It took him a while, tough. Guess he got sidetracked.

or bcronin@comicbookresources.com

Yeah, that does answer a lot of it for me. Thanks.

As for the Atlas Archives site, I certainly did not mean to suggest I thought that you had some inside information there. Sorry it came acros that way. I do wonder why, given that "Phil" "obviously admired" (your words, and just giving credit where it's due, as I certainly agree with that) the defunct company, he put Rovin's article up at all. Did he hope Cooke's contrary piece would be believed by the site's visitors over Rovin's, making Jeff look bad? Oh, well.

One last thing: "There was reasonable doubt as to whether the creators had signed the standard work--for--hire contracts [with Atlas] (which is why Marvel and Dc really began emphasizing that status around this time)." Back in Urban Legends #48, a discussion board debate concerning Jack Kirby's departure from DC in the mid--70s directed me to certain references that indicated the Big Two began emphasizing work--for--hire because of the instituting of some regulation/legislation saying that if comics work wasn't specifically stated to be such, then it wasn't (I believe that's what was said---it is at least pretty close---but see below). This reaction by the companies---so as to retain total ownership as they had always been doing---led several names, including Kirby then at Marvel, to leave comics entirely until the rise of the creator--ownership--oriented alternative companies a few years later, starting with Pacific. This was before Brian changed sites and left all the old discussion postings behind, so those links, etc., are gone, and I didn't make notes, primarily because I didn't know that was going to happen. Again, this is all at worst pretty close.

but Rovin was there. yes, his piece has a sense of personal mythmaking, but it also rings really true if one simply looks at the other sources that discuss that time.

Goodman OWNED Marvel, but he also owned several other publishing houses. One of his hedges had always been to publish with as many corporate names as he could, so that debt from one flop (or profit from one hit) couldn't be easily connected to each other. Early Marvel books may have had Marvel on the cover (at least after the first year or so) to tie them together, but if you looked at the publishing indicia (the actual legal copyright claim), they were often credited to many different companies.

and, as I said above, Goodman published a lot of different publications besides comics, men's magazines, film magazines, puzzle magazines, etc. Anything that might be a profit center, he had a finger in it. In fact, Mario Puzo wrote for Goodman's film magazines while he was writing The Godfather in the 60's. It was long acknowledged that the Men's magazines were what made the most profit for a long time, not the comics. It was just better PR to be identified as a comics publisher than a men's magazine publisher.

If you read the various histories of comics, whether Steranko's or Gerard Jones or Goulart's, they are all consistent that Goodman had a long, long, long history of flooding the market to follow whatever trend was selling at that date, whether superheroes during the war, westerns/love/crime after the war, or horror in the late 50's/early 60s. Goodman didn't publish one or two books, he published dozens to make the quick profit. (Anyone who knows the 70's Atlas history should know how familiar that sounds).

after his Atlas distribution company went under in the collapse of the comics' market in the late 50's, the owners of DC (who also owned Independent News - one of the largest magazine distributors left in the market) agreed to take them on, but put Goodman under very strict controls about how many titles he could publish in any genre (as well as total) because they didn't want him to flood the market again. It was the only deal he could get, so he took it.

and it had to frustrate the hell out of him, as when the Batman craze came along, he couldn't take advantage of it!! He was limited in the total number of books he could publish. Once the 10 year agreement for distribution was over, Goodman found another distributor (Curtis, I believe) and we had the famous 1968 explosion of new titles from Marvel where the split books each became two solo books and lots of new titles debuted. The difference is that Marvel had become Marvel, and there was a market for more Marvel product (but not as much as even Goodman thought, as many of the new 1968 books didn't last long).

Once Goodman had the profit statements from his new, expanded lineup in place, he sold out to a conglomerate (just as National Periodical had recently done). National Periodical (DC) sold to a major media company, whereas Goodman sold out to Perfect Film, who worked primarily in the printing industry (and may have been a major creditor if the rumors I've heard are correct).

Goodman expected the new owners to allow his son to remain the nominal publisher of Marvel, but Chip Goodman was a bad businessman and didn't do well. Once he was fired (as soon as the new owners could legally), that's when Goodman began setting up Atlas to tear apart Marvel, with Chip as the publisher. He got connected up with yet another distributor (Kable, I believe) who had minimal comics product and thus allowed Goodman free range to print as many books as he could, as it was a new potential market for them.

