Trend-following
Goodman's publishing strategy for Atlas involved what he saw as the proven route of following popular trends in TV and movies — Westerns and war dramas prevailing for a time, drive-in movie monsters another time — and even other comic books, particularly the EC horror line. As Marvel/Atlas editor-in-chief Stan Lee told historian Les Daniels, Goodman "would notice what was selling, and we'd put out a lot of books of that type." Commented Daniels, "The short-term results were lucrative; but while other publishers took the long view and kept their stables of heroes solid, Goodman let his slide." While Atlas had some horror titles, for example, such as Marvel Tales, as far back as 1949, the company increased its output dramatically in the wake of EC's success. Lee recalled, "t was usually based on how the competition was doing. When we found that EC's horror books were doing well, for instance, we published a lot of horror books." Until the early 1960s, when Lee would help revolutionize comic books with the advent of the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, Atlas was content to flood newsstands with profitable, cheaply produced product — often, despite itself, beautifully rendered by talented if low-paid artists.
The Atlas "bullpen" had at least five staff writers (officially called editors) besides Lee: Hank Chapman, Paul S. Newman, Don Rico, Carl Wessler, and, in the teen-humor division, future Mad magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee. Daniel Keyes, future author of Flowers for Algernon, was an editor beginning 1952. Other writers, generally freelance, included Robert Bernstein.
The artists — some freelance, some on staff — included such veterans as Human Torch creator Carl Burgos and Sub-Mariner creator Bill Everett. The next generation included the prolific and much-admired Joe Maneely, who before his death just prior to Marvel's 1960s breakthrough was the company's leading artist, providing many covers and doing work in all genres, most notably on Westerns and on the medieval adventure The Black Knight. Others included Russ Heath, Gene Colan, and the fledgling, highly individualistic Steve Ditko.
Atlas' most prominent Western titles, many reprinted in the 1970s, were Ringo Kid, with art by Maneely, Fred Kida and John Severin; artist Doug Wildey's The Outlaw Kid; artist Jack Keller's Kid Colt, Outlaw and the anthology Gunsmoke Western, starring Kid Colt; and The Black Rider, drawn by Maneely, Syd Shores and others. (The Atlas versions of two prominent 1960s Marvel Western characters, the Rawhide Kid and the Two-Gun Kid, were different and historically undistinguished iterations.)
Read more about this topic: Atlas Comics (1950s)