MENACE, ANYONE?

While artists like Lee Elias, Warren Kremer and Don Heck were designing horrific covers that would become legendary in pre-Code horror comics, over at Atlas, Stan Lee was cranking out reams of stories. While they eventually became formulaic, no one can deny that they were nearly always well-written.

Publisher Martin Goodman was a harsh taskmaster and kept his staff at Atlas busy. As a result, the imprint sold more titles (18) and released almost 400 single issues (see FIFC reference page HERE) than any other publisher during the pre-Code years. One of them was called MENACE and ran for 11 issues from 1953-1954 before it was cancelled, another casualty of the Comics Code Authority.

MENACE

Vol. 1 No. 1

March 1953

Hercules Publishing Corp. (Atlas Comics)

Editor: Stan Lee

Cover: Bill Everett

Pages: 36

Cover price: 10 cents

CONTENTS

"One Head Too Many!"

Script: Stan Lee

Art: Bill Everett

"The Man Who Couldn't Move"

Script: Stan Lee

Art: George Tuska

"Poor Mr. Watkins"

Script: Stan Lee

Art: Werner Roth

"The Wait In Their... Dungeon!"

Script: Stan Lee

Art: Russ Heath

THE KISS OF DEATH!

The natural progression of Romance, Western and other themed comic books was to evolve into horror titles. This was repeated many times over when horror was noticed gaining popularity with a larger number of readers over other books that had traditionally sold well during the Golden Age.

One example that changed with the trends is EC's Moon Girl, who started off as a super-heroine in MOON GIRL AND THE PRINCE, then became MOON GIRL, then MOON GIRL FIGHTS CRIME! and finally A MOON, A GIRL . . ROMANCE.

In his excellent book, A HISTORY OF UNDERGROUND COMICS, Mark James Estren explains further:

"A trend toward crime and adventure comics was developing, and E.C. was in the forefront—staying in the field of love comics and Western stories as well. But the special E.C. style was emerging fast as the forties waned. It was a style that never took itself completely seriously; when an adventure comic did not make it after three titles were tried (Moon Girl and the Prince, then simply Moon Girl, then Moon Girl Fights Crime), the book was changed to a love comic with completely different settings and characters, but with an oddly familiar title: A Moon, a Girl... Romance. Moon Girl #5, by the way, had a story with a title that looked forward to the great horror comics of a few years later: 'The Corpse with Will Power'."

Moon Girl would finally merge with WEIRD FANTASY with issue #13.

Similarly, VENUS began as a romance title, then began a run of "Strange Stories of the Supernatural" with issue #11 (November 1950).

Today's story appeared in the last issue of the original VENUS series. The next time we see her is in Marvel's SUB-MARINER #57 (January 1973). The story and art is by Bill Everett. He also did the knock-out cover and you can see his signature obscured by one of the skeleton's shrouds in the background. A horror comic cover if there ever was one!

Coincidentally, Stan Lee must have liked the title as it was used again later in ADVENTURES INTO WEIRD WORLDS #23 (October 1953).

Read it HERE.