. It's
the original coloring. Also, and the fans really like that.
(22:19):
They they they didn't like the garish recoloring that the
Marvel master works had personally, I didn't care. I mean,
I was happy to even see those books. But you know,
but but a lot of people did not like them.
And and they were printed on very you know, glossy
right paper and and you know, again I liked them.
But but but a lot of folks you know, did not. Uh.
(22:43):
But there you know, the reports back on this first
book and also the me Nearly Bok because they loved
the way the artwork looks. You know, people have said
it's the best reproduction of vintage material that they've seen
so far. And I'm happy. I'm happy to that because
I see some of the reprint books that are done
on the cheap and while it's nice to have that material,
(23:06):
you know, it looks muddy.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
I so agree with you, man, And I've loved what
id W has done with newspaper strips and clover press
as well. I think they do a good job. And no,
I'm I'm really glad that care is being taken. And
mentioning colors, you know, we always they were always known
as four color books. I don't know how many colors
were in the was it only sixteen originally? I don't
(23:32):
even know.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
It's out of my comfort zone.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
I don't know, Okay, okay, I remember talking to Neil
Adams and I think it was he gave Saul Harrison
credit for like doubling the color scheme, or he worked
with Harrison to make that happen at DC and everything.
But even no, and you mentioned because I think of
when Neil was remastering a lot of his old stuff
and putting new colors on it. Yeah. Man, no, it
(23:57):
kind of takes away the charm. I mean, just as
I'm sure your room and what you've got behind you
and stuff has that wonderful, decomposing comic book smell that
we all love in a great vintage job.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
You know this, this is the Library of Congress here,
this is the room at the end of Indiana Jones
where they take the art more. There's more molding pulp
paper here than you can imagine. John, That's fantastic pulps,
comic books, old newspapers, magazines, you name it. I'm surrounded
(24:31):
by it.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
That's excellent. Behind you in the frame next to your bookcase,
is that a pulp cover? Is that a comic cover? Astonishing? Yeah,
let's see. Oh there you go.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Image.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Also, that's that original image. That's fantastic, is it? Is
it the original?
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Uh? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (24:52):
And and was that reproduced in some way to make
the cover for the Mini Lely collection or.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
No, the the cover was the Manealy book was shot
right from the actual comic book.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
That's excellent, man, Yeah, now that's great. I love this collection.
It does cover so many genres and that's great. And
I mean, you know, his work in westerns was really cool.
The fact that he was doing contemporary Korean war stories
while the war was happening is pretty cool, all of it.
And again top to bottom, the sci fi and the
(25:25):
horror stuff too.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
But we're making the rounds on these books. What I
mean by that is the first book was a horror book.
The second book is Venus, which everyone is waiting for.
The third book is going to be Space Opera. So
Adalys published two science fiction book ROGERI type series is
Space Squadron and Speed Carter Spacemen and there are six
(25:47):
issues each. And I didn't know what to do because
you know, we're fitting eight issues into these types of books,
and that comes to you know, one is six issues.
You could put it together, it's twelve issues. But god,
bless fanographics. They just said we'll do all twelve issues
in one volume. So you're going to get all twelve
issues of both serieses in one volume that should be
(26:11):
out in May, I think June.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Okay, and they're back. Then was it sixty four pages
for ten cents? Was it forty eight pages for no?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
No? No? The standard Atlas comic was thirty six pages
for ten cents in nineteen fifty they some of the
books expanded to fifty fifty two pages, and you know,
they're thicker. And in the Venus book, we had that
problem because the first issue a volume of Venus was
(26:42):
I think issues one through nine, and the second volumn
is going to be issues ten through through nineteen. And
when you throw in the first one or two issues
of double size issues, it's a lot of pages. But
like I said, we're running them all in there, the
entire things. That's going to be a thick, thick book.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And then, and maybe this was just a golden age thing,
but those a lot of comics would have a two
page text piece, and I know, in fact, Stanley's first
writing for Timely was a two page Captain America.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Actually every comic had a two page text piece. It
was required for for for postal reasons. I guess you
couldn't get a certain type of postage unless it was text.
