Atlas Comics Library #8

History

When EC's Mad comic became a cultural phenomenon, publisher Martin Goodman directed Stan Lee to produce Atlas's own response; Lee, who had served in the Army Signal Corps during the war and had been Kurtzman's boss at Timely, wrote and edited Snafu essentially single-handedly, deploying the Atlas freelance roster — Joe Maneely and John Severin as the primary art workhorses, with Russ Heath, Bill Everett, Howie Post, and Marie Severin on production — across just three issues published November 1955 through March 1956 before the title folded. The Fantagraphics hardcover, produced under the ongoing collaborative licensing arrangement between Fantagraphics and Marvel announced in April 2023, pairs the complete facsimile reprints with a new scholarly introduction by series editor Dr. Michael J. Vassallo that contextualises Snafu within the full sweep of Martin Goodman's 1950s humor publishing programme across multiple Atlas titles.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Collects all three issues of Snafu (Vol. 1, #1–3), published by Atlas/Marvel in November 1955, January 1956, and March 1956 — presented together in hardcover for the first time.
• Written and edited by Stan Lee; primary artists were John Severin and Joe Maneely, with additional contributions by Russ Heath, Bill Everett, Howie Post, and production design by Marie Severin.
• Snafu contains the first appearance of Irving Forbush — the bumbling fictional 'founder' of the magazine created by Stan Lee — a character Lee later resurrected as Forbush Man in Marvel's 1967 self-parody title Not Brand Echh.
• The magazine was Atlas's answer to EC's Mad, hitting newsstands at the same moment Mad transitioned from a comic book to its landmark black-and-white magazine format (cover-dated July 1955); among multiple Atlas Mad-imitators (Wild, Crazy Comics, Riot), Snafu is considered the most ambitious of the bunch.
• Snafu's targets included mid-1950s pop-culture touchstones: the juvenile-delinquency film The Blackboard Jungle ('The Blackboard Forest' by Russ Heath), Mickey Spillane hard-boiled detective fiction, the Marilyn Monroe calendar, Senator Joe McCarthy, and pinup model Bettie Page.
• The volume includes original Snafu artwork by Joe Maneely — wash-style Hollywood caricatures described by reviewers as among the most technically ambitious work of his tragically brief career; Maneely died in June 1958 at age 32.
• Edited and introduced by Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, the series' recurring Atlas scholar, whose introduction contextualises Snafu within the broader history of Martin Goodman's humor publications across the Atlas line.
• Atlas Comics Library #8 is the eighth volume in the ongoing Fantagraphics/Marvel collaborative reprint series, announced in April 2023, which aims to be the first carefully curated archival line dedicated to Marvel's 1950s Atlas Comics output across horror, war, crime, science-fiction, and humor genres.

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