THE LAST TIMELY-ATLAS CROSSOVERS?

My earlier essay THE FIRST MARVEL CROSSOVER remains accurate, given that it describes the first encounter of starring icons since the publisher variously known as "Timely Comics" and "Atlas Comics" began using the name "Marvel Comics" for the entire line. However, there were developments in the late 1950s that can be seen as precursors of that 1961-62 event-- or at least, just as a barometer of how bored Stan Lee was with his job.

First, in WYATT EARP #5 in 1956, the Atlas version of the famed marshall met the second of two Atlas versions of the celebrated Annie Oakley, after the latter character lost her short-lived title. (The first Atlas-Annie was just one of the company's standard "pretty-girl humor" features.)

Then in SHERRY THE SHOWGIRL #5 (April 1957), the titular Sherry (introduced I believe in issue #1 of the series) had a minor encounter with the long-running Millie the Model.

Then came the oddest mutation of the pretty-girl humor genre; a two-issue wonder called SHOWGIRLS. I'm reasonably sure that I saw this cover for issue #1 (June 1957) at one time or another, but I probably thought that it was just one of the many "phony-meeting" covers often seen on comics-covers since the early 1940s.

But no, the first issue has a single-page gag in which Millie and her support-character Chili-- despite the fact that they're models, not showgirls-- are hanging out with Sherry Storm and Pearl Dimly, the latter the star of the "My Girl Pearl" feature initiated in 1954. (As yet I have no idea if Pearl was ever a showgirl and I'm not sure I want to know.) Everything else in the issue, though, just focuses on separate pretty-girl stars.

Then, issue #2 offers a full four-page story in which the aforesaid four girls, along with Hazel Haze (catty rival to Sherry Storm in that series), go on the road and have some forgettable things happen to them.

The same five girls also get a one-page gag in the same issue.

For some reason, the title then jumps to #4, possibly the result of re-numbering some other title, and though there are no literal crossovers therein, there is a cutesy reference to another company icon, Patsy Walker.

Like the Marvel crossovers described earlier, all of these were piddling stories that could not possibly have been intended to impel readers to check out other established titles. They just show Stan Lee futzing around, trying to keep himself entertained while he churned out gags. He may not have initiated the 1956 Earp-Oakley crossover (GCD credits that script to Hank Chapman), but it took place under Lee's editorial aegis, just like all the cute-girl strips Lee did write. In addition, about two years had gone by since Atlas had attempted its revival of its "Big Three" superheroes. These strips also did not have more than minor crossovers, one of which was the recycling of a failed 1948 superheroine, Sun Girl into the Human Torch's partner. Still, possibly those failed books caused Lee to think back to the glory days of early Timely, when the Human Torch-Sub-Mariner battles were big money-makers. Lee wasn't ready to undertake anything ambitious in the late 1950s, and the journey to "Marvel Continuity" was a slow one even in the early 1960s. But sometimes the seeds that seem not to grow at first are merely slumbering for a later rebirth.