It was a magazine or something like that. So they
the magazine rate for posts. Yeah, exactly, so they had
(27:39):
to include them. And yes, Stanley's first thing was a
text piece in Captain American number of three.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
And and did that continue through the fifties as well,
that they would still have a really wow you know
when that stopped? It it stopped in the sixties.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
It continued into the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
So I'm trying to think, you know, years of reading
silver Age Mardel at some point, at some point it
was abandoned in this in the nineteen sixties. Memory tells
me I couldn't tell you exactly when, but it did
continue into the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
And Joe's career, man, And it's such a shame. And
I'll let people read about Joe and they they can
learn more. I want to get people obviously, you know,
not only reading the comics but your great work as well.
But there was that period, and I suppose that it
kind of was part of the era in which Joe
was doing his Atlas books where Martin Goodman saw that
(28:35):
there was so much back unpublished stories, and that's kind
of when all the everyone was fired. No, so yeah,
clarify that for you. Yeah, I'll put the timeline together, Okay,
that that story, and whether it's one hundred percent true
or not, I don't know. There might have been a
lot of reasons why Martin Goodman wanted to disband the
(28:57):
staff at timely. There may have been tax reasons. There
might have been insurance reasons.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
I don't know. But the story is he opened up
a cabinet and saw, you know, hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds of pages of unused artwork, and he flipped his
lid and said, fire everybody and start using this stuff up,
et cetera. I don't know if the story is one
hundred percent true or not, but that's what led to
the staff being fired in nineteen forty nine and everyone
(29:24):
going freelance. Now, the other thing you might be thinking
of is the Atlas implosion, which happened in nineteen fifty seven.
That's a completely different matter. In fifty six, what he
did is that he dismantled his self distribution network, the
Atlas News Company, and went on from the advice that.
(29:44):
I guess his business manager with the American anc the
American News Company, which is one of the largest at
the time magazine distribution networks. They were in all the
train stations, and it probably sounded like a great idea,
except that behind the scenes there was problems with that company,
(30:05):
and within a year's time they just went belly up.
And Goodman had ramped up his production to the point
where by you know, early nineteen fifty seven, there were
sixty five to seventy titles at one time, not at
one time on the newsstand, but sixty five to seventy
titles in total that were being churned out, and all
(30:28):
of a sudden he had no way to get them
to the newsstands. So, you know, we call it the
Atlas implosion. But what happened is that they just canceled everything,
and he immediately looked for another way to get some
of his books onto the newsstands. And I guess not,
I guess he went on. He signed on with Independent News,
which was his rival DC, and you must have said
(30:52):
something like, yeah, we'll take you on, but you're not
taking on sixty books. You know, you can do eight
books a month or something like that and that was it,
and it nearly it decimated the freelancers because everybody freelanced
for Martin goodmane there were so many titles. When all
(31:14):
of a sudden there was no more place to freelance,
people left the industry in droves.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
It is amazing.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
And to get back to what you were saying, is
that Goodman had inventory at that time, so they stopped
buying new work. And I believe it was in April
of nineteen fifty seven, and they subsisted on inventory for
about ten months and there was nothing new. There was
no more work at Martin Goodman's comic book division. Stanley
(31:45):
was all by himself in a cubicle putting books together
with inventory for ten months and then at some point
and then at some point the call went out again
to start buying work again, and Joe Maneely did come back.
He took over two gun Kid. I think he got
about five issues out and then he died. Yeah, and
(32:09):
that's a whole other what if type.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Of a.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Scenario.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah, you would imagine much like some of the guys
that came from that late fifties period and went onto
the silver age, and that the nearly likely would have
gotten some sort of superhero assignment.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Well, there's there's there's different ways of looking at it,
and I don't think there's a right answer at all.
You know, the way I put it in the introduction
was just musing. You know, it's just opinion of mine
based on what I've seen with the industry and you
know in the nineteen fifties and and and whatnot. But
but there is a business document that's dated within a
(32:49):
week after Joe died, where Martin Goodman was going to
close down the comic book division, and in no time
at all he reversed and all of a sudden, science
fiction titles, you know, tales of suspense, tales to astonished,
strange worlds, and and Jack Herby was interviewed once and
(33:11):
it might have been in the Art of Jack Kirby,
and he said that he had heard that Martin Goodman
was closing down his comic book division and he raced
over there and Withstan they sort of talked him into
keeping it open. And I would say that he probably
had ideas for new titles, you know, can do all
the science fiction. He had been doing that at DC,
(33:33):
and he was doing you know, he was doing the
science fiction newspaper strip also, so that's what he knew.