Atlas failed because they debuted at a negative point in the country's history in terms of spendable income. They failed because they didn't have a coherent editorial plan. They failed for any number of reasons. But ultimately, Chip Goodman retained the men's magazines (which was the only part of the company that he seemed to care about or have any understanding of) and washed his hands of the rest.

The creators, meanwhile, had used Rovin's experiment to their advantage. In the late 60's, the rapidly aging DC staff writers had asked for benefits and talked about unionizing. They were almost all fired and replaced by the new generation of writers like O'Neill, Wein, Wolfman, etc. by the early 70's, Neal Adams (at the height of his influence and powers) began to talk about creating a union for comics' creators. Since by that time there were mainly DC and Marvel left, the two companies were able to maintain solidarity and refuse most of the demands pretty easily. Then comes in Jeff Rovin and Atlas with promises of co-ownership and return of art and higher rates, and there was competition. If you've read the articles linked to already, you know that the better deal never really existed, but the potential lasted just long enough to give the creators a bargaining chip. Both DC and Marvel changed their policies to the better for creators before everything was said and done.

and if you look at what Atlas actually published, not many of the DC and Marvel "stars" ever really made the jump. and the ones who did were still at the early stages of their careers and were able to recover and get work once the Atlas experiment was over. Although many of them (like Chaykin) never really stuck with the majors like many of their contemporaries did. that early taste of freedom, followed by the start of creator-owned titles like Star*Reach, made them less willing to work on the plantation.

But this is a long-winded reply to a rather simple question. There was no Atlas/Seaboard company to lodge a lawsuit. There was reasonable doubt as to whether the creators had signed the standard work-for-hire contracts (which is why Marvel and DC began really emphasizing that status around this time). What was the benefit of a lawsuit to protect characters that had "failed" and were no longer published by a company that was no longer in existence?

and if you look at it from Marvel's perspective, what better way to thumb their nose at the grandiose claims of their former owner (who had not been a supportive owner in the first place) than to recycle some of the characters? Add into that fact that Marvel, at the time the characters were recycled, was not a well-oiled machine. it was run by writer-editors who each had their own little feifdoms, with not much overall control, definitely not a company that ran things in front of the lawyers on a regular basis. That all came later, when Jim Shooter became Editor-in-Chief and began imposing a more corporate culture on the company. So Marvel as a company most likely didn't know that creators were recycling characters -- the individual creators may have been doing it to spite Goodman/Atlas, but it's very unlikely that it was intentional on the corporate level. And actually, if you read interviews with many of those creators where they talk about recycling the characters, even then it wasn't about thumbing their noses at Atlas as much as it was trying to use characters that they liked and thought had potential.

I'm not sure if any of this rambling answers your specific questions, but it's important to not put today's context onto what was done 30 years ago -- it was a different environment.

But come on, get the facts right, at least! Constant anti-Byrne agenda?!!? What the heck?!?

I have read the Jeff Rovin article now, and do have some questions about it. First, note that the Cooke piece is singled out with a "History" button all its own, while Rovin's is buried with a bunch of other articles. I seriously doubt that said button existed when a link at Fred Hembeck's site first led me to the Atlas Archives two or three years ago, and all this situation is why I didn't cite Rovin's work: I didn't know the thing existed! After all, why would two articles ostensibly covering the exact same ground yet so at odds with each other both be posted on the same site, with the one you say should be disregarded given the much higher profile? Shouldn't they be posted side by side, so to speak, with a disclaimer that the site's administrators don't know which to believe? There's a story there, but I've got NO idea what it might be. Secondly, Jeff is obviously anything but objective (THAT could very well be a major factor in the two contradictory articles situation, come to think of it). His description of how Martin Goodman had done business since the depression era---"he'd capitalize on what was current or successful, take as few chances as possible...."---is hard to reconcile with him being the man in charge when the other Atlas became Marvel and changed the face of the comics industry, which he was.

