Atlas-Seaboard Comics - February 1975!

WULF THE BARBARIAN is clearly a blend of Tolkien, Burroughs, and Howard with snippets of other folks tossed in. Wulf is the obligatory orphaned prince cared for and trained by the master-warrior Stavros Dar Kovin, loyal warrior to the slain king and queen. The arch-villain glimpsed only through magical lenses is suitably mysterious and vile using Trolls to do his evil bidding. The story is the brainchild of Larry Hama who both writes and draws the story with effective Klaus Jansen inks. The first story sets up our hero nicely, and sets the stage for many future conflicts. The use of flashbacks to tell the saga works very well in this effective comic book. The cover by Dick Giordano is another beauty!

THE BRUTE is Atlas-Seaboard's homage/swipe of Marvel's the Hulk. A blue sometimes-giant caveman murders and suchlike, but the general idea of a off-colored wildman is communicated. The story (as I've stated in another post) is ripped off from the movie Trog and if any cared enough, legal action would likely yield a result for the filmmakers. Mike Fleisher scripts this exceedingly well drawn Mike Sekowsky-Pablo Marcos effort. The Brute is a better story than it has any right to be, and that Dick Giordano cover is magnificent. Now if they could only figure out just how big the Brute is supposed to be.

MORLOCK 2001 is a sci-fi epic set in (gasp) 2001 by Fleisher and Al Milgrom with Jack Abel inks. Morlock (named of course for the H.G.Wells monsters from The Time Machine...somewhat illogically) is a plant creature who can transform into a humanoid, or is it the other way around. His scientist creator is killed by the oppressive and tyrannical government clearly ripped off from 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. These "Big Brother" types try to control Morlock with all sorts of schemes but it all comes to naught and the plantman is loose by story's end. There is clearly a desire to tap into the muck-monster success of Man-Thing and Swamp Thing with this book. It's a clever mishmash. The cover by Al Milgrom and Dick Giordano seems is deceptive as it offers both versions of Morlock in seeming opposition.

PLANET OF VAMPIRES is another sci-fi effort, this time by Larry Hama and Pat Broderick with Frank McLaughlin inks. The cover by Broderick and Neal Adams is considered the best in the entire line by many folks. It is a dandy! The story is part Planet of the Apes and part I Am Legend, as five astronauts return to Earth after being away to the planet Mars for five years. Ironically, they launched the flight this very year...2005...and returned to a destroyed Earth in 2010. The Earth is overrun with gangs of what appeared to be bikers sans bikes, and there are also high-tech vampires who live in a dome built around the Empire State Building. They ride around in the exceedingly poorly named "floaters" and there is general death and mayhem all around. By the story's end, the heroes (two married couples, one white and one black...with all the obligatory stereotyped dialogue sadly) are split up, and trying to deal with both the threats of the street gangs and the "vampires".

WEIRD SUSPENSE offers a real treat by Michael Fleisher and the exceedingly excellent Pat Boyette. TARANTULA is a monster spider-man of sorts who is an 11th generation European nobleman afflicted with a curse that transforms him into a "weird" (the title did not lie) humanoid-tarantula. In this debut, he and his butler Joseph are confronted with escaped killers who are quicly dispatched by the monstrous Count Lycosa. We also get the origin story by way of flashback, how the first Count Lycosa frustrated the plans of an evil Spider-Witch to transform the whole of a village into tarantulas, hence the curse. It's a quickly-paced monster adventure. Good comic with a better-than-average Dick Giordano cover. Though technically, this is a genre book, it reads more like one of the other self-titled features and so I include it here.

THE SCORPION is often picked by folks as the best Atlas-Seaboard book. It is a good one! Howard Chaykin is given free rein as he both writes and draws this debut adventure of a 1930's mercenary named "Moro Frost" who along with capable and lovely aide Miss Bishop take on cases of a peculiarly pulpish nature. Frost is not the hero's real name and we are clued in on the opening page that the Scorpion is a very long-lived fellow who has been different people at least since the heyday of the Civil War. There are lots of thugs, car chases, biplane derring-do and such as this story rolls along to a very violent and satisfactory conclusion.

THE DESTRUCTOR is the book that gets my vote for the best that Atlas-Seaboard had to offer. With true comics giants like Archie Goodwin on scripts, Steve Ditko on pencils, and Wally Wood on inks, this book is an instant classic. The familiar story has a few interesting twists, as a young boy gone bad works smalltime for the local gangs, and ignores the wisdom of his scientist father. The ganglord imagines the kid to be some kind of threat and orders him hit, but the father sacrifices himself to save the boy. Dying, the father gives the boy a potion that heals the boy's wounds and gives him superpowers of all sorts. The boy of course then realizes the errors of his ways and promptly promises revenge on the gangs. He finds a costume and the game's afoot. The book is full of great Ditko action, and features some lovely Wood finishes. A master-hitman named "Slaymaster" shows up, but the "Destructor" (always found that name a bit of a mouthful) wins out. By story's end the ganglord is killed by his own boys, and the Destructor is set up to continue his one-man war against organized crime. It's a good tight superhero story. A highlight of the Atlas-Seaboard run, there has been a lot suggested about this book being a response to Spider-Man and the parallels are pretty obvious, the most telling thing though is the presence of Spidey creator Ditko. This saga seems like vintage Ditko to me, and typical of his other work for Charlton and DC as well as Marvel. Good Ditko is good no matter where you find it. (Special note: This is the only mainline superhero title of the first wave edited by Larry Lieber, who edited all of the genre books as well...but more on those later.)