Martin Gooden did not like science fiction, you know. To me,
it always seemed a little strange that he would just say, hey,
let's put out some science fiction books, you know, a
genre that never sold for me. I can only think
that it was Jack Kirby who sort of cajoled him into,
(33:56):
uh maybe through just the force of his will, to
start heading towards science fiction. Plus, you had the Twilight
Zone on TV, and you had all those things, you know,
you know, that was starting. And of course and once
that happened, within a few years we had Fantastic four,
you know, number one. But what if Joe had not died,
(34:18):
was Goodman going to then shut down the company? Their answays?
I don't know, you know, no one will ever know.
We don't know. And if he doesn't die, and he
just keeps doing two Gun Kid, and Goodman just keeps
doing what he had been doing, there's no marvel age
of comics in the nineteen sixties now, mind you people
will subscribe to It was stan Lee who was, you know,
(34:40):
pushing the superheroes and whatever. And I'm not going to
get into that, you know, right, now here at all.
But but you know, to me, it was always Jack
driving that company, and I think it was his impetus
that launched the marvel age of comics.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Well. And also in that science fiction period of the
late fifties, you still had tons of movies B movies
coming out, So that's true. And uh yeah, I mean,
good lord, I'll I'll make the connection. And I'm sure
you would agree that the Challenges of the Unknown that
Jack was doing at DC is a direct through line.
Especially I mean look at that early Fantastic four number
(35:18):
one cover and compared to some of the Challenges covers
and stuff. Yeah, and that's great. I mean again, there's
there's a there was a lot of uh you know,
uh uh uh genres sharing and then ideas that were
born from other other comics and stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
I love discovering the heap, the big uh the big
swamp thing like character, that man thing and swamp thing certainly. Yeah. Yeah,
so no, it's it is fascinating. Now. Also, Stan kept
trying to break into the comic strip business, and he
and Joe had their comic strip correct.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Yeah. Yeah, Actually, at the time of Joe's death, he
was working on Missus Lyons Cubs a gentle humor type. Yeah,
Cups Cups, scout strip and you know when Joe died,
Al Hartley took it over and it ran for a
few more months and then you know that was that
was the end of it. It was cool to Joe.
(36:16):
Joe was doing Joe was doing Missus Lyon's Cubs, and
he was doing two Gun Kids and assorted covers all
over the line.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
It's cool. Yeah, no, And I'm glad you even have
some strips in the Menealy book as well, uh, to
reflect that work. You know, it's really really interesting. So
now you say that, you know, Jack obviously might have
been the through line in terms of pushing him into
sci fi? Is there is there a line out there
as far as and I don't know if you ever
got a chance to talk to Stan about Manealy.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
I did. I knew Stan, not well, but I had
his email address for at least fifteen years before he
passed away, and before he stopped answering his email, and
and he knew my name from the Marvel master Works
and whatever. I ran it dam in San Diego a
few times, but I always I would pick his brains,
(37:08):
but I would pick his brains about old stuff, so
he felt comfortable with me. I wasn't going to bring
up any of the controversial stuff, so I would ask
him about some of the earliest stuff when he broke
into the business at Timely, what he remembered about so
and so person and whatnot. And you know, his memory
(37:30):
about that old, old stuff was better than you would
have thought. He did recall a lot of that stuff. Actually,
he had no idea how I knew all about that stuff.
He would, you know, he would say I knew more
about Timely and Atlas than he did.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
That's which is probably true. Well again, and you you know,
you were sifting through the grains of sand and getting
a lot of the stuff that I'm sure was just
day to day and in his brain and out of
his brain. So no, I can appreciate that. Definitely. Of
Manealy's genres, my favorite stuff he was doing, based on
(38:05):
what I read in the book, was the Westerns, obviously,
and I really really really appreciate it. Do you have
them that he did?
