‘The Atlas Comics Library No. 3: In the Days of the Rockets!’ (review)

By Joe Maneely, Hank Chapman,
Mike Sekowsky
Edited by Dr. Michael J. Vassallo
Published by Fantagraphics

In the Days of the Rockets is another of Fantagraphics’ and Dr. Michael Vassallo’s curated complete reprintings of comic books from Atlas, the 1950s proto-Marvel.

If you couldn’t tell from the title, this time out we’re dealing with science fiction.

In particular, what’s reprinted here are the complete six-issue run of Space Squadron/Space Worlds and the six-issue run of Speed Carter, Spaceman.

That first series ran in 1951-1952 and the latter was in 1953-1954.

Despite the fact that these were running concurrently with EC Comics’ Weird Science and Weird Fantasy, it would be patently unfair to make comparisons. EC’s science fiction stories were generally more cerebral and, of course, had the advantage of Al Williamson and Wallace Wood on much of their art chores.

The Atlas stories are more pure space opera, but that’s hardly a bad thing! And the artists represented in the twelve issues in this volume are no slouches, either—George Tuska, Joe Maneely, Christopher Rule, Werner Roth, Allen Bellman, John Romita, Mike Sekowsky, and more.

Most of those names would go on to greater fan familiarity in the Silver Age of Comics that was soon to follow.

As always with this reprint series, perhaps the best part is Dr. Vassallo’s Introduction. Long considered to be the reigning expert on all things Timely-Atlas, his writing is always detail-oriented, entertaining, and supremely informative. At some point, when Fantagraphics has completed however many books they end up publishing in the series, I think I would like to see a collection just of Michael’s text pieces.

Many of the stories themselves feature stalwart space heroes along the lines of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers. In this case, it’s Jet Dixon, Speed Carter, and Blast Revere. Some of these guys are also reminiscent of DC’s Tommy Tomorrow, who had appeared a couple of years earlier.

Aliens (some of them two-headed), lethal plants, space dragon ladies, space dragons, would-be conquerors, and lots and lots of spaceships and rockets are the order of the day plotwise.

The second half of the book, Speed Carter, Spaceman, is more polished than the first half. While most of the writers of the first section are unknown, Hank Chapman gets the credit for nearly everything in this second half. It’s still cheesy Captain Video-style adventures but the art is generally more sophisticated. It should go without saying to anyone familiar with the art of Joe Maneely that his work always displays more effort than he was likely being paid for. Maneely was literally the best Atlas had, and, in his own way, as good as those guys over at EC. In fact, he’s so good, that when one of the stories here is NOT by him, you find yourself thinking lesser of it.

As always, the covers, text pages, and original ads appear as well, and, as always, I personally see no value in reprinting ancient ads in a book like this. The text pages can be interesting and the covers, of course, are a must. Surprisingly, the covers of these issues aren’t particularly memorable.

For that matter, neither are the stories or the characters.

Obviously, Marvel would improve on that score a decade later. Presumably because of titles like the ones reprinted here, publisher Martin Goodman would declare that science fiction doesn’t sell. For ages he wouldn’t allow Marvel to publish any science fiction outside the confines of the superhero books.

That all changed in the early 1970s, which would eventually lead to Marvel introducing the world to the greatest space opera of them all—Star Wars. Probably wouldn’t have happened without Blast, Jet, and Speed pioneering the spaceways!

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