You also wrote: "As to why the creators would re--use their characters so obviously---they weren't using the trademarked names, and who was left at Atlas to run the lawsuit?"
That's not what I asked. Let me try to make it clear, this time. If Atlas was a deliberate attack on Marvel as BOTH articles claim, why would Chaykin and Buckler rework their creations from there at Marvel (as opposed to DC or even Charlton, which around that time was publishing the fan faves E--Man and ROG--2000, and therefore doesn't seem to be that unlikely an option), and why didn't Marvel recognize their Atlas antecedents and understandably refuse to have anything to do with them (or---again come to think of it---did the facts that 1: Goodman's new company failed so spectacularly and, 2: they would own these thinly disguised versions of his properties, amuse them)?

Going in, I thought I had more to say about this, but can't think of anything else now.

Atlas had a different distributor than Marvel, and thus got more of a push from that distributor when they came out. Charlton was its own distributor, and was notorious for being very spotty -- you never knew if you would find a Charlton book available for sale, ever.

In order to get artists to leave Marvel (and DC, but they targeted Marvel specifically), Rovin had to promise the moon, including co-ownership of characters and higher pay rates. When Goodman found out, he hit the roof. Once the creators found out that they didn't have what they thought they had signed on for, they left. Almost every Atlas title changes creators after the 2nd issue, once the original creators found out what the real deal was going to be.

The similarity to Marvel (including setting Larry Lieber up as a poor-man's Stan) was obviously set in place to compete with Marvel. Goodman was trying to one-up his previous company. The problem was that Goodman was a publisher, not a creator. He only understood the outer trappings, the gimmicks. He had never understood the creative elements that made Marvel Marvel. When you add into that the fact that he was notorious for flooding the market (going back to the 40s) when he thought there was a fad, and you get a pretty accurate account of the Atlas debacle.

And as for why the creators would re-use their characters so obviously -- well, they weren't using the trademark names, and who was left at Atlas to run the lawsuit? When you add in that many of the creators felt they had been misled and/or lied to about their contracts and were not given what they were promised -- Atlas wasn't going to go to court when the judgment could just as easily come back at them as having broken the contracts.

I was there when Atlas came out. I liked some of their stuff and hated a lot of it. There's some good stuff hidden among the fluff (primarily in the first few issues of the titles when the creators still believed they had creative freedom).

the true legacy of Atlas is that it gave dreams and hope to the new generation of comics creators. it showed them that it might be possible to own their work, or to try different things. page rates went up after Atlas. Both DC and Marvel changed their contracts to allow more creative control. It's been reported several places that the reason the DC Showcase volumes end where they do is that once you hit 1976 (post-Atlas), DC had changed its reprint policies and they have to negotiate with the creators to make the Showcase volumes economically viable.

So, John Byrne drew the FF cover but he didn’t know the story as to why Kirby was removed? C’mon now, why must every one of your columns have some kind of anti-Byrne agenda to it?

John Bynre gave us the reason why Kirby was removed and reiterated it on his board again yesterday.

Why don’t you do a column about why John Byrne is the most slandered man in comics.

Byrne slander?

That's absurd.

Where do I even slightly knock Byrne in the piece?

Dude says "Shooter took him out," and he's right, Shooter took him out. So I dunno where you're getting a slight towards Byrne in the piece. And past Urban Legend pieces? What the heck? Where are the past instances of knocking Byrne in Urban Legend pieces?

I'm actually getting more irritated the more I think of it. I really should be viewing it as more bizarre than irritating, but I can't help but lean toward irritating. There's not an INSTANCE of me knocking Byrne in these past columns, and you've decided to not only ignore that, but to claim that "every one of your columns have some kind of anti-Byrne agenda to it." I mean, if I wrote, like, a single anti-Byrne column, I would still be a bit irked, but as it is, I do not believe I have. CERTAINLY not enough to make an argument of "every one of your columns have some kind of anti-Byrne agenda to it."

I have thought about it...and I have now calmed down from the initial "more irritating than bizarre," and am now willing to go back to "more bizarre than irritating."

So, yeah, very bizarre.

John Bynre gave us the reason why Kirby was removed and reiterated it on his board again yesterday.

Why don't you do a column about why John Byrne is the most slandered man in comics.