Speaker 2 (38:12):
In particular, you asked me what my favorite might be.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah, but continue your thought that you were going to.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Say, I like it all. I mean, he was so versatile. Obviously,
the first thing that I was aware of of him
was was The Black Knight when they were reprinting that,
and then of course it was the horror comics in
those early nineteen seventy Marvel reprint reprint books. And it
was only after, you know, when I was already older,
(38:38):
going to conventions and finding out what Marvel actually published
before the Fantastic Four, that I realized that he had
done just work in every single type of book there was.
And I like the humor stuff. He was a very
good cartoonist. You know, you see that Dennis the Menace parody,
(38:58):
you know that's there, which was just spot on. It
was really really good. I can imagine him even going
over to Mad Magazine if he had lived also, you know,
he could have been He did go over, and he
was in the first five issues of Crack the magazine.
So and then of course he did that that Mad
Magazine copycat that Atlas did snaff wu Y, which two
(39:21):
issues of that, And I mean, whether it's you think
it's that funny is another matter. But the artwork was phenomenal,
if the parodies were phenomenal. He was extremely versatile. He really,
really was, so, I guess. And I like the war
stuff also. The war stuff is really really good. But
I think he's probably best known for the Westerns because
(39:42):
his his his attention to detail on the Westerns. You know,
you saw some of the photos I show there. He
had all these ancient guns on the wall there. He
had all these like model sheets that you know that
he had made up for every type of gun and
saddle and and button. Uh. There was so much detail,
(40:05):
you know, he put into all that stuff that someone
who like, like like even Jack Herby, who I love
who I love his Western work too, he was not focusing,
you know, on those details at all, but Joe was.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
That's really cool, no, I I also appreciate John Severn's
Western stuff from that area.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
John Severn and Joe. John and Joe were close friends.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
And and Severn was out with Joe that night, uh,
you know, saying goodbye to him, you know, the night
that Joe the night that Joe died. I did not
get a chance to interview and speak with John Severn,
and it's something I regret to to this day. You know,
he he was always around, he was always I'll get
to it, you know, I'll get to it, and then
(40:50):
it was just and then it was too late.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
That happened with me and Joe Kubert. Uh, Jimmy Palmiatti
and Amanda Connor were very kind introduced me to him
at a show, and it was great. I knew about
his saint John's work, I knew about him being friendly well,
Norman Mauer, his folk collaborator, marrying into Mo Howard's family. Yeah,
(41:13):
Mo Howard started from three Stooges, so yeah, I mean, yeah,
we totally bonded over just talking about the Stooges and
things like that. And I regret never having him on
word below and it's like, ah, yeah, so close. So
I can I can absolutely appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Joe, Joe and John Severn occasionally would even trade off
pages of stories. You know, you could find Western stories,
you know, by John Sever and you can say, oh,
these panels, there's Joe Meneely in this panel, and you
can look at some Joe Meneely westerns and say John
Severn was doing work here too. So I think John,
in an interview somewhere even said that they would pass
(41:48):
pages between them and and and and do that and.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Again mentioning Cubert too I felt like there's one war
story that it takes place in the rain, and it
felt like a Cubert kind of our choice and everything
the way that Meneely drew it. Now, really again, I
think this is really interesting stuff and I'm I'm so
glad that you're doing this, and I also look forward
to whatever other atlas. Uh, you know, artists, you you
(42:16):
have planned spotlights of I think it's going to be great,
and I don't whatever you want to say as far
as who might be coming up, and if you don't.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Well, unfortunately we're only going to get one artist edition
a year.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
So so I mean I have a litany of people
who I want to do and and you know, I
run them by fanographics, and of course they might not
always agree with me. They're thinking in terms of what's
a better name, you know, a name that might sell
or and I understand that, you know, certainly, the bottom
line is they got to you know, they got to
(42:48):
sell books. But but we have we have some good
people and if as long as the books keep getting bought,
I'll keep making them.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
That's great, man. And and for give me because I
didn't realize I don't buy because I don't have the
If I had the bank, I would certainly buy a
lot more omnibuses and master works and the like. So
you did do a lot of work on those Marvel
Silver Rage master works.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
