ATLAS COMICS LIBRARY Volume 11 Spy Cases

Collected here for the first time, the secret agents in Atlas' spy comics of the 1950s kept Cold War America safe from Red agents and saboteurs and were in print well into the years of the Korean War, which made its presence felt in every adventure title from the publisher. Patriotic, but also subtler, darker and more sinister than the familiar costumed hero titles, the spy genre is a little-seen aspect of Atlas/Marvel’s deep publishing history. Shortly after launching his men’s adventure line of comic books in 1949 (and just before he published his first war title), Atlas publisher Martin Goodman found, in the middle ground between crime and men’s adventure, the sneakier, conspiratorial sub-genre of spy comics. The first title was Spy Cases (soon followed by Spy Fighters and Kent Blake of the Secret Service) and the contents were Cold War noir stories, as Doug Grant, Secret Agent, protected America’s interests, fighting commies from behind the Iron Curtain. Led by superlative action/adventure artwork by Al Hartley (later Bill Savage) and supported by Atlas titans including Gene Colan, Bill Everett, Russ Heath, Jerry Robinson and Joe Maneely, American agents ferreted out sinister threats in thrillers like: “The Traitor!,” “Discs of Death,” “Frame-Up in Red,” and “The Case of the Missing B-29!”