Author: Robert Greenberger

Atlas Comics, the 1970s upstart designed to rival Marvel Comics, is being revived in time for New York Comic-Con next month. In a Deadline Hollywood exclusive, Jason Goodman, grandson of Marvel founder Martin Goodman, revealed that the line is poised to be revived beginning with Phoenix and Grim Ghost.

Handling the creative will be Ardden Entertainment’s Brendan Deenan, working with J.M. DeMatteis as editor-in-chief. Together, the pair previously produced a well-received adaptation of Flash Gordon and Casper the Friendly Ghost. No creative assignments were announced in the story but will be unveiled at the convention where both Atlas and Ardden will have table space.

“Although my grandfather eventually sold Marvel, he insisted on keeping Atlas Comics in the family,” Jason Goodman told Deadline. “As a result of his vision, Atlas Comics is the largest individually-held library of comic book heroes and villains on the planet. We have 28 titles and hundreds of characters imagined by some of the greatest minds in the industry.”

In 1972, Goodman sold Marvel Comics and by June 1974 decided he wanted to keep his hand in and created Atlas, a name once used by the company. His son, Chip, was its publisher, a role Martin intended Chip to have at Marvel, but one denied him by the new owners. It was always speculated Martin founded Atlas to beat Marvel in revenge.

Martin Goodman hired former Warren editor Jeff Rovin and Larry Leiber, a relative and brother to Stan Lee, to run the color comics and black and white magazines respectively. Both men always felt they were given the wrong jobs.

The line aggressively launched after luring many of the biggest names working in comics to produce covers or stories. Atlas paid top rates and offered creator participation, making them a more attractive outlet than either DC Comics or Marvel.

However, no sooner did titles launch than they were ordered retooled to more closely resemble Marvels’ heroic universe. An example was Howard Chaykin’s pulp-inspired The Scorpion, but after two issues he quit when orders to update it came down. He took his unfinished work to Marvel, reworking it into Dominic Fortune.

The line lasted long enough to publish approximately 60 color comics and nine black and white magazines.

Rarely are Philip K. Dick’s stories appealing and accessible to mass audiences. You need fights and things blowing up and Arnold Schwarzenegger to really attract a crowd because the thought-provoking subject matter doesn’t always translate well from the printed page. As a result, it was a major mistake to release [[[A Scanner Darkly]]] on July 7, 2006, in the midst of the summer blockbuster season. The movie was certainly appealingly cast and was nicely marketed, but it opened small, never caught on and vanished from the public discourse. Instead, its competition the same weekend was the seasonal popcorn favorite [[[Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest]]].

And that’s a shame because in its own way, the movie is a well-made antidrug film whose message is told in a way its target audience might hear. After all, who could be hotter and hipper than Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey, Jr., and Woody Harrelson? Reeves was just coming off [[[The Matrix]]] trilogy so was a major star while people always liked Downey despite his personal battles with addiction.

Thankfully, the movie was rushed onto DVD that year and now, Warner Home Video has given us a crisp, swell-looking Blu-ray edition. One of the odder choices made by screenwriter and director Richard Linklater was to film his talented cast then rotoscope the entire feature. On the one hand, you might miss seeing the real actors but on the other, it also allowed the animators to play with reality just enough to further the story’s message. As we learn in “[[[The Weight of the Line: Animation Tales]]]”, the actors actually broadened their performances to give the animators something to work with and that also helps given the drug-induced state most of them live in.

In a near future, the hyper-addictive Substance D has become the drug of choice and undercover cop Reeves is sent into the sub-culture to make arrests and stop the supply. Wearing a camouflage suit that perpetually alters the personal traits of the wearer, Reeves goes about his job until he encounters a group of addicted misfits — Harrelson, Downey, Winona Ryder & Rory Cochrane. As we learn who these people are, we descend into their drug-haze which is seen by increasing paranoia and inability to think rationally.

Linklater wisely gathered his cast together for two weeks of rehearsal so they could become a cohesive acting troupe before letting becoming the druggies. Better, he let them modify and add to his script. Downey, for example, converted his lines into run-on sentences which informed his quirky performance while Reeves annotated the novel the film is based on.

It has been said that Dick wrote this work based on elements of his own life and one of his themes is the role of government in dealing with personal choice in taking the drugs. In adapting the work, Linklater twists and turns the events so it actually might require more than one viewing. Thankfully, the movie is so well translated to Blu-ray this will be more pleasure than chore.

The extras from the original DVD mostly remain, including the so-so commentary from Linklater, Reeves, Dick’s daughter Isa Dick Hackett, Producer Tommy Palloton and Dick historian/novelist Jonathan Lethem. “Weight” is a lengthy and fascinating look at the rotoscoping process and why it took twice as long as anticipated. Oddly missing is “One Summer in Austin: The Story of Filming A Scanner Darkly” which was a making of featurette.