ATLAS COMICS LIBRARY Volume 2 Venus #2

In the late 1940s, Marvel Comics predecessors Timely and Atlas Comics  published Venus,  a lighthearted romance comic about the goddess of love. Never a company to miss a trend, Atlas introduced science fiction and made her a superhero -- then made the title a straight-out horror anthology. Today it's one of the most desirable pre-code titles. Here is the swift-changing second half of the 19-issue run -- all the very best issues! Future Marvel stars Bill Everett (seven issues) and Werner Roth (three issues) take Venus to heights of four-color weirdness and pre-Code horror ghastliness. Bill Everett in particular is given free rein and seizes the opportunity: writing, drawing, and lettering twenty ghoulish and goofy masterpieces, including classics like "Hangman's House," "The Day Venus Vanished," "The House of Terror," "The Sealed Spectors," "Tidal Wave of Terror," and the phantasmagorical "Cartoonist's Calamity!" These stories showcase the brilliant draftsmanship and storytelling of Everett, one of the giants of the 1940s and '50's comic book industry. His slick, fluid line rendered at Timely/Atlas, his creation of the Sub-Mariner, to the atomic age Marvel Boy, presents some of the finest pre-Code horror this side of E.C.'s Graham Ingels. And of course he co-created and drew the origin and first issue of Daredevil with Stan Lee in 1964. Everett did some of his finest work here, on both stories and covers. They are fabulous, including a Venus-in-bondage #17, "Terror in the Tunnel" on #18, and the iconic skeleton clutching Venus on the cover of the final issue, #19. - Bud Series editor Dr. Michael J. Vassallo assisted in the compilation of the first volume of Venus for Marvel 13 years ago, and Fantagraphics gets publishing honors for the horror half, now the second collection in the new Fantagraphics Atlas Comics Library. The first volume in this new series was Vol 1 - Adventures in Terror, also very highly recommended. This is a must-have new series.