Demon-Hunter #1 (September, 1975) | Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books
Last November, in our post about Grim Ghost #1, we discussed the origins and early days of Atlas/Seaboard — the comic-book company launched in 1974 by the founder and previous owner of Marvel Comics, Martin Goodman, and his son Charles (aka “Chip”). In this post, we’ll be covering the upstart publisher’s decline and fall, as well as taking a close look at one of Atlas/Seaboard’s very last releases — a comic which, ironically, was not only one of the company’s better efforts, but also one of the very few to have any sort of afterlife following its abrupt demise.
Cover to another early Atlas/Seaboard release, The Scorpion #1 (Feb., 1975). Art by Howard Chaykin.
Cover to one of Atlas/Seaboard’s earliest releases, Phoenix #1 (Jan., 1975). Art by Sal Amendola and Dick Giordano.
As detailed in that earlier post, Atlas/Seaboard hit the ground running in the summer of ’74 with deep pockets and generous creator incentives — including, but not limited to, a higher page rate than what the competition was offering. It certainly wasn’t hard to understand why prominent professionals like Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, Archie Goodwin, Howard Chaykin, and Wally Wood would be willing to work for them. And while there were some definite duds among Atlas/Seaboard’s earliest offerings (e.g., Ironjaw) there were others which, if not exploding with originality, still demonstrated a high level of craft (e.g., Wulf the Barbarian)
There was also a genuine diversity in the genres and artistic styles embraced by the line, even as the advertising copy heralded the publisher as “the new House of Ideas” — a phrase that directly invited comparisons with the Goodmans’ former company. But, as Jeff Rovin — who, along with Larry Lieber, headed up Atlas/Seaboard’s editorial staff — would write over a decade later for a personal retrospective published in The Comics Journal #114 (Feb., 1987) , the senior Goodman seemed determined to not so much emulate the creativity and freshness of approach that had marked Marvel’s ascendancy over the last fourteen years, but rather to imitate the actual content of Marvel’s then-current output as much as was possible:
…Martin became more and more disgruntled as he read more and more of my comics. And what he decided, without having received a single sales report, was that they didn’t look and read enough like Marvel Comics.
“That’s right,” I remember telling him with a mixture of disbelief and disappointment. “Why should they look like Marvels?”
“Because Marvels sell.”
“Sure,” I replied, “but that’s because the characters have had 10 years to establish themselves, not to mention the newsstand clout Marvel has developed –”
“Look,” he snapped, “I don’t want to argue about this. Just do it.” To which end Martin established a hefty warchest and told Larry and me to go out and hire away as many Marvel people as we could.
Cover to another later Atlas/Seaboard release, The Scorpion #3 (Jul., 1975). Art by Jim Craig.
Cover to a later Atlas/Seaboard release, Phoenix #4 (Oct., 1975). Art by Al Milgrom.
Rovin ended up parting ways with Atlas/Seaboard in January, 1975, leaving the whole enterprise — which in addition to the color comic books included black-and-white comics magazines, as well as non-comics periodicals — in the hands of Larry Lieber. Concurrent with the changes in the editorial offices, a number of the creators who’d helped launch the line in the fall of 1974 — Chaykin, Larry Hama, and Michael Fleisher being among them — left the titles they’d helped create. And in many cases, the writers and artists who replaced them proceeded to give those features extreme makeovers which left them looking a lot more like standard Marvel Comics fare of the time — and Marvel superhero comics fare, most of all.
But even as the company’s creative ambitions — not to mention Martin Goodman’s financial largess — appeared to wane, new features developed by new creators (new to Atlas/Seaboard, anyway) continued to appear on the racks. One of the very last of these was Demon-Hunter, conceived by artist/plotter Rich Buckler and brought to fruition with the assistance of writer David Anthony Kraft, who’d recently joined the Atlas/Seaboard staff as an assistant to Larry Lieber.
