Atlas/Seaboard Comics - Chip Goodman

Chip Goodman

Some reports at the time suggested Goodman was angered that Cadence, the new Marvel owners, had reneged on a promise to keep his son, Charles "Chip" Goodman, as Marvel's editorial director. Marvel and Atlas writer Gary Friedrich recalled: "I never really felt that did it for that reason. I think he did it to make money and that he thought with Larry in charge and paying good rates that he could do it. Now, he probably wouldn't have minded if it would have taken a bite out of Marvel's profits, but I don't think it was done out of revenge. I think Martin was too smart for that". Marvel art director John Romita, however, believed, "Chip was supposed to take his place. But that part of it must not have been on paper, because as soon as Martin was gone, they got rid of Chip. That's why Martin started Atlas Comics. It was pure revenge".

Although Chip Goodman was also in charge of the Seaboard comics, he was a "lightweight" in making decisions about them, according to Rovin. Historian and one-time Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas recalled, "One of the problems was just being Martin Goodman's son. I don't think that Martin respected Chip very much — he put Chip in charge but would treat him with less than benign contempt in front of other people. Martin was a little cruel sometimes".

This father-son conflict was fictionalized by a Magazine Management staffer, Ivan Prashker, who wrote a short story with a thinly disguised, unflattering portrait of a character based on Chip Goodman. When this story, "The Boss's Son," was published in the February 1970 issue of Playboy, Prashker expected he might be fired, but instead, wrote comics historian Jon B. Cooke, he "was rewarded with his own editorship of a magazine as Martin was apparently more impressed that one of his staffers was published in the premier men's magazine than with any insult made to his son".

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