It's clear that Atlas-Seaboard desired to attack all the traditional genres of the comic book. They give us in February a horror-short anthology, a western, a crime drama, and a war book. These four along with somewhat genre-sounding Weird Suspense (edited by Jeff Rovin), make for a strong beachhead in the market. All of these books are edited by Larry Lieber by the way, and his touch is felt on many of the covers.

SAVAGE COMBAT TALES offers us SGT. STRIKER'S DEATH SQUAD. This story offers us a somewhat pacifistic hero who is reluctant to kill despite being in a very hostile war zone. Striker is a sensitive fellow who must not look out for himself but his beloved's brother Andy. Of course Andy gets killed, and guilt-ridden Striker finds himself fitted with a battlefield promotion to sergeant and soon finds himself a squad of soldiers/prisoners. These four ethnically diverse fellows hearken back at once to not only the Howlers and Easy Company, but also to the Dirty Dozen. There is the stereotyped asian who of course can effectively use martial arts, a large bald wrestler type, a curly-haired acrobat, and a vaguely Italianesque former gangster and seeming hitman. These five joined, form an effective fighting team, and are capably drawn by Al McWilliams and despite a lack of logical credits written by Archie Goodwin. The Squad will have to wait for issue #2 to get their formal name as "Death Squad". The second offering is a war short story and gives us the destiny of a selfish pilot who is in it for the "bounty" he gets on opposing aircraft. The story gives us a somewhat predictable twist ending, but does feature some better-than-average Jack Sparling artwork.

POLICE ACTION gives us two very different crime adventures. LOMAX is a member of the NYPD and he is very much a Dirty Harry wannabe, as he tears up the criminal element with his singularly violent policing techniques. The story by Jack Younger and Mike Sekowsky has very much a TV-detective feel to it, and reads smoothly if without many surprises. The second feature in the book is a real gem, LUKE MALONE is the work of Mike Ploog (former Will Eisner assistant who shows his talent to great effect here) and the story is a vintage noir story of a hard-boiled dick with a heart of if-not-gold-then-maybe-bronze. There is a real mystery here, and it unfolds neatly as the story winds its way through some dark alleys and up some very atmospheric streets. Frank Springer offers inks, and as good as they are, I wish Ploog had inked himself on this. It would be a masterpiece.

TALES OF EVIL is a typical fright book with three short stories each offering some twist right out of the old EC playbook. Two stories are very nicely drawn by Jerry Grandenetti and the middle story is done by Mike Sekowsky with some very indiffernt inking. The first two stories are written by Russ Jones and the last one by Jack Younger. The Grandenetti story that opens the book is the highlight and offers a story clearly inspired by the Exorcist as a young girl is possessed by a demon and goes about destroying her family. The second offering is a strange story about werewolves and hair tonics; not the best horror story I've ever read. Jones is one for two in this book so far. The final story features a neatly frightened protagonist who ends up being a singularly inept vampire slayer. All in all Tales of Evil is a decent effort but nothing to get terribly excited by or be afraid of. The book will undergo substantial change with its second issue. One thing about this book though, is as bad as the werewolf story is inside it, the cover by Lieber has always been one of my favorite werewolf images. It's a keeper!

WESTERN ACTION offers two features. The cover is an arresting image by veteran western artist and Atlas editor Larry Lieber. It features KID CODY GUNFIGHTER and is a very successful image in my opinion. The Kid Story is written by Lieber, but drawn by the magnificent Doug Wildey. The only problem here is that Wildey's ultra-realistic western images clash somewhat with the more modern kinetic story of Kid Cody. It's a quibble on what is a very good western origin full of the usual revenge stuff. Wildey's western work is famous, as we'd later learn in Rio, but I remember from superb reprints of Outlaw Kid. The second feature in this book is COMMANCHE KID. This better-than-average story is written by Steve Skeates but sadly is not helped by adequate but somewhat inappropriate Al Milgrom pencils. I like Milgrom, but this strip wasn't his cup of tea. Commanche Kid is the cliche white boy raised by Native Americans who grows up to be the run-of-the-mill man-with-no-country type. He wanders the west helping folks and whatnot. There's some decent characterization, and maybe it's the fact the story has to compete with the Wildey magic in the first part, but it's always seemed an oddball effort. The one notable thing about Western Action though is that despite its prominent debut, it becomes the first color Atlas-Seaboard comic to get the axe. Issue #1 was the one and only issue of this pretty good western comic book.

Special Note: VICKI also debuted with a February date and this reprint of the old TIPPY TEEN stories are still entertaining. They reprint those old Tower stories in their totality save for re-lettering Tippy's name as "Vicki" when necessary. One time they messed up and left "Tippy" in one of the balloons. I only have the first issue of this series, but it's unusual too in that it's square-bound and sells for twenty-five cents. Maybe that's why I didn't get anymore!

More Atlas-Seaboard to come in March. 

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