As discussed in our Astonishing Tales #31 post a few weeks ago, Rich Buckler was a very busy man at this time, with a slate that included pencilling the monthly Fantastic Four title and overseeing the production of the bi-monthly Astonishing Tales (featuring yet another Buckler-originated character concept, Deathlok), both for Marvel. Given the trouble he seemed to be having meeting his “Deathlok” deadlines, it’s anyone’s guess as to why or how he thought he’d be able to handle yet another project where he’d be responsible for directing the ongoing storyline as well as providing the art; but that’s what happened. (For the record, Buckler also found the time to draw a number of covers, as well as one additional story — “Man-Monster” in Tales of Evil #3 — for Atlas/Seaboard during this period; in fact, he even managed to squeeze in a few art jobs for DC Comics.)
That’s twenty-seven, count ’em, twenty-seven panels Rich Buckler has drawn on the page above. Maybe not a record, but still, quite impressive.
As he did in his contemporaneous “Deathlok” material, Buckler makes frequent use in this story of the sort of sophisticated graphic storytelling techniques we associate with the work of Will Eisner, Bernard Krigstein, and Jim Steranko — which makes for a very different overall look from the Jack Kirby-emulating (sometimes Jack Kirby-appropriating) style he was employing on Fantastic Four and other Marvel comics during this era. Your humble blogger is inclined to think of this as being Buckler’s “real” style — although, based on statements made by the late artist in various interviews over the years, he himself would probably have referred to it as being just one of several different, but equally valid, styles he regularly employed, dependent on what the particular job he was working on called for.
In addition to being the title of our present story — and the current occupation of its protagonist — “Harvester of Eyes” is the title of a 1974 song by Blue Öyster Cult, a fact that’s acknowledged in the story’s dedication to “Buck Dharma and the boys”. As we’ve noted previously, Rich Buckler was a huge rock music fan who enjoyed seeding his stories with song titles and other lyrical references.
Along with its employment of unconventional page layouts here and there, the opening sequence of Demon-Hunter’s debut parallels that of Deathlok in another way, as well — in both cases we see our protagonist not only already empowered and “costumed”, but acting as a cold-blooded assassin for hire.
Wavy panel borders are generally used in comics as a way of signifying a flashback, or dream-state, or some other trait that sets the action in those panels apart from those preceding or following them. But that doesn’t really seem to be the case, here, so I’m not sure this was an effective storytelling choice.
I get that Gideon Cross doesn’t have to change out of his spandex onesie to hide his secret identity, due to his magical camouflage powers — but is the thing really so comfortable that he never takes it off, even when relaxing alone? Or are we supposed to think he can’t remove it? If it’s the latter, then of course the same question arises that always does in this kind of situation — namely, how the hell does the guy go to the bathroom?
OK, so Gideon Cross works as a “Harvester of Eyes” for the “Harvesters of Night”. What, exactly, is the difference? And for that matter, why is Gideon’s gig described as harvesting eyes? All we ever see him collect from his victims is blood. In the end, it seems to be a case of Buckler’s picking up on a cool-sounding phrase from a rock song without giving too much thought as to what it might actually mean in the context of his story.
Cross accompanies Damian Severs to his late night rendezvous on the three-miles-out yacht, where he observes a whole lot of cash being exchanged for a whole lot of drugs. He then proceeds on his own to Kennedy International Airport, from where he’s supposed to fly to Jamaica. But our protagonist has become uneasy with his current role as Severs’ assassin, fretting that it “makes me no better than a sniper myself, like Matthews.” (To which this reader can only reply: well, d’uh.) So he determines that before he hands his latest “bloodflask” over to the Cult, he’s going to demand some answers about the reasons for it all..
Cross quickly decides on a change of destination — and so, when he flies out of Kennedy, it’s en route not to Jamaica, but rather to Nigeria…
Watching all this from his hiding place, Demon-Hunter knows now without a doubt that the Cult is evil — and that if he’s not going to be one of them any longer, then he can only be against them. “From now on, I’ll believe in myself!” he silently declares.
