Fantagraphics announces a series of Atlas Comics collections

The publisher will work with Marvel to bring the 1950s comics line back into print.

Fantagraphics and Marvel have announced a series of hardcover volumes collecting comics from Marvel’s 1950s Atlas Comics line. Fantagraphics plan to release collections of individual titles and compilations of a single artist, starting with Adventures Into Terror and artist Joe Maneely.

Edited by Atlas scholar Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, the comics were scanned “directly from the original printings and meticulously restored with a wealth of detail never seen before.” Fantagraphics will publish five volumes a year, with the first two volumes coming this fall.

“It is with great pleasure that I reintroduce modern audiences to this hidden gold and Marvel’s talented 1950s creators, many of whom would go on to fame in the silver age and beyond,” Vassallo said.

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Comics Lowdown: Who owns Atlas Comics?

Plus: Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award recipients, Paige Braddock, Frank Santoro, Dr. Gene Luen Yang and more!

Who exactly owns Atlas Comics? That seems to be the question raised in two articles from The Hollywood Reporter. Earlier this month Steven Paul, producer of the Ghost Rider film, announced via a press conference that he had bought the rights to the Atlas Comics and planned to work with Paramount to turn the properties into movies. Not so fast, said Dynamite Entertainment, who followed up by telling THR that they own the name “Atlas Comics.”

Many of you may be wondering “What the heck was Atlas Comics?” while others might be thinking, “Wait, wasn’t Atlas the company that eventually evolved into Marvel Comics in the 1960s?” And still others are wondering, “Didn’t he learn his lesson after Ghost Rider?”

But getting back to Atlas, yes, there was an Atlas Comics in the 1950s that grew out of Timely Comics and eventually became Marvel Comics. It was owned by publisher Martin Goodman, and it put out comics in a variety of genres like horror, crime, espionage and even a few superhero titles featuring characters like Captain America and the Human Torch, who had previously been published under the Timely banner. However, this isn’t that Atlas Comics.

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