The Atlas Artist Edition Vol 01 Joe Maneely FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS

The first book in Fantagraphics’ new Atlas Artist
Edition series collects the best work of Marvel’s top
artist of the 1950s in a lush, lavish, full-color, oversize
collector’s volume, scanned directly from the original
printings and meticulously restored and presented in
a wealth of detail never seen before.
Joe Maneely was known for his draftsmanship, his versatility, and
his speed. He could draw horror, science fiction, war, crime, Madstyle
humor, Westerns, and funny animals with equal dexterity. His
tactile, chiaroscuro graphic approach to storytelling has made him
a legend among the comics cognoscenti, but because he never drew
superheroes and his life ended tragically at age 32, he has never
been given the attention his short but incandescent career deserves. Until now.
As Geoffrey C. Ward wrote in American Heritage, “Maneely’s knowledge of 19th
century artifacts was encyclopedic, his rumpled, unshaven cowboys all wore the
right hats, swung the right lariats, sat in the right saddles, fired the right model
Colts – with every screwhead and trigger guard and notched handle precisely
rendered.”
And that’s only his Westerns. That tightly focused attention to detail pervades
his work in every genre.
The Atlas Artist Edition Vol. 1: Joe Maneely, presents a cornucopia of Maneely’s
work for Marvel (then called Atlas) including Westerns (Kid Colt, Black Rider, Ringo
Kid, Wyatt Earp, Two-Gun Kid), pre-Code horror (“Haunted!”, “The Raving Maniac”,
and the classic “Your Name Is Frankenstein”), space opera (Speed Carter), war (Combat
Kelly), Mad-style parodies from the pages of Crazy and Riot, cold-war intrigue
and paranoia (Yellow Claw), and Maneely’s pride and joy – his Arthurian champion,
The Black Knight. Series editor Dr. Michael J. Vassallo provides expert contextual
and historical commentary in a special essay for this volume.
Dr. Michael J. Vassallo is the pre-eminent expert on the Timely/Atlas period of Marvel’s
history. He co-wrote The Secret History of Marvel Comics (Fantagraphics Books,
2013) and edited Atlas at War (2020) and Timely Confidential: When the Golden Age of
Comic Books Was Young (2017). He has written extensively for the Marvel Masterworks
series and maintains his own Timely/Atlas Comics blog. He lives in New York.