Menace, from publisher Martin Goodman's Atlas Comics, the 1950s forerunner of Marvel Comics, debuted in 1953 during a cycle of popularity for publisher EC Comicshorror comics. It joined such existing Atlas horror/fantasy series as Adventures into Terror and Strange Tales. Atlas editor-in-chief Stan Lee sought to distinguish the title by attempting to replicate EC's specific process, as Atlas historian Michal J. Vassallo describes: Menace ran 11 issues, cover-dated March 1953 to May 1954. It was published monthly through issue #8, then after a three-month hiatus returned for its final three, bimonthly issues. Lee wrote each issue's four comics stories through #7, and at least two more stories through the end of the title's run. Issue #12 was in production at the time of cancellation, scheduled for a July 1954 cover date. The contents were held as inventory and soon afterward published in the Atlas title Astonishing #35. Menace is considered an example of "pre-Code horror", referring to horror comics published prior to the strictures of the industry's self-censoring Comics Code Authority, in which comics would bear the postage-stamp-sized Comics Code seal. The series' covers, however, each sport a star reading "Conforms to the Comics Code", with a small rectangular box above that reading "Authorized A.C.M.P." This represents the essentially unenforced precursor sponsored by the trade group the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers.
Creative personnel
The series' primary artist was Bill Everett, who in 1939 had created the aquatic antihero the Sub-Mariner and who was now an Atlas mainstay. For issues #1-6, he drew the covers and one story each, as well as drawing a story for #9 and the cover of #10. The Lee/Everett story "Zombie" in issue #5 introduced the Zombie, Simon Garth, in a seven-page, standalone story of a zombie outside New Orleans, Louisiana, and the ironic comeuppance visited upon his cruel master. The character was revived two decades later as the star of the black-and-white horror-comics magazine Tales of the Zombie that, published by the Marvel Comics imprint Curtis Magazines. The character has continued to make appearances in Marvel comic books into the 2000s. Another character introduced in a standalone story that was revived decades later as a continuing character was an unnamed robot in the five-page story "I, the Robot", by an unknown writer and artist John Romita Sr., in issue #11. Rechristened the Human Robot, the character appeared in a non-canonical, alternate-universe story in What If? #9, as part of a 1950s version of the later-created Marvel superhero team the Avengers. The character next appeared in mainstream Marvel Universe continuity in the six-issue miniseries Agents of Atlas and the subsequent ongoing seriesAgents of Atlas vol. 2. Now dubbed M-11, the Human Robot, it served as a member of a team of artificially or naturally long-lived 1950s superhumans gathered as the globetrotting adventurers the Agents of Atlas. Other series artists included George Tuska and other 1940s Golden Age of Comic Books veterans such as single-story contributors Fred Kida, Sheldon Moldoff, Bob Powell, and Syd Shores. Industry newcomers and future stars included Gene Colan, Russ Heath, Joe Maneely, and John Romita Sr., and Joe Sinnott. Among other artist contributors were Tony DiPreta, Al Eadeh, John Forte, Jack Katz, Ed Winiarski, Seymour Moskowitz, Paul Reinman, Werner Roth, and Robert Q. Sale. The covers of issues #7-8 are tentatively credited to Golden Age great Carl Burgos. Two standard databases credit the final issue's unsigned cover to artist Harry Anderson.
Collected editions
The complete 11 issue series has been collected in Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era - Menace
"Zombie!" from Menace #5 was included in the Marvel Horror Omnibus
"I, the Robot" from Menace #11 has been included in various Agents of Atlas collections