It’s kind of an odd way to end this first chapter of Demon-Hunter’s saga, at least if the idea is to build suspense, since presumably all Gideon has to do to spoil the Cult’s subterfuge is to turn his head slightly to the right. But, setting that and the story’s other bobbles aside, this is a pretty solid set-up for an ongoing series — one that, to quote from one of Tom Brevoort’s two (!) blog posts about this comic, came across in 1975 as “a strong synthesis of all of the disparate elements then popular in mainstream culture: occultism, gun-slinging men’s paperback characters, the Godfather and its sequel, and super heroics.”
Following the story’s last page is the Atlas/Seaboard version of a Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page — complete with a knockoff of Stan Lee’s famed “Soapbox” column by his younger (and rather less ebullient) brother, Larry Leiber:
I’m not sure exactly when this “Here’s What’s Happening with Atlas” page was put together — though whenever it was, the publisher obviously still had a lot of comics in various stages of production. By the time Demon-Hunter #1 reached stands on June 3rd, however, most of the projects touted here as being “current and upcoming” had already come out — some by as much as a couple of months. And those that were still on the horizon, such as the third and fourth issues of The Barbarians, or Man-Monster #1, were destined never to appear at all.
Cover to Savage Combat Tales #1 (Jul., 1975). Art by Rich Buckler.
There would in fact be just one more publication released by Atlas/Seaboard: Savage Combat Tales #3, which came out exactly one week after Demon-Hunter #1. And that was that; “the new House of Ideas” was closed for good.
According to just about all accounts (several of which can be found here), the decision to pull the plug on the enterprise came down to finances; in the words of one of the publisher’s latter-day writers, Gary Friedrich, “Martin just saw the numbers. After a year or so of losing money, Martin was not the type of guy to continue to throw good money after bad.” It also seems to have happened relatively abruptly, although the final shuttering of the operation took at least a few weeks, and even at the very end there was a certain amount of ambiguity; David A. Kraft (who’d already left his staff job, but was still writing for the company as a freelancer) was simply told that the comics line was being “suspended”, which suggested that the company might regroup and make a comeback.* On the other hand, artist Terry Austin later recalled that “Walt [Simonson] and I walked to the Atlas/Seaboard offices and asked for our artwork back. My recollection is that the receptionist denied that the company had ever published comics.” A number of finished stories and covers by those two artists and others, including Neal Adams and Russ Heath, were evidently never recovered.
The legacy of Atlas/Seaboard may fairly be described as “mixed”. On the one hand, Jeff Rovin probably knew what he was talking about in 1987 when he characterized the publisher’s story as “the text-book example of how not to run a comics company”. On the other hand, as Rovin himself acknowledged, the company was a pioneer in the sort of incentives it offered creators; beyond the higher page rates, Atlas/Seaboard also made a policy of returning artwork, as well as giving creators a contract enabling them to share in the profits for characters they created. True, a lot of the artwork was apparently lost or stolen before it could be returned, and none of the characters remained in print long enough for anyone to make any profit off of them; nevertheless, a precedent had been set.
Relevant to that last point, the post-collapse history of the Atlas/Seaboard IP over the last half-century has been pretty underwhelming. Back in 2011, Martin Goodman’s grandson Jason attempted to revive the brand with a small line of titles released through Ardden Entertainment; none of the titles, which included reboots of Grim Ghost, Phoenix, and Wulf, as well as a “team” book called Atlas Unified, made it past seven issues (which, admittedly, is three more than any original Atlas/Seaboard title ever got). Much more recently, in 2024, Jason Goodman began another run at it, joining forces with SP Media Group to unveil plans for an “Atlas Cinematic Universe”, merchandise, and more. And, indeed, four action figures from Mego — Grim Ghost, Phoenix, the Dragon (from Hands of the Dragon), and Devilina (from Atlas/Seaboard’s black-and-white comics line) — have evidently been manufactured and shipped, and are available for your purchase, somewhere. Your humble blogger must admit to having a ginormous amount of skepticism regarding the overall financial prospects of a multi-movie franchise based on properties that were published for less than a full year a full half-century ago, and which 99 percent of currently living humans have never even heard of — but, hey, I’ve been wrong before, and if any of the old Atlas/Seaboard creators (or their heirs) are able to make a few bucks out of all these shenanigans, good for them.
