With the fashion of relaunch that has swamped the market recently, such as Buck Rogers, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, the Red Circle characters, the Green Hornet and even a small blast from the Milestone imprint; is there really room for another one?
Absolutely yes, especially if it receives the same tender loving care that the aforementioned titles have done.
Now, while I say Atlas, I do not mean the Atlas comics from that evolved into Marvel, of which there has been more than a few reprints recently. No, I mean the cast of characters that never really got a chance to shine, those of Atlas Seaboard comics.
For an imprint that only lasted for a year, (June 1974 to June 1975), it had a prolific output, and seemed omnipresent as I launched on my collecting career numerous years later. Every car boot sale or jumble sale I visited, I seemed to find yet another Atlas issue, nearly always a new title, totally unrelated to any of the others.
By all accounts, Atlas owed it’s short lifespan to a combination of bad decisions, yet it’s stock of characters seem to me to have a lot of potential. If nothing else, surely Image could give them a home?
Apparently, Eclipse Comics had the same idea. In 1994, the characters had lapsed into the public domain (that was quick!), and Beau Smith stated in Comics Bulletin:
Dean wanted to pay the Goodman’s a price he thought the stuff was worth, but the Goodmans wanted much, much more. Dean declined. He also told them that he found out the stuff was free and clear. Needless to say that subject went back and forth with no real winner of the argument.
So Dean gave me the greenlight to develop the characters and update them where they needed to be updated. I came up with a plan and a history for them along with a storyline for a series. We hired a couple of artists to draw up and update some of the characters. We published a few ash cans with these results.
Then, as we all know, Eclipse Comics ceased to exist. As unfortunately did the ashcans, as Beau’s office burnt to the ground shortly after. Both have been greatly missed by this author, especially the latter as I never got to see them!
You can read the whole complement of Atlas titles online. Some stories are definitely of their age, some are better than others, but in this age of the relaunch and re-imagining, can such an essential part of comics history be left to fade away?
So, could Phoenix The Protector be the MacBeth of the comics world? Or do Tiger-Man, the Demon Hunter and Cougar have a future for a whole new generation of readers?
