Thursday, June 24, 2010

Unintended Humor

To me, this has always been the most unintentionally hilarious comic book cover of all time:


Basically, Iron Jaw was a barbarian comic book intended to cop the popularity of Conan. The only difference was that Iron Jaw was Conan with his mandible cut off and an iron jaw in place of the original flesh and blood. He could still talk, so I always reckoned they'd left him his tongue and palate.

Atlas-Seaboard Comics was a short-lived publishing venture of the 1970s. It was started after publisher Martin Goodman sold Marvel Comics. Apparently he'd assumed that his son would be highly placed after the elder Goodman took his leave of the company. Instead, they tossed the younger Goodman and doled out important roles to other employees such as pitch-man extraordinaire Stanley Lieber, AKA Stan Lee. This so angered Goodman and son that they started up a rival comic book company with the intention of slicing in to Marvel's market share.

Unfortunately, although Goodman was able to hire some top writers and artists of the day, the titles sucked Holy Roman Ass. So the company quickly folded in the face of lackluster sales. Most of the artists and writers returned to Marvel, tails tucked firmly, and thus did Atlas-Seaboard become a sad chapter in the history of American comic books.

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