mysterio Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 TheWatcher and bc 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frozentundraguy Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 14 minutes ago, mysterio said: I've always liked the multiple panel/story teaser covers. Plenty of great ones in these books. I know that ST and JIM did a three book run with multiple vignettes, and they're all generally tough. Here are the JIMs. I've got a #31 with a detached cover but grabbed this scan, and this is my former #32 (can't find the scan of my current 5.5) and 33. Those books are some great examples of the panel covers!! From the man who had no fear, Elevator in the Sky, and There'll be some changes made, great cover teasers. bc 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Commissioner Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 While we are all on the topic of learning new things, can someone explain the atlas-implosion? Asking for a friend bc 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bc Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 11 hours ago, Sweet Lou 14 said: +1 on the spreadsheet being amazing. I have something very similar. One thing though, I thought Strange Tales #60 is from December 1957? https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Strange_Tales_Vol_1_60 And you would be correct - ST60 is a 12/57 issue. I should have caught that - I have 3 of them! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post bc Posted April 10, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted April 10, 2020 15 minutes ago, The Commissioner said: While we are all on the topic of learning new things, can someone explain the atlas-implosion? Asking for a friend From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Comics_(1950s)#Pre-superhero_Marvel : From 1952 to late 1956, Goodman distributed Atlas' comics to newsstands through his self-owned distributor, the Atlas News Company. He shut down Atlas News Company in 1956 and began newsstand distribution through American News Company,[11][30]:66 the nation's largest distributor and a virtual monopoly, which shortly afterward lost a Justice Department lawsuit and discontinued its business. As comic-book historian Gerard Jones explains, the company in 1956 ...had been found guilty of restraint of trade and ordered to divest itself of the newsstands it owned. Its biggest client, George Delacorte, announced he would seek a new distributor for his Dell Comics and paperbacks. The owners of American News estimated the effect that would have on their income. Then they looked at the value of the New Jersey real estate where their headquarters sat. They liquidated the company and sold the land. The company ... vanished without a trace in the suburban growth of the 1950s.[41][page needed] The Atlas globe remained on the covers, however, until American News went out of business in June 1957.[42] With no other options, Goodman turned to the distributor Independent News, owned by rival National Periodical Publications, the future DC Comics, which agreed to distribute him on constrained terms that allowed only eight titles per month.[30]:66 The last comic to bear the Atlas globe on the cover was the funny-animal comic Dippy Duck #1,[43] and the first to bear the new "Ind." distributors' mark was Patsy Walker #73, both cover-dated October 1957.[44] Stan Lee, in a 1988 interview, recalled that Goodman: ...had gone with the American News Company. I remember saying to him, 'Gee, why did you do that? I thought that we had a good distribution company.' His answer was like, 'Oh, Stan, you wouldn't understand. It has to do with finance.' I didn't really give a damn, and I went back to doing the comics. [Later,] we were left without a distributor and we couldn't go back to distributing our own books because the fact that Martin quit doing it and went with American News had gotten the wholesalers very angry ... and it would have been impossible for Martin to just say, 'Okay, we'll go back to where we were and distribute our books.' [We had been] turning out 40, 50, 60 books a month, maybe more, and [now] the only company we could get to distribute our books was our closest rival, National [DC] Comics. Suddenly we went ... to either eight or 12 books a month, which was all Independent News Distributors would accept from us.[45] During this retrenchment, according to a fabled industry story, Goodman discovered a closet-full of unused, but paid-for, art, leading him to have virtually the entire staff fired while he used up the inventory. In the interview noted above, Lee, one of the few able to give a firsthand account, told a seemingly self-contradictory version of the downsizing: It would never have happened just because he opened a closet door. But I think that I may have been in a little trouble when that happened. We had bought a lot of strips that I didn't think were really all that good, but I paid the artists and writers for them anyway, and I kinda hid them in the closet! And Martin found them and I think he wasn't too happy. If I wasn't satisfied with the work, I wasn't supposed to have paid, but I was never sure it was really the artist's or the writer's fault. But when the job was finished I didn't think that it was anything that I wanted to use. I felt that we could use it in inventory — put it out in other books. Martin, probably rightly so, was a little annoyed because it was his money I was spending.[45] In a 2003 interview, Joe Sinnott, one of the company's top artists for more than 50 years, recalled Lee citing the inventory issue as a primary cause. "Stan called me and said, 'Joe, Martin Goodman told me to suspend operations because I have all this artwork in house and have to use it up before I can hire you again.' It turned out to be six months, in my case. He may have called back some of the other artists later, but that's what happened with me.