Comic books in 'Atlas Artist Edition/Creator Collection'

Volume 1 - 1st printing. "Featuring Joe Maneely: The Raving Maniac and Other Stories!" Introduction by Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. The first book in Fantagraphics' new Atlas Artist Edition series collects the best work of Marvel's top artist of the 1950s in a lush, lavish, full-color, oversize collector's volume, scanned directly from the original printings and meticulously restored and presented in a wealth of detail never seen before. Joe Maneely was known for his draftsmanship, his versatility, and his speed. He could draw horror, science fiction, war, crime, Mad style humor, Westerns, and funny animals with equal dexterity. His tactile, chiaroscuro graphic approach to storytelling has made him a legend among the comics cognoscenti, but because he never drew superheroes and his life ended tragically at age 32, he has never been given the attention his short but incandescent career deserves. Until now. As Geoffrey C. Ward wrote in American Heritage, "Maneely's knowledge of 19thcentury artifacts was encyclopedic, his rumpled, unshaven cowboys all wore the right hats, swung the right lariats, sat in the right saddles, fired the right model Colts - with every screwhead and trigger guard and notched handle precisely rendered." And that's only his Westerns. That tightly focused attention to detail pervades his work in every genre. The Atlas Artist Edition Vol. 1: Joe Maneely, presents a cornucopia of Maneely's work for Marvel (then called Atlas) including Westerns (Kid Colt, Black Rider, Ringo Kid, Wyatt Earp, Two-Gun Kid), pre-Code horror ("Haunted!", "The Raving Maniac", and the classic "Your Name Is Frankenstein"), space opera (Speed Carter), war (Combat Kelly), Mad-style parodies from the pages of Crazy and Riot, cold-war intrigue and paranoia (Yellow Claw), and Maneely's pride and joy - his Arthurian champion, The Black Knight. Series editor Dr. Michael J. Vassallo provides expert contextual and historical commentary in a special essay for this volume. Dr. Michael J. Vassallo is the pre-eminent expert on the Timely/Atlas period of Marvel's history. He co-wrote The Secret History of Marvel Comics (Fantagraphics Books,2013) and edited Atlas at War (2020) and Timely Confidential: When the Golden Age of Comic Books Was Young (2017). He has written extensively for the Marvel Masterworks series and maintains his own Timely/Atlas Comics blog. He lives in New York. Hardcover, 256 pages, full color. Cover price $75.00.

Title Becomes Atlas Creator Collection HC (2026 FB) for Vol. 3

Volume 2 - 1st printing. "Al Williamson: The City that Time Forgot and Other Stories!" Art and cover by Al Williamson. After becoming a professional comics artist in 1948 at the age of 17, by 21 Al Williamson was well-regarded enough as a Western and science-fiction illustrator to be recruited for the EC Comics staff roster - the absolute peak of the field in the 1950s, and a team rarely challenged since. After the Comics Code forced EC to reduce their business, Williamson found himself at the door of Atlas Comics, the largest employer of freelancers in the field. From 1955-60, Williamson would draw 99 stories for Atlas (both solo and with help by Fleagle Gang studio cohorts Angelo Torres and Roy Krenkel, plus Gray Morrow and Ralph Mayo) in mostly western and fantasy genres, with a smattering of war, romance and jungle girl adventure. He flourished on Westerns, freely and loosely rendered four-page morality plays, many scripted economically by Stan Lee. With his extensive oeuvre subsequently based mostly in newspaper strips (including Flash Gordon, Secret Agent Corrigan, and the syndicated Star Wars, at George Lucas' own request), or working largely as an inker, his Atlas stories collectively are the largest single body of work Williamson would ever do as a primary creator for one company. Fantagraphics is proud to present this Al Williamson Artist Edition to finally showcase this distinct period of his remarkable career. Hardcover, 448 pages, full color. Cover price $125.00.

See Atlas Artist Edition HC (2023 Fantagraphics) for Vol. 1-2.

Volume 3 - 1st printing. "Featuring Bill Everett: One Head Too Many and Other Stories!" Written by Stan Lee and Unknown. Art by Bill Everett and Russ Heath. Cover by Bill Everett. Introduction by Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. Already a Marvel/Timely legend for his creation of the Sub-Mariner in 1939, Bill Everett returned to Marvel during the 1950s to become Atlas most versatile and effective practitioner of horror-fantasy. Everetts art was a combination of Graham Ingels, Harry Anderson, and Bernie Wrightson, with the slick ink line of Jack Davis, all melded within his own uniquely captivating imagery and in-your-face ghastliness. This mammoth Fantagraphics/Marvel volume is packed with Atlas pre-Code horror stories — the first volume of a series collecting the Atlas works of Sub-Mariner-creator Bill Everett. Including: Spectacles of Doom, The Evil Eye, The Pit of Horror! Horror in the Moonlight! Dont Bury Me Deep, One Head Too Many! Burtons Blood! Werewolf! The Madman, and The Graymoor Ghost, from titles like Menace, Journey into Unknown Worlds, Strange Tales, Uncanny Tales, Spellbound, Mystic, Suspense, as well as Zombie! from Menace #5, featuring a character rebooted as Simon Garth in the black-and-white Marvel Magazine explosion of the 1970s. An introduction by Atlas expert Dr. Michael J. Vassallo puts it all in context. Hardcover, 10-in. × 13 1/2-in., 256 pages, full color. Cover price $75.00.

See Atlas Artist Edition HC (2023 Fantagraphics) for Vol. 1-2.

Volume 4 - 1st printing. "Featuring B Bernard Krigstein: The Complete Atlas Stories!" Written by B Bernard Krigstein, Dr Michael J Vassallo, and Greg Sadowski . Art and cover by B Bernard Krigstein. While Bernard Krigsteins groundbreaking work at EC Comics has been reprinted numerous times, his substantially larger output for Atlas has been unfairly neglected. The 78 stories in this volume – the vast majority restored from original photostats – will fully rectify that oversight, and provide a greater understanding of the achievement of this often-misunderstood graphic-storytelling pioneer. Krigstein was the only Golden Age artist with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and he approached the black-and-white idiom of comics from the perspective of a student dissecting the drawings of the old masters—in this case those old masters included Jack Kirby, Mort Meskin, Alex Raymond, Jerry Robinson, and many others. Already a seasoned comic book veteran when he arrived in mid-1951, Krigsteins two-year tenure at Atlas can be seen as a vital bridge to his artistic maturity. Story by story, page by page, he stretches and refines the Atlas house style expected of its artists to its outer limits, then defies that convention to forge the personal aesthetic hell continue to refine at EC. After ECs collapse in 1956, Krigstein returned to Atlas to create his final body of work in comics: 29 short-form experiments demonstrating the infinite possibilities inherent in the art of graphic narrative. I used them as a medium for dramatizing the breakdown technique, to show the limitless ways that a comic book story could unfold. I wanted to show that the form was fluid and dynamic and should not be considered a static form. Guest editor and Krigstein biographer Greg Sadowskis introductory historical essay traces the arc of Krigsteins development and his efforts to elevate the stature of a medium that was dismissed as disposable juvenile escapism. Hardcover, 10-in. × 13 1/2-in., 400 pages, full color. Cover price $125.00.