I wrote the introductions to, not Silver Age, the Atlas
master works. Oh I see, okay, Atlas master Works, not
the issues that did the Atlas Hero revival. Roy Thomas
wrote okay introductions, but all the genre stuff. I wrote
all the introductions to them. And I also did all
(43:35):
the credits for Marvel also, so that was my contribution.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
I see. And again back in the Minealy book, you've
got the first appearance of and forgive me everybody, but
this is what he was called back then, the Yellow Claw,
now now just the Claw, but it was, you know,
kind of a Fu Manchu mastermind character. I'll yeah, right
about the Claw.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Well, I was going to say it was a full
man chew. And if you look at the Yellow Claw's niece,
it's basically Anime Wong from the nineteen.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Oh yes, the Great Asian actress.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Absolutely, yeah, it even looks like kr Sure. I think
Daughter of the Dragon. I think the film was so
it's basically Daughter of the Dragon. And yes, Al Felstein
did write the first issue. Now, I did speak to
Al about that, and I asked them, I said, how
did you ever get to write the first issue of
(44:32):
Yellow Claw? And he told me. You know, it was
at the lowest ebb of his career. He had left
Gains and I guess he showed up at Stan's door.
Stan either asked him if he had any ideas or
maybe gave him and threw ideas at him, and he
scripted the first issue. And as soon as the first
issue was done, he immediately went back to helm Man
(44:55):
and I asked them, I said, what was the reason that,
you know he went back. You know what happened? He
just wanted to pick his brain and he said, well,
I don't know. You could ask the artist who took
who who did it? And I said, the artist died,
you know, so say, he wasn't even aware of anything
that was going on. He didn't know anything about Joe
(45:16):
and Neely, he didn't even know Joe had died or
anything like that. But it was Jack Kirby who took
over the series for the for the last three issues,
and of course he completely turned it around. It was
no longer a you know, Yellow Peril, cold War intrigue anymore.
It became a science fiction uh, the type of a series,
and it was good in its own in its own way.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
I didn't read the story yet, and I should have
because was Jimmy Woo the secret agent in Yellow Claw books.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Was his FBI agent.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Yeah, that's great, I mean, and certainly now.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Now now he's considered Shield agent.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Right, and I'm yeah, I'm aware of that well, and
it's great because Ken right, no, not can long darn
it the Korean actor that plays him in the Marvel
Cinematic movies now, but I'm so glad I listen. I
love Jimmy Woo. There was that great, as you know,
because again we're close enough in the same age that
what if issue that postulated in nineteen fifties Avengers, and
(46:22):
then they became the agents of Atlas, of course, and
my good friend Jeff Parker wrote that series that oh god, yeah, man,
And that's why it's like, hey, that's really cool that
Jimmy Woo came out of this Yellow Peril look that
you know, some might blanche at today, but it had
a positive byproduct in creating Jimmy Woo. Yeah, yeah, good stuff, man, no. Yeah,
(46:45):
And of course the Black Knight, those many early stories
look great. The design is so great.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
You can tell he really put extra care into those,
into those stories. And you know the point I make,
you know, towards the end of the introduction, and you know,
online for years there's always been a debate if Joe
had lived. And let's just say it's some in some
way he participated in the Marvel in the Marble universe.
(47:11):
You know, I remember reading comments saying, well, you know,
he couldn't have he didn't have a style to do
superheroes or something like that. And I don't believe that
I agree at all. You know, we only saw nearly
one point zero and he was gone. And you know,
if you compare him to his contemporaries of the time,
(47:32):
who later in the Silver Age were very, very big
stars in the fifties, he was already considered better than
all of them. So in the nineteen sixties he would
have just upped this game, just as day up there.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Game we saw a bit of a progression, don't stories
into that last period of its eight years of attless
work and or nine years of attless work. Yeah, and
I would imagine not just like Dick Ayris, who obviously
did a ton of Westerns, but still, you know, was
doing Sergeant Fury and also other superhero stuff. I have
(48:04):
a Dick Airs Iron Man that I asked him to
draw with that very brief time where Tony had the
face plate where the points came at the front of
the face plate. You know, I think I saw that
for the first time in Marvel's Superheroes cartoons, and I'm
just like, I love that design. So yeah, that's what
I got from Dick Airs and everything. But yeah, I
(48:25):
love I Yeah, I just do love that fifties period.