[46] In a nutshell, the Atlas Implosion refers to the bankruptcy of their sole distributor, American News Company, which forced Goodman to use their rival (DC's) distributor Independent News. Independent News only let them publish a few books a month until Marvel Comics arose. Pretty dark days in the history of Timely/Atlas/Marvel comics. Hope this helps explain it, -bc Sweet Lou 14, mysterio, KirbyJack and 3 others 4 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bc Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 10 hours ago, mysterio said: Great detective work m ! -bc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mysterio Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 2 minutes ago, bc said: Great detective work m ! -bc Thanks, but I can't claim too much credit. I keep a folder of cover scans to randomly cycle as my screen saver. I'm approaching 12,000 different, and the books that got me started were pre-hero (probably no surprise there). Just had to check my Timely/Atlas folder to see which covers fit the bill. bc and frozentundraguy 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Commissioner Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 (edited) 8 minutes ago, bc said: Hope this helps explain it, -bc Extremely informative! Thank you! Edited April 10, 2020 by The Commissioner bc and mysterio 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mysterio Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 (edited) 33 minutes ago, The Commissioner said: While we are all on the topic of learning new things, can someone explain the atlas-implosion? Asking for a friend Can't add much to the fine explanation provided by @bc, but will just chime in that you can see evidence of this implosion in the length of time that passed between JIM #48 and #49. Same with Strange Tales. It is why many of these other cool titles (Mystic, Mystery Tales, etc.) disappeared. Edited April 10, 2020 by mysterio Not my books, snagged the scans for aforementioned folder. TheWatcher, frozentundraguy, bc and 1 other 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mysterio Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 Come to think of it, this may also explain why JIM #49 is a very difficult book to find. Distribution was likely pretty awful after many of these titles started back up. I'd also be curious to know why titles like JIM and ST were continued a year+ later and others that were very similar were not. bc 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bc Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 1 minute ago, mysterio said: Come to think of it, this may also explain why JIM #49 is a very difficult book to find. Distribution was likely pretty awful after many of these titles started back up. I'd also be curious to know why titles like JIM and ST were continued a year+ later and others that were very similar were not. Likely due to $$$ - those titles were very popular and well-established before the implosion and Stan & Co. likely sought to leverage the brand-name recognition to sell books during this tough period. Since they could only publish a handful of titles a month, it was probably easier to resurrect the "main" sellers instead of trying to cultivate a new unknown title. Again, just my hypothesis, -bc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bc Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 (edited) JIM 49 looks much closer to a post-code book than a PHM (again, likely compiled from the closet of work that Goodman found). This kind of content could have easily come from leftover Astonishing or Mystery Tales stories. -bc Edited April 10, 2020 by bc TheWatcher 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mysterio Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 13 minutes ago, bc said: Likely due to $$$ - those titles were very popular and well-established before the implosion and Stan & Co. likely sought to leverage the brand-name recognition to sell books during this tough period. Since they could only publish a handful of titles a month, it was probably easier to resurrect the "main" sellers instead of trying to cultivate a new unknown title. Again, just my hypothesis, -bc I don't disagree, but Mystic had 61 issues by then and Mystery Tales had 54, for example. Both were ended in 8/57, same month as the hiatus started for JIM. Those two had a longer track record than JIM or ST at that point in time. So it may be due to sales numbers, sure, but I wonder how good a handle they had on those back in the day. bc 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mysterio Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 12 minutes ago, bc said: JIM 49 looks much closer to a post-code book than a PHM (again, likely compiled from the closet of work that Goodman found). This kind of content could have easily come from leftover Astonishing or Mystery Tales stories. -bc I completely agree. JIM #49 does not look like a pre-implosion book at all, and would fit in much better with a title like Mystery Tales than what had been (and would be) published in JIM. I've always thought that that cover looked out of place in this title. bc 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bc Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 Just now, mysterio said: I don't disagree, but Mystic had 61 issues by then and Mystery Tales had 54, for example. Both were ended in 8/57, same month as the hiatus started for JIM. Those two had a longer track record than JIM or ST at that point in time. So it may be due to sales numbers, sure, but I wonder how good a handle they had on those back in the day. Good points for sure. Never found a good explanation for recycling ST & JIM in my research. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mysterio Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 Just now, bc said: Good points for sure. Never found a good explanation for recycling ST & JIM in my research. These types of discussions are a good reason for you to visit the thread more often. bc 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bc Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 6 minutes ago, mysterio said: These types of discussions are a good reason for you to visit the thread more often. Oh, I followed along with the thread digests in my email box during my hiatus. But point well received -bc mysterio 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post The Commissioner Posted April 12, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted April 12, 2020 (edited) Finally getting around to catching up on my scanning. Thought I would post an updated picture! Edited April 13, 2020 by The Commissioner bc, ThothAmon, Get Marwood & I and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post RICK STARR Posted April 13, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted April 13, 2020 Finally, I found a real nice copy of this issue after a 20+ year search. Still have my raw FN copy to read. One of the first PH I purchased off the stand as a youngin. bc, Get Marwood & I, taro90 and 4 others 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KirbyJack Posted April 13, 2020 Share Posted April 13, 2020 Pretty! I’ve seen a few on line, but I’ve never held a nice copy. My old copy was the single roughest in my PHM collection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
