Grim Ghost #3
This may be the worst comic book produced by Atlas-Seaboard (and that’s saying quite a bit). I found the first two issues to be some of the best comics produced by Atlas-Seaboard (and that’s not saying much at all), but this one was just brutal. Tony Isabella’s story was beyond nonsensical, as the reader is somehow forced to cheer for Satan, whose diminutive stature doesn’t exactly strike fear into the hearts of readers. Normally I love Ernie Colon’s artwork, but I’d swear that this book has some panels drawn by Sanho Kim. It looks like bottom of the barrel fanzine art.Atlas-Seaboard certainly came in like a lion and went out like a lamb, especially if that lamb was struck by a car and was left on the side of the road.
Verdict: For Completists Only
6 comments:
Thank you for saving me! Unfortunately, we can't all write like Brubaker, Stan Lee or Steranko. But most of us wind up like Larry Lieber!
Hey now - I am actually the world's only Larry Lieber fan (love the old Marvel back-up stories).
I normally try to defend Atlas-Seaboard too, but this one is a stinker - most of their series did take a total nose dive after Lieber too over as editor of the entire line.
Thanks for you comment.
I recall seeing these in spinner rack 2 at the place we bought comics in Norway Bay, Quebec in the 1970's. The main spinner rack had all the DC and Marvels and was right beside the door in front of the counter. The second one had the Archie comics, weird magazines and the Atlas comics which were clearly substandard Marvel comics to my youthful eye. We snubbed them big-time.
Scott:
I just wrote a review of this issue for my site, and will be sending people here for a second opinion. I liked Tony Isabella's story more than you did (though it had its problems), but concur on the Colón art. I'm normally a fan, but he laid a real stinker here!
Cheers,
Andrew
I couldn't disagree with you more! Garish rushed art? A character pretty much stolen from FIGHTING YANK, The Funky Phantom and MR. JUSTICE? All that plus SATAN- served up in a crab boil of tarnished bronze-ness that only Stanley Leiber's Atlas Comics could? BAH!! GRIM GHOST is one of my faves Atlas-wise, if even for it's absurdity.
It's easy to love the Chaykin Issues of Scorpion, DESTRUCTOR and TIGER-MAN! But giving your love to the GRIM GHOST, MORLOCK, The COUGAR, etc.? That's commitment- that's fidelity. I know, I'm alone Maybe this is what it's like to explain being a White Sox fan, or a lover of the film GALAXINA, Turkish super-hero films, Necco Wafers, etc.
So I guess I'll stand alone. In the misty, unshaven, un-hip chamber of 70's nostalgia in that weird corner of my psyche- the GRIM GHOST shall always ride!
You lost me at TONY ISABELLA. As much as I always wanted to support the guy because he rose from fandom, I cannot think of one thing that he ever wrote that I enjoyed.
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