From the September 1953 issue of Menace #7
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Your Name Is Frankenstein!
Quick! Take a peek at that opening splash panel below. Did your eyeballs just pop right outta your skull? That’s Joe Maneely folks, and he was without a doubt one of Atlas Comics best, (and Stan the Man wrote the words so you know it doesn’t get much better than this!) To finish off the month of July with a big scream, this is the first post in a 3 day, 3-part Atlas Monster Trilogy… just ahead: mummies and vampires too, so be on the look out!
From the September 1953 issue of Menace #7
From the September 1953 issue of Menace #7
Gorgeous art! Maneely balances the fine line between realistic and cartoony perfectly, most of the great Atlas artists were capable of pulling this off flawlessly.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely! I'll have a couple more Atlas examples in the next couple posts from DiPreta and Everett, both perfect examples of exactly what you're talking about.
ReplyDeletethis ones cool but it always bugs me when people call frankenstiens monster frankenstien when that was the doctors name
ReplyDeleteYou're right of course, but then again "Your Name is the Frankenstein's Monster" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
ReplyDeletejust kidding......
ReplyDeleteAnyone notice that the themes in this story - prejudice, intolerance and human superiority, the sorrow of not fitting in, being the odd one out - are the exact same themes that Stan Lee would later develop into the X-Men?
ReplyDeleteThis comic was written in '53 - exactly ten years before the appearance of the first issue of X-Men in '63.
Interesting footnote to the X-Men saga.
Thanks for sharing it.
Frankenstein's Monster--- the ORIGINAL X-MAN!
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not,the original X-men fought an alien android in X-MEN#40,that was said to have been shelleys inspiration,weird considering that the real monster showed up in the '70's in his own series MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN,also I agree this one is a kind of a tearjerker,and you see where concepts like the Hulk and X-men came from,also you may wanna check the wikipedia article for marvels Frankenstein,this story is listed as his first appearence(even though Captain America fought the monster in USA comics#13.)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the additional info! It's observations like this that make our blog so much more interesting.
ReplyDeleteKeep those types of thoughts coming!
Thanks so much for linking to ome! This is such a cool site!!!
ReplyDeleteThe mighty Atlas, second only to EC IMHO, and at times, better, Stan, and the other writers, were a bit better at balancing words with pictures than Al at EC, but that would be down to taste.
ReplyDeleteWhat's not down to taste is the gorgeous art. Maneely, he would have been one of the greats, right up there with Kirby and Ditko if he would have made it to the Marvel super-hero age.
The Atlas horror stories are like the subconscious mind of the Marvel universe.
ReplyDeleteSo many of their future ideas were fermented in this period, it seems.
For many years I kept reading articles by journalists that probably never read a non-E.C. horror story claiming how awful all of the other horror comics were compared to E.C. They were the only ones in print so I believed it. Those E.C. horrors were everywhere. You could buy them in corner store comic racks.
They never went out of print. I have cheap printings of them and deluxe black and white hard covers.
I discovered this site not too long ago. This was such a great time for imaginative art. I'm really interested in this whole genre.
I think Atlas and E.C. were equal. They both had their strengths and weaknesses. My third favourite company is Harvey.
The other publishers seemed less consistant but have treasures in their books if you look for them.
These Atlas horrors were just hidden. They are so good. So fun. They could've sold well if the E.C.s sold so well.
These stories should really be a bigger part of our culture.
Joe Maneely, for one should be a more well known artist.
Even if he lived longer, I bet I probably would've still liked this horror stuff of his the most. (Super-hero costumes make the art less interesting to me).
Based on what I've seen of Maneely's art on the HoiA,
he IS one of the greats to me.