I think the Timely revival failed because Timely's stories weren't particularly fun. Captain America cheering nuclear explosions is a far cry from the Superman and Batman stories of that period.

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To disagree slightly --

Captain America's cheering an A-bomb would, even should, have fit in nicely with the right wing anti-communist craziness that was the McCarthy era. (that panel, with more inspired captions and skipping the jingoistic dialogue, would have made a pretty good cover). But they downplayed his patroitic appeal and, in the Young Men books anyway, didn't even splash that red, white, and blue costume across the cover. The stories were simply too short to do much more than introduce the villain/problem, have the hero show up, fight, and end the problem. This might work in a crime or horror story, but it certainly did not in a superhero. DC had the advantage of slightly longer stories plus a history. Everybody knew (except the dumbest woman in comics, Lois) that Clark Kent was superman, Bruce Wayne was Batman, etc.
Atlas had to start from scratch since four years had passed from the last appearance of these characters. But we get virtually nothing about them other than as masked avengers showing up to defeat the never changing commies, aliens, etc.
type villains.


A. Leedom, President of the Red Raven Revival Society and former flag salesman.

"Nobody dies forever, this is MARVEL!"