Atlas Comics Library HC (2023 Fantagraphics) comic books published within the past 2 months
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Published Apr 2024 by Fantagraphics.$34.95
$34.95
Volume 2 - 1st printing. "Venus: Strange Stories of the Supernatural!" Collects Venus (1948-1952 Marvel) #1-19. Art by Werner Roth, Christopher Rule, Mike Sekowsky, Joe Maneely, Bob Powell, Vince Alascia, Lin Streeter, Syd Shores, Russ Heath, Hy Rosen, Mike Esposito, Don Rico, Gene Colan, Bill Everett, Dave Berg, John Tartaglione, Sol Brodsky, Allen Bellman, Manny Stallman, John Giunta, and Pete Morisi. Cover by Jim Mooney. Back Cover by Bill Everett. Introduction by Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. The Goddess of Love...and SF horror: The eagerly anticipated single volume collecting the 10 rare issues of the overstuffed Venus comics! In the late 1940s, the first half of the Venus series from Marvel Comics predecessors Timely and Atlas Comics was published as a lighthearted romance comic about the goddess Venus taking a job on Earth at a beauty magazine. Never a company to miss a trend, Atlas began introducing more science fiction elements in the 1950s, and eventually turned Venus' dating adventures into a straight-out horror anthology. Collected here, 70 years later and for the first time ever, is that swift-changing second half of the 19-issue run. Future Marvel stars Bill Everett (seven issues) and Werner Roth (three issues) take Venus to heights of four-color weirdness and pre-Code horror ghastliness. Everett is given free rein and seizes the opportunity: writing, drawing, and lettering twenty ghoul is hand goofy masterpieces, including classics like "Hangman's House," "The Day Venus Vanished," "The House of Terror," "The Sealed Spectors," Tidal Wave of Terror," and the phantasmagorical "Cartoonist's Calamity!" These stories showcase the brilliant draftsmanship and storytelling of Everett, one of the giants of the 1940s and '50scomic book industry. His slick, fluid line rendered at Timely/Atlas, from his seminal god-child Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, to the atomic age Marvel Boy, is some of the finest pre-Code horror this side of E.C.'s Graham Ingels. Series editor Dr. Michael J. Vassallo assisted in the compilation of Venus for Marvel 13 years ago, and Fantagraphics is delighted to publish the horror half as the second title in The Fantagraphics Atlas Comics Library. Hardcover, 8-in. x 11-in., 280 pages, full color. Cover price $49.99.