Opening splash page from the first “Dominic Fortune” story, as published in Marvel Preview #2 (Jun., 1975). Text by Len Wein; art by Howard Chaykin.
In the mentime, if we want to talk about comic-book characters that managed to survive the demise of the original Atlas/Seaboard Publications — if not quite exactly in their original form — then we actually need to go back way, way past 2024, or even 2011 — all the way back to April, 1975, in fact. Yes, that’s actually two months prior to when Atlas/Seaboard shipped its final releases. But it’s also the month that the company brought out its third issue of The Scorpion, which found Howard Chaykin’s original character — an immortal adventurer whose pulp-style exploits were set in the 1930s — replaced by a present-day spandex-clad superhero… as well as the month that Marvel Comics released Marvel Preview #2, a black-and-white comics magazine feature a strip by Chaykin and writer Len Wein about Dominic Fortune — a not-so-immortal adventurer whose pulp-style exploits were set in the 1930s. Not exactly the same guy, no… but pretty damn close. Chaykin’s reworking of his “Scorpion” concept (which was even more on-the-nose than his slightly earlier reinvention of DC Comics’ “Ironwolf” as the creator-owned “Cody Starbuck”) would go on to a long, if not necessarily prominent, role in the larger Marvel Universe; which, if nothing else, is a lot more than you can say about either incarnation of Atlas/Seaboard’s Scorpion, at least at this time of writing.
Cover to Marvel Spotlight #33 (Apr., 1977). Art by Rich Buckler and Klaus Janson.
In similar fashion — and, in the context of this particular blog post’s primary subject, much closer to home — Rich Buckler and David Anthony Kraft would bring back Gideon Cross, Demon-Hunter, as Eric Simon Payne, Devil-Slayer at Marvel Comics, a couple of years following his ill-fated initial outing. Pretty much only the names and the costume color-scheme were changed for this one, with the “new” character making his debut in Marvel Spotlight #33 (Apr., 1977) as an antagonist to that other Buckler hero, Deathlok the Demolisher, before proceeding on to a stint with Marvel’s “non-team”, the Defenders, whose adventures were then being scripted by Kraft. There’s a very good chance that some of those comics will be the subjects of their own blog posts in the next few years, so we’ll refrain from going into more details at this time — and will simply note that, like Dominic Fortune, Devil-Slayer would continue to have a place in the Marvel Universe in the years and decades to follow, even if he never became a breakout star.
Cover to Galaxia Magazine #1 (Jun., 1981). Art by Rich Buckler and Dick Giordano.
But the saga of Demon-Hunter doesn’t even end there. Four years after the introduction of Devil-Slayer at Marvel, Rich Buckler dusted off his original character concept for one more go — this time as a fully creator-owned project — in the pages of the black-and-white Galaxia Magazine #1 (Jun., 1981), released in the dawning days of the “direct market” as the first and only offering of the independent publisher Astral Comics. In this incarnation, the hero’s codename was Bloodwing; but his backstory remained the same, as did his “real” name, Gideon Cross. He kept the same costume, as well, albeit with yet another color-scheme switch-up (although since the book’s 8-page Bloodwing story was printed in b&w, that factor was only relevant in regards to the cover).
I didn’t buy this one back in the day, so the chances of it getting its own post from me in 2031 are nil — however, if you’re curious, Tom Brevoort has blogged about it, too (though just once, at least so far), and his coverage will likely tell you all you might want to know. So, thanks, Tom!
*Kraft’s account of Atlas/Seaboard’s final days was first published in the fanzine Deadspawn #1 (Jul., 1975), and later reprinted in Comic Book Artist #16 (Dec., 2001).
