Balladeer’s Blog’s recent look at the short-lived comic book company Atlas-Seaboard was a big hit. As a follow-up here’s a look at an Atlas figure I did not cover in the main article, which can be found HERE
MAN-MONSTER
Secret Identity: Paul Sanders, Olympic Swimming Gold Medalist
Origin: Hedonistic Paul Sanders lives the life of a playboy from his endorsement deals and his resented oil baron father’s vast fortune. After a flirty/ bickering battle of the sexes-style interview with two female reporters from Women’s Lib Magazine Paul boards a motorboat for one of his father’s offshore oil wells.
To show off for the still-watching ladies Paul leaps overboard to swim the rest of the way to the oil drilling platform. As fate would have it, the oil drilling had just churned up some rare, mutated bacteria from the ocean floor. Sanders winds up covered by the bacteria, which causes changes to his body.
Paul barely escapes the bacteria and makes it back to shore, where he transforms into a red-scaled amphibious monster. After a brief rampage he becomes human again and the female reporters take him home.
From then on in times of danger the transformation comes over Paul again and he finds himself battling various forces of evil.
First Appearance: Tales of Evil #3 (July, 1975). His final appearance came in September of that same year.
Powers: Continue reading
A TEEN TITANS CHRISTMAS CAROL – Last year Balladeer’s Blog examined the 1973 Luke Cage, Hero For Hire version of A Christmas Carol. This time around I’ll take a look at Christmas 1967’s The Teen Titans’ Swingin’ Christmas Carol. 
Balladeer’s Blog marks the shortest day of the year with the shortest-lived comic book company since Pelican Publishing! 
PHOENIX 
First Appearance: Phoenix #1 (January, 1975). His final appearance came in October of that same year. 
DESTRUCTOR 
THE ZEBRA 
CAPTAIN WIZARD 
Balladeer’s Blog spent part of this past summer on a light-hearted, escapist bit of fun by examining the very first Mantis storylines at Marvel Comics. Mantis was brought into the Marvel Cinematic Universe this year in the second Guardians of the Galaxy movie but I reviewed her ORIGINAL appearance and the 1973-1975 Celestial Madonna epic she starred in. 
II. MANTIS 2: NIGHT OF THE SWORDSMAN – Mantis and her romantic partner the Swordsman show up at Avengers Mansion and wind up helping the superteam against one of their old foes. CLICK 
Balladeer’s Blog’s summer-long exploration of Marvel Comics’ Celestial Madonna Saga of 1973-1975 wrapped up last Saturday. For a light-hearted “dessert” after that 31-part examination here’s a look at a ONE-ISSUE tie-in from 1977 that Steve Englehart, the writer of much of the Celestial Madonna Saga, wrote for the Justice League of America (as it was then called) at his NEW employers: rival comic book company DC. 
His way of doing that is often pretty cutesy, like having his Mantis stand-in get interrupted at key moments when she’s about to answer very specific questions about herself and her background. 
In a coincidental bit of prescience regarding future depictions of Mantis when Marvel Comics finally brought her back (left), Willow has GREEN skin. She also has what appear to be antennae peeping out from under her pile of hair as a nod to Mantis’ pronounced antennae (again, at left).
GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS Volume 1, Number 4 (May, 1975) … Let All Men Bring Together 
We join the Vision where we left him: in the center of the Earth in a mystical cave created as an artificial “womb” for the re-birthing Dormammu. As Uatu the Watcher told the Avengers and Defenders when Dormammu was seemingly destroyed by the Evil Eye of Avalon, Dormammu is a god. 
THE AVENGERS Volume 1, Number 135 ( May 1975) The Torch Is Passed 
The laboratory where the “dead” android Human Torch of the World War 2 era is lying on a slab was just broken into by the Avengers’ archenemy Ultron. Back then he was still numbering his iterations so he was technically going by Ultron-5 when he crafted the Vision. 
THE AVENGERS Volume 1, Number 134 ( April 1975) The Times That Bind 
The Synchro-Staff now shows its passengers the Kree home planet of Hala in the Kree Year 476 (last time around we learned that Kree Year Zero was the year of First Contact with the Skrulls). Here in 476 those Kree dissidents who want nothing to do with the “all-conquest, all the time” nature of their race’s Empire have drawn together in their own sub-culture. 
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