The universe would like me to share an anecdote about the short-lived comic-book company Atlas, founded in 1974 by Martin Goodman, who also founded another company you might have heard of—Marvel Comics!

As I’ve mentioned before, Sean Howe, author of Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers!, is working on a book about Marvel in the ’70s. His mention of Atlas in an e-mail today sent me scurrying to the vault …

So here’s a memo, dated March 18, 1975, from Marvel Publisher Al Landau to Production Manager Sol Brodsky that was then forwarded to Editor-in-Chief Len Wein before eventually making its way to Editorial Assistant me.

Obviously, Landau was hoping there’d be a smoking gun that would prove Marvel had been ripped off.

A few days before my 20th birthday, I wrote Landau the following rather snide reply.

I can’t recall having heard back from anyone in response to my memo, but if I had been Landau, I imagine I’d have been thinking, “Who does this kid think he is?”

As you can easily tell from my tone, even though I denigrated Atlas’ output, I still thought the whole exercise was ludicrous, and didn’t do much to disguise those feelings. I may have put down the Atlas output, but I defended them at the same time. As I wrote:

If we go into this detail, the similarities are endless. At one point in the early forties National tried to forbid other companies [sic] characters from wearing capes, simply because Superman was the first super-hero to wear one.

I’d always felt the whole Superman/Captain Marvel lawsuit was ridiculous, and I guess this was my way of saying so, and also saying, can we as an industry please not go there again?

As for the severity of my opinion about the competition at the time, well, I hope you and the Atlas editors, writers, and artists will forgive me for that. Would you really expect any different from a 20-year-old Marvel fanboy who was thrilled to suddenly be working down the hall from Stan Lee? Atlas may have had some fun comics, but could this new, loyal Marvel employee ever be willing to admit it?

Nah. I don’t think it was possible.

Sorry, guys!