Well....

Having just, finally, finished reading the Atlas Heroes Vol. 1, I think I can safely say just why the line failed back in the mid-fifties.

THEY WERE DREADFUL COMICS!!!

I have NEVER taken this long to read a Masterworks volume before. It took two bloody weeks, because the stories kept putting me to sleep. EVERY story was about the Red Menace, every story had the same structure and resolution, the villains were completely goofy (yes, even the Red Skull). Frankly, the only redeeming feature was the Everett art on Marvel Boy and Sub-Mariner!

Now, I know that I read at least 25% of these stories back in the late sixties to mid-seventies, as reprints in Fantasy Masterpieces/Marvel Super-Heroes or in those Giant-Size issues that Marvel experimented with. And yet, not one of the stories remains in my memory in the slightest. This book contains EVERY Marvel Boy story printed in the fifties, so it has to contain the three or four Marvel Boy stories I read in the sixties -- but re-reading it now does not trip any memories whatsoever. It's like I never read them, even though I can recall virtually every other story I read back in the day.

These were sloppily-assembled books from the get-go. Kudos for trying to deal with the 4-year absences of the Big Three characters in the Young Men issues, but they can't keep their stories straight! In the first several issues, it's established that Steve Rogers and Bucky are at a private school ("The Lee School"), but by the fifth story that continuity has been thrown out the window and they're back in the army. It's established that the Big Three characters know each other in one story -- but that's about the only acknowledgement. Namor's Atlantean race is sometimes pink-skinned, sometimes blue-skinned, sometimes green-skinned. And one of the promotional blurbs at the bottom of one of the Torch stories calls Toro Bucky!

Romita's art on the Cap strips is terrible -- the Red Skull looks comical, more like Red Skelton or something you'd find in Not Brand Echh. Compare Romita's Red Skull with Kirby's version ten years earlier or ten years later -- a pale imitation, at best.

I'm sorry, folks. While I will probably continue to buy the Atlas heroes line, I surely won't recommend this to anyone as a "Masterwork" on any level. This is a historical curiosity, nothing more. I think I would rather read Millie The Model than another volume of this.

Just to cleanse my palate, after I finished this voume, I picked up another Masterwork I recently purchased: Hulk Vol. 3. Now, no one can tell me that this is the pinnacle of Green-Skin's career, but THIS volume I was able to finish in one enjoyable 4-hour sitting. What a world of difference ten years makes....