And I completely agree with you. No, there's well even
Captain Comet in the fifties, those early stories, whoever was
drawing that, I think there's a similarity to Minnealy's style.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
Yeah, I don't know who was drawing.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
I don't either, but yeah, I mean yeah, I just
think they would adjust and there was enough room when
you consider who that original silver Age group of artists
were at Marvel. You know, it wasn't just Ditko and Kirby.
It was Dick Airs, it was and now I'm blanket
on something. And well, certainly Everett. Everett did that first
issue at dared Devil, you.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Know, and then and then and then you got Gene
Cole and you got John Ramieder.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
Absolutely yeah, did you talk to John Senior at all
about me? Neelie was where they could tell you I did.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
He told me the same tour, the same story he
told a lot of people, which was a real cool story.
And and that is when he was a young artist
and he was starting to contribute to this to the line,
Stan basically said, go spend a day with with with
Joe in his studio. And that's when I found out
that Joe had a studio in Flushing, right at the
(49:37):
end of the seven train line off Northern Boulevard. And
it makes sense because when he moved to New York,
he lived in Bayside, which is also in Queen's so
he didn't always work out of his house. He had
a studio in Flushing. And John told the story that
you know, he took the train, he got out, he
went over to Joe's studio and he watched Joe pencil.
(50:01):
Actually Joe really really didn't pencil. He basically put down
stick figures and then he drew an ink, which was
that's how assured he was of his ink line and
he just watched Joe, you know, barely paying attention, do
two entire pages in ink while he was chatting it
up for you know, for two three hours, and he
was just blown away by it, you know, just just
(50:23):
how good he was and how fast he was also.
So yeah, John Romita really really liked Joe's work. We
mentioned and if you compare and if you compare the work,
because John did a lot of work for Atlas in
the nineteen fifties, and if you look at the work
it it doesn't hint at what John did in the
nineteen sixties. So right, there is just proof you know
(50:46):
that Joe would have been fine in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Understood, absolutely, Man. You know, I'm really glad you included
the shot of Joe's studio and all the Western reference
photos and things I know to you dedicate your work
and the book to Joe's youngest daughter.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Right, yeah, yeah, Nancy, Yeah, So do they.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Have a lot of original art and you know, different
things that Joe might have happened.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
A lot was lost through the years through various floods.
I was told this certainly was a bit of it. Yeah,
But the book was a labor of love. You know,
I've been wanting to put this book together for her
for a very very long time, and I'm still I
wanted to do a larger biography, you know. I've written
two thirds of a biography, an art biography, you know,
(51:35):
similar to what Blake Bell did with the with the
Bill Everett type type of a book. Sure, so I
have that on the horizon also, I'm hoping to do
that too in the future.
Speaker 1 (51:47):
That's great, Michael, because truly, since the nineties every gesture
has been documented because of video and things, and it
is that three nineties because even I would say the
might even have a few things that might have slipped
through the cracks history wise. So it's really important that
people like yourself are out there filling in the gaps.
(52:08):
I know, a lot of podcasts with the best intentions
will get things wrong and it's like no, no, no, man.
People need to talk to you and the surviving artists
and writers that are still out there, and they're sadly
dwindling every year.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
Well, you know, to what you're saying. In the late eighties,
I started to track down artists, but I purposely stayed
away from the big names who everybody who went to
the conventions and everything like that, and I tracked down
the guys I would see in the Atlas comics as
(52:44):
I was indexing them. You know, I have a huge
Alice collection. I have almost everything that was ever published.
But I've also indexed the contents to every single book
I have into a huge database. So I discovered tons
of names that I never heard before. And these people
just sort of fell through the cracks, and a lot
(53:05):
of them were still alive in the late eighties and
in the nineteen nineties, and I started to I just
would pull them on the phone and track them down
introduce myself. Some of them were shocked to even be remembered.
