Before Reed Richards and his stoic companions where belted by cosmic ray, or a young Peter Parker had a fateful run-in with a radioactive spider at Empire State University, and even before Marvel was Marvel, Stan Lee was in the monster business.
Under the banner of Atlas Comics, Lee and the amazing talents of Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, Matt Baker, Carl Burgos and Joe Sinnott assaulted young 1950s readers with bold five-page, nine-panel horror/sci-fi stories with surprise ending "inspired" by the Twilight Zone tv series. Some much so, Lee stated in an interview with Will Murray regarding his Amazing Fantasy scripts, "I used to get letters from readers `Hey, I just saw Twilight Zone, and they used one of your stories from issue so-and-so.'"
Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Tales to Astonish Volume 1 beautifully reprints the first 10 issues of the title and brings out face-to-face with captured Martians, Mummex- King of the Mummies, the sinister Floating Head, Droom- the living lizard, the Things from Easter Island and many more oddball and off-beat menaces from the four-color universe.
This collection is a must have for vintage monster comic book fans who have enjoyed Dick Briefer's The Monster of Frankenstein or Monster Masterworks.
Monsters! Run for your life! Just kidding... Good old stuff from 1959-1960. You cannot lose with great comic book artists such as Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, Jack Davis, et. al. No Pulitzer Prize literature here, which is actually a good thing. Nothing, but lots of fun! Two hundred and fifty-nine pages of great reading, except the two pager stories which I did not read then either. Oh, I know the story twists are not that difficult, but that's okay. Issues 1-9. If you enjoy this book, you will also like (Marvel Comics) "Monster Masterworks" (ISBN: 0-87135-592-2.) Also recommended for public libraries.
An Interesting Artifact Signaling Impending Greatness Before those glorious days when Marvel Comics became one of the dominate forces in the comic book industry, it was a bit of an also-ran named "Atlas". Between the salad days of Martin Goodman's "Timely Comics" in the Golden Age, and the company that changed super-hero comics in the Silver Age, Atlas was an entity that cranked out a number of genres, including war, science-fiction, romance, teen-comedy, and the like. But in 1959, Atlas began a series entitled "Tales to Astonish", an anthology book featuring science fiction action tales. Some of the ideas, and most importantly, the artists who helped found the Marvel Universe were test-driven in "Tales to Astonish". Marvel has wisely reprinted the first ten issues of that book in this handsome volume of "Marvel Masterworks".
Truth be told, this volume is really more of an interesting artifact than anything else. While the stories were obviously patterned after the late EC line of horror comics, the anti-comics crusade of the early 1950s insured that these stories were tepid at best. They used fairly similar templates: big monsters attack, space-travelers have zany adventures, inventors create evil gadgets, and occasionally, ghosts haunted intrepid heroes. Each story ended with a twist, depending on the template. Inventions turned on their evil creators, human space travelers with Anglo-Saxon names discovered the planet Earth, and the like. Some twists worked quite well, others not so well. Nearly all of these stories were narrated by our hero, and each title began with "I [did]....." These stories were certainly never the Grand Guignol blood-fests EC and their imitators were just a few years before. Consequently, none of the stories is truly memorable or engaging.
That having said, the real draw here is the artistic talent on display (the names of the writers are lost, although me may presume Stan Lee can claim a couple of these). Jack Kirby could draw some scary giant crabs. Steve Ditko could really haunt a house. Joe Sinnot illustrated beautiful space journeys. Along with others, these masterful artists knew how to take relatively bland stories and give them some pep. Moreover, it's not hard to see some of the vague ideas being tossed around here as proto-types of the concepts Marvel Comics was built upon.
So, in the end "Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Tales to Astonish" makes for a breezy afternoon, but generally doesn't stand out among the other books in the "Marvel Masterworks" line. Nonetheless, I applaud Marvel for reprinting some of the material that they might not deem of importance beyond sentimental and historical value. I'm very curious to see what other treasures from the Atlas era Marvel will produce.
Finally Marvel Brings Out the Classics !! A great compilation...it's beena long wait for the pre hero Marvel comics !!! Hopefully this is the first reprint of many !!!
This book is a lot of fun... I'd give it a 4.5! While, yes, it's true that these are not the best-written stories ever, it's still a delight to see the giants of the Marvel comics staff (notably Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Don Heck) tinkering around with countless half-banal/half-fantastic concepts and gimmicks while they fumbled their way from the last gasps of the 1950s horror/sci-fi genre towards the superhero boom that they would kick off in 1962 with "The Fantastic Four," "Spider-Man," "Doctor Strange" and all the other Marvel superheros we know and love today.
Some of the ideas in here -- men clad in metal armor, mysterious men of magic, etc. -- found new form in the superhero years, and it's fun seeing these guys striving towards a new visual and kinetic vocabulary of graphic art storytelling. It's also interesting to see the Atlas/Marvel crew making the best of the weakened state that the comicbook industry found itself in during the late 1960s and early '60s, when anti-violence, anti-smut campaigns had taken a lot of sizzle out of the medium. These "Tales To Astonish" issues were pale echoes of the intense, macabre storytelling of the EC horror comics (and their many imitators), the very comics that had led to the government crackdown to begin with. The format was the same -- short, 4-6 page stories with twist endings and zingers -- but the execution was very different. In all honesty, it has to be said that these are not very involving or particularly exciting comics, and yet there is a magic, and a budding artistic style that fans of the old Marvel titles will recognize right away. There were also contributions from artists such as Matt Baker, Carl Burgos, Jack Davis, Paul Reinman and Al Williamson, who had been stars in peak years of the real horror comic boom -- but the real excitement here comes from Ditko and Kirby, who were just catching fire and experimenting with bold, dynamic new layouts. It's pretty cool to compare and contrast.
The primary appeal of these high-quality reprints may be mainly academic and historical, but they are still well worth checking out. (Plus, tracking down real copies of the originals is a very expensive and time-consuming proposition...) I, for one, look forward to more volumes just like this one!
Anything Goes Trivia
Last Kiss
Megaton Man
Trevor
