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Do Atlas Comics have the best logos, or what?

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Charlton fanzines! Man, what a guy can find here in Pittsburgh, PA.

OK, lemme see if I can trace this riff back to the source. So, I went to that small convention last weekend and was bragging to my friends about all the cool shit I cherry picked from 50-cent bins, when I mentioned that I passed up those off-sized color comics from Charlton.

My buddy Spahr was like, “Oh, yah, those were great, I love the paper they used for those things. I don’t have any of those around but I do have these, remember these Charlton fanzines?”

The most interesting one, to me, is the first one pictured below (top left). That’s Contemporary Pictorial Literature #12 from 1975 with a Paul Gulacy cover.

Check out some choice bits from the editorial by Roger Stern about the debut of Atlas Comics (at that time a new publishing effort led by former Marvel Comics owner Martin Goodman), as well as the price increases and content changes to the zine:

“Think for a moment of the really ugly things that go on in comics publishing—the deliberate rack-crowding, the unearned braggadocio, the high-handed treatment of creative personnel—and you’ll realize that Atlas has in a sense become a microcosm of the industry. We have seen a handful of shockingly beautiful books and a carload of tripe. […] It is clear that a free, creative hand can devise a damn good comic. And no better examples can be found than Larry Hama’s Wulf and Howard Chaykin’s Scorpion. […] So here we are for $.75 … four times a year … with ever-lovin’ color covers … and type so clear you can read every word. […] Old timers amongst you will notice that there is no Steve Gerber with us this issue. What with him becoming a Crazy editor, and a number of new titles starting up … well, you’ve heard of deadline doom. Dogs willing, he’ll be back with us next issue.”

It was a cool little zine (mostly put together by Bob Layton, future Iron Man artist) and also inside are spot illos and comics by future pros John Byrne (we used to say “John Brine”) and Dennis Fujitake (remember Dalgoda?), as well as “fan” drawings by established pros like Syd Shores and Herb Trimpe(!).

But the best thing in the issue has to be this line from the indicia: “Contributors! Please refrain from sending in samples unless you can put any of our regular CPL artists to shame.”

Hold on, I’ll be back, I gotta see if I can scare up any Fantastic Fanzines.