Black Knight #1

History

Stan Lee and artist Joe Maneely co-created the Black Knight for Atlas Comics in the post-Wertham climate of 1955, when superhero comics had largely collapsed under public and governmental pressure and most publishers — Atlas included — had retreated into westerns, horror, and romance. Despite that headwind, Lee and Maneely chose to frame Sir Percy as an Arthurian adventure-fantasy hybrid rather than a straightforward superhero, giving the character a double identity borrowed from the superhero playbook but dressed in chainmail. The American Atlas edition (published under the Margood Publishing Corporation indicia, edited by Stan Lee, colored by Stan Goldberg, and lettered by Artie Simek) was simultaneously licensed to L. Miller & Son, Ltd. of London, which printed its customary black-and-white British reprint edition for UK audiences. The series ran only five issues before folding in April 1956, a casualty of the same market forces that claimed nearly every non-DC superhero title of the era.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance and origin of Sir Percy of Scandia, the original Marvel Black Knight, a 6th-century knight at the court of King Arthur who maintains a secret identity as a seemingly cowardly courtier while acting as Camelot's armored champion.
• First appearance of Mordred the Evil and Morgan Le Fay in Marvel Comics continuity, establishing the villain roster that would haunt the Black Knight legacy for generations.
• First appearance of the Crusader (El Alemain) in a back-up story — though the GCD notes the script credit for that segment is disputed, with a previous indexer crediting Stan Lee but later scholarship flagging it as uncertain.
• The enchanted sword introduced in this issue is referred to in the first story as 'the Black Sword' rather than the Ebony Blade; the canonical 'Ebony Blade' name solidified across later issues and retroactive continuity.
• Art and cover by Joe Maneely, with coloring by Stan Goldberg and lettering by Artie Simek; Maneely drew interiors for the first three issues and all five covers of the series.
• The L. Miller & Son British edition reprinted all the Atlas #1 stories in black-and-white, consistent with that publisher's standard format for licensed American material, placing the issue in the hands of UK readers simultaneously with the American release.
• The issue has been reprinted multiple times: Fantasy Masterpieces #11 (October 1967), Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Black Knight/Yellow Claw Vol. 1 (2009), Black Knight #1 Facsimile Edition (April 2021), The Best Marvel Stories by Stan Lee Omnibus (2022), and the Fantagraphics Atlas Artist Edition featuring Joe Maneely (October 2023).
• The series ran only five issues (May 1955 – April 1956) before cancellation, but Sir Percy's lineage seeded two more Black Knight identities — the supervillain Nathan Garrett (Tales to Astonish #52, 1964) and Avenger Dane Whitman (Avengers #47, 1967) — making this debut issue the genetic root of a 70-year-long character dynasty.

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