Atlas Era Tales of Suspense Masterworks Vol. 3 (Tales of Suspense

Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era

by Jack Kirby (Illustrator), Stan Lee, Larry Lieber

Collects Tales of Suspense (1959) #21-31.

It's a jam-packed Tales of Suspense monster bonanza! And you know you can't keep a good monster down. No way, no how, and before they revolutionized the super hero set, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby made monsters their daily diet. Klaag. Oog. Bruttu. Monstrollo. Skyscraper-tall lumbering beasts from outer space; muck-covered monsters from the Savannah swamps; lost world anachronisms from beyond time; and they were all here to teach humanity a lesson, whether we liked it or not. And after Kirby scares you with his creatures from the id, Steve Ditko will tear at your conscience-from the inside out-in tense suspense-thrillers cast with nervous-eyed dreamers and sweaty-palmed schemers, none of whom make it out with getting theirs. Each and every tale is executed by a master of storytelling-by the talents that defined the comic book medium for a generation!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Marvel

297 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 25, 2010

About the author

Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg) was one of the most influential, recognizable, and prolific artists in American comic books, and the co-creator of such enduring characters and popular culture icons as the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Hulk, Captain America, and hundreds of others stretching back to the earliest days of the medium. He was also a comic book writer and editor. His most common nickname is "The King."

Reviews

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really nice to be able to read these long out of print stories from the era between the Golden and Silver age of Marvel Comics (Still Atlas at the time). What a nice time trip for a lazy day's reading. Recommended

[Kris Shaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stan Lee. Jack Kirby. Steve Ditko. Dick Ayers. Don Heck. Consider this the A-Team of the Silver Age of comics. This gorgeous hardcover edition provides a heaping helping of Cold War era Twilight Zone riffs. I love Kirby's monsters and aliens, Ditko's eerie, tense artwork, and Lee's overly dramatic writing. These stories are so much fun to read, and I always enjoy tales of the future, like how in the year 2000 everyone will have their own robot. Awesome. There isn't a loser story in the bunch.

On the OCD side of things, everything is once again perfect. Paper, sewn binding, superior linework and color restoration...all signals turn to green. This is the definitive document of these issues for the ages.

[Adam Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book collects eleven issues of Tales of Suspense from the 1960s, when it was an anthology book for stories of Science Fiction and the supernatural, though more science fiction. The stories are all between 5 and 10 pages long, with no ongoing stories between issues, so you get a lot of quick stories and most are fairly well-executed. There are few misses like the brilliant mad scientist who discovered time travel and planned to make himself a god in Ancient Roman by showing modern technology but failed because he didn't plan for how he would make technology work. Still, the shortness of the stories is an asset as any failed stories don't take long to read and there's always a better one around the bend including quite a few that feature Twilight Zone style twists.

The stories can be a little goofy, but they're never too silly and some of the talent behind them are the same people who (by now) were already beginning to establish the Marvel Age of Superhero comics. If you like some fun silver age Sci Fi, this is a solid read.

[John Peel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Monsters! Okay, the stories are often a bit silly, but you can't complain when they're drawn by Marvel's best artists, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Don Heck. It's silly fun - but the emphasis is on "fun".