Battle #45
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeBattle #45 (March 1956 cover date) is a representative specimen of the Atlas Comics war anthology line at a pivotal creative crossroads: published in the first full year of post-Comics Code production, it illustrates how editor Stan Lee and publisher Martin Goodman recalibrated the gritty Korean War storytelling of earlier issues into the more restrained, Code-compliant anthology format that would define the mid-decade line. The issue's anthology structure — mixing present-day combat with historical war vignettes spanning conflicts as far back as the Mexican Revolution — shows the editorial breadth Atlas deployed to keep the war genre fresh without running afoul of the new content restrictions. While it introduces no characters who went on to major prominence, it serves as a clean cross-section of the mid-tier Atlas war machine at work, with its stable of journeyman-to-notable talent handling varied military settings in a single 32-page package.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Battle launched in March 1951 as one of Atlas's earliest dedicated war titles and ran continuously for 70 issues through June 1960, making it one of the longer-lived war anthologies in the Atlas stable. By issue #45, the series was operating squarely under the Comics Code Authority regime that had reshaped the industry beginning with cover dates of February–March 1955; publisher Martin Goodman responded not by contracting the war line but by expanding it, adding new titles while softening content across the board. The issue was on sale in mid-November 1955 despite its March 1956 cover date, a standard newsstand backdating practice of the era.
Trivia · 7 facts
- Cover date: March 1956; on-sale date: November 15, 1955 (per Marvel Database/BreezeWiki).
- Confirmed story contents include: 'At Gunpoint!' (art by John Romita), 'When Villa Attacked' (art by Paul Reinman), 'A Hunk of Steel' (art by Don Heck), plus 'Missing in Action!,' 'Break-Thru!,' and the text story 'Big Offensive' (per MyComicShop/GCD data).
- John Romita — later the celebrated co-creator of Mary Jane Watson and a defining Spider-Man artist — contributed war anthology work to Atlas throughout this period; he drew exactly 33 war stories for Atlas between 1952 and 1957, never handling character features or covers.
- The issue is part of the 'Fight For Freedom' sub-feature era: a post-Code anthology insert that ran approximately 60 installments across 7 Atlas war titles in 1956 and 1957, including Battle, drawn by talent ranging from Al Williamson to Mort Drucker.
- Battle remained a purely anthology war title for its entire run — it carried no ongoing starring character features, unlike sister titles such as Marines in Battle ('Iron Mike' McGraw) or Combat Kelly.
- The series ran from March 1951 to June 1960, totaling 70 indexed issues, making it one of the longest-running Atlas war titles.
- No notable first character appearances have been documented or corroborated for this specific issue across any indexed source.
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Reprints
Reprinted in War #4 (1961), War #5 (1961)
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