Some of them seemed a little suspicious of what my
intentions were, and some of them were just absolutely thrilled
(53:26):
to be remembered. And I don't know if you're familiar
with Alan Bellman, you know, I found him down in Florida.
He was just a completely forgotten comic Golden Age comic
book artist, and yet he's someone who drew timely superheroes
during the Second World War, and he became the last
(53:47):
man standing. And I'm just so happy how the last
fifteen years of his life turned out he was just
feeded at conventions all around the country, and he went
to every convention that he was invited to. And it's
things like that that really make me happy.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
I hear you, man. No, I got the chance to
meet Martin O'Dell when he was still doing the rounds
of conventions, and he had a Chicago convent or a
connection because of his advertising work at Leo Burnett and
creating the Pillsbury dough Boy, in addition to all the
great comic book works.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
That he did.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
And no, it really it's important. I mean, do you
do work with the Tomorrows guys as far as there
you know Roy's Alter Ego, andeah.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
I'm a contributor to Alter Ego I've had. I used
to write some of the obituaries when the Atlas artists
would die. Matter of fact, the first large article on
Joe Manealy I did for Alter Ego number twenty eight
a long time ago, and that sort of was my
putting Joe out there for the world to see for
the very first for the very first time. And so yeah, yeah,
(54:57):
I work with Roy and occasionally would John Morrowls Yeah.
Speaker 1 (55:01):
Sure, No, John's a great guy, and Roy's a great
guy and I and I'm glad that those magazines exist.
The Kirby Collector as well. Yeah, great stuff, absolutely and
again and filling in the gaps of these men and
women that should be forgotten. I forget the mystery writer
that Stan briefly dated, that wrote a bit for Marvel
or Timely. I can't think of her name now, but
(55:23):
it was to mention.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
Yeah, yeah, it'll come to me. I know, you mean,
she she did show up, and she did do some writing.
Patricia Patricia Stranger on the train.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
Right the Hitchcock thing, isn't it Patricia Higsmith. I think
Patricia Heismith, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and of course
Mickey Spillane had Mario Puzzo. I don't know if he
wrote comics, but I know he wrote for the Men's Adventure.
Speaker 2 (55:49):
Yea, he didn't. He didn't write any comics, but he was.
He wrote for the Men's Adventure. He was on staff,
I believe, at Martin Goodman's Men's Adventure magazine. He was
riding the Godfather while he was on Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
Yeah, and I know it was like serialized before it
was turned into the novel and everything that got Father yeah,
it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (56:08):
No.
Speaker 1 (56:08):
I again, it is these little things that excite you.
And I I mean I'm an armchair I would even
just say student of comics sistory. I would not. I
would never claim to be a story in per se.
But I mean you're doing you guys are doing the
real hard work man, you know, but I and it
is fun and I'm glad you're doing it. And truly
that's what's great about the men Ealy book. And if
(56:31):
you don't mind holding it up one more time for
the video audience from fanographics. Everybody there, it is so yeah,
the Atlas Artists Edition Volume one Joe Maneely and great stuff.
Great look at that. Oh there, as you go, there's
name war. Fantastic of an early name war, right there,
everybody outstanding. Well, that's why people have to watch the
(56:52):
video and not just listen to the audio version of
word Balloon. Michael. Honestly, man, this has been great. I'd
love to have you back as you're releasing these books.
I mean the nitty gritty of you know, this, this
chapter of Marvel that sometimes gets forgotten between the time
leads and the Marvel age.
Speaker 2 (57:10):
No, I'd be happy to come back I can talk
about this stuff forever.
Speaker 1 (57:15):
That'd be great, man. Thanks a lot for talking today,
very well today, and we'll point everybody to the book
by Fantagraphics that when when is the release date?
Speaker 2 (57:25):
Oh, it's out already, Oh it's out all right, it's
out either right now. So it's out about two two
and a half weeks.
Speaker 1 (57:32):
If your store doesn't already have it, make sure to
ask them to order it for you, or grab it
through Amazon and the online bookstore.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
Amazon, the fanographics website, Barnes and Nobles, you name it.
Speaker 1 (57:46):
That's great. No, thank you very much for your time
today mine.
Speaker 2 (57:48):
You're welcome. John
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