I spotted listings for these new entries in Fantagraphics' series of pre-Marvel Atlas Comics reprints.
Note: Links go to Bookshop.org, which helps support indy bookshops and Pop Culture Safari!
The Atlas Comics Library No. 10: Sports Action
In the summer of 1949, Marvel decided to bring its successful sports pulps to the Atlas comic-book line, launching Sport Stars #1, which became Sports Action with its second issue, the same name as one of his most successful sports pulps of the 1930s.
Across fourteen tumultuous issues, the artistic cream of the Timely/Atlas crop (Syd Shores, Joe Maneely, Bill Everett, Bob Powell, Gene Colan, George Tuska, Bernard Krigstein, and others) told biographical stories about sports heroes of the 1930s and 1940s in all the major sports: Knute Rockne (football), Hack Wilson (baseball), Man O'War (horse racing), Herman Sandow (physical culture), Bronco Nagurski (football), Ralph Kiner (baseball), Phil Rizzuto (baseball), Warren Spahn (baseball), Sugar Ray Robinson (boxing), Jackie Robinson (baseball), and Niles Kinnick, the 1939 Heisman Trophy winner of the Iowa Hawkeyes, among a score of others!
Out June 30.
436 pages, hardcover.
The Atlas Comics Library No. 11: Spy Cases
Shortly after launching his men's adventure line of comic books in 1949 (and just before he published his first war title), Atlas publisher Martin Goodman found, in the middle ground between crime and men's adventure, the sneakier, conspiratorial sub-genre of spy comics. The first title was Spy Cases (soon followed by Spy Fighters and Kent Blake of the Secret Service and the contents were Cold War noir stories, as Doug Grant, Secret Agent, protected America's interests, fighting commies from behind the Iron Curtain.
Led by superlative action/adventure artwork by Al Hartley (later Bill Savage) and supported by Atlas titans including Gene Colan, Bill Everett, Russ Heath, Jerry Robinson and Joe Maneely, America ferrets out sinister threats?in thrillers like: "The Traitor!," "Discs of Death," "Frame-Up in Red," and "The Case of the Missing B-29!"?
All spy comics had healthy runs and by 1952, the Korean War made its?presence felt in every adventure title. Patriotic, but also subtler, darker and more sinister than the familiar costumed hero titles, the spy genre is a little-seen aspect of Marvel's deep history.
Out Aug. 25.
304 pages. Hardcover.
Comments
Post a Comment