And if you need more Atlas today, head over to Pappy's for a great terror tale too! CLICK HERE!
Saturday, October 6, 2018
Money Mad! / Fish Story
As mentioned in the previous post, October is Atlas Month, and as we countdown to Halloween, things around here will likely only get horrifically weirder! And today is no exception with two jolting Joe Maneely tales, our first written by Stan Lee (of course) from the July 1953 issue of Uncanny Tales #10, --the second, a silly science fiction freak-out, from the January 1954 issue of Uncanny Tales #16.
And if you need more Atlas today, head over to Pappy's for a great terror tale too! CLICK HERE!
And if you need more Atlas today, head over to Pappy's for a great terror tale too! CLICK HERE!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteDid not see the gill nets coming. I guess they scooped me up. Thanks for pointing to Pappy that was nice of you.
ReplyDeleteBoth of these are great, but Money Mad is the real winner. It's a good setup, he's not just greedy but unreasonably greedy, having millions but denying his sister $10 for what is obviously a life or death situation. This makes the ending all the more powerful. The whole "locked up by mistake" story is as old as the seas, but the last panel is a great twist on it. A real winner from Stan and Joe. Again, the coloring didn't do the art justice.
ReplyDeleteA fish story is just fun. It's got a joke-y ending and the progression of lures is great. And more fabulous Manelly art!
And Pappy deserves all the shout out he's can get!
Don't know if these are the typical length for Atlas stories, but I'm really digging their tightness!
ReplyDeleteYou can't eat it (money) - In the film Blood Bath (1975) a loan shark does just that while locked in his walk in safe (Did the writers of Blood Bath read Atlas comics as kinds?)
ReplyDeleteFish Story, another man-as-the-prey story, was well done, and I didn't see the giant nets as an ending coming either.
Thanks for giving a shout out to Pappy, Karswell. I'm glad he is posting again.
Trevor Constable is the name of the UFO writer who put the idea of "UFO's as living things" on the map. He wrote a very interesting book about it called "Sky Creatures." (But it's a pretty confusing one to me, not some much because of the UFO stuff as because it has a lot of heavy philosophy in it.)
ReplyDelete"Fish Story" manages to answer a problem people (including big fans) have with countless SF stories (and spy stories) - why does the villain make it so easy for the hero to escape? In this case, because he was thrown into a bucket of "fish," and even if they'd known he was alive, they wouldn't have worried about it.
For my money. Maneely is the only artist that can go toe-to-toe with Jack Davis and Wally Wood for storytelling ability across all genres and levels of abstraction (well, maybe not the romance genre, but I'm not placing bets on that). This stuff is all the more amazing because it seems so hurried.
ReplyDeleteColors are probably by Stan Goldberg no? The other best colorist to ever walk the Earth. Page two of Money Mad is just inspired--the brilliant color distribution balances the whole page, not the panels. Page one of Fish Story is similar, but the splash is really the focus, there. I think Goldberg saved the panel. I mean, the art is super great, but Joe sort of sidelined the all-important lightning strike and Stan got it back into the spotlight again. That's teamwork!