During the 1970’s comic book newcomers Atlas/Seaboard stormed on to the spinner racks with no less than 23 colour comic titles and 5 black and white "adult-orientated" mags. Despite the many problems the company faced they did produce some decent books with arguably their best title being the black and white anthology magazine “Thrilling Adventure Stories” (TAS), in particular issue 2 of that title. While the first issue of TAS was a good attempt the title exploded with its second and sadly final issue with some wonderful strips by the top writers and artists of the day all wrapped up in the above wonderful Neal Adams cover. Below are a few pages from what I consider to be one of the best black and white magazines of the 1970’s and beyond.
Above: The splash page from perhaps the most famous of all the stories in this issue by the legendary "Manhunter" team of Archie Goodman and Walt Simonson (which I may shown more of later)
Above: The magazines only returning character from TAS #1 "Kromag" by Gabriel Levy with art by Jack Sparling. Although Sparling wasn't one of the top hot comic artists at this time, this was a pretty decent strip.
Above: 2 pages from the John Albano and Russ Heath tale "Tough Cop" - Heath at this time never failed to produce anything less than jaw dropping art.
Above: 2 pages from "Town Tamer" by Steve Mitchell and the wonderful John Severin. Second page image from Comic Art Collectors ( I deleted my image in error after scanning and I'm too lazy to scan it again lol ).
Above: "A job well done" by Rick Meyer and Alex Toth. This was a pretty grim and gritty tale even for the 1970's expertly drawn by Toth who added some nice touches including not using word ballons.
Above: The cover to the first issue of "Thrilling Adventure Stories" by Ernie Colon.
This issue wasn't quite the end of TAS as in 2021 a third issue (of sorts) of "Thrlling Adventure Stories" was published featuring text stories of Targitt 2021/ Man Hunter and Bog Beast by Jeff Rovin, John Albano and Richard Meyers. Cover image from Amazon.
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Great post about a great if ill-fated magazine. I was totally unaware of the 2021 third issue. I have a mission. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI only came across the 2021 text book by accident Rip, but I'm tempted as well.
ReplyDeleteI think I had them at the time as the covers and art look familiar, but I couldn't swear to it. Your post shows as having been published 8 hours ago, but it wasn't there when I last specifically checked for new posts before I retired for the night. Strange.
ReplyDeleteI pulled it at one point as I hadn't added the 3rd issue cover, perhaps that was the reason Kid
ReplyDeleteThis one always stood out for me too. Especially the Goodman/Simonson tale.
ReplyDeleteHi Steve, The Temple of the Spider was an excellent tale expertly illustrated by Simonson
ReplyDeleteI have a suspicion that at some point I owned a copy of issue #2, but must have sold it in my comic purge of 1983. Looking at the pages you have shown, I'm very much of a mind to track down a copy. What a roster of talent in that book!
ReplyDeleteI remember nearly getting rid of all my old Atlas/Seaboard books but decided at the last minute to hold on to a few issues. It's worth tracking down a copy of TAS #2 for the art.
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