The name "Atlas" shows up fairly frequently throughout comics' history. There are number of characters that go by that name, multiple publishing companies, many specialty comic retail shops and countless references within the comic stories making sly background references to the name. My question is: how did it become so ingrained in comics' lore?
Well, the short answer is Martin Goodman and I expect many of you will have mentally gone there already. But let's explore this more deeply...
An "atlas" (lower case) is essentially a collection of maps. They're generally of very large regions, often the entire Earth, and often printed and bound. The earliest items we would consider atlases date to around 150 AD and were put together by Claudius Ptolemy. Though already outdated by the time they were released, they sold very well and he produced several revised editions.
It wasn't until 1595, however, that the actual term "atlas" was used in connection with these collections of maps. It was Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator who entitled his book Atlas, Sive Cosmographicae Meditationes De Fabrica Mundi which translates to Atlas, or Description of the Universe. It was actually published after his death in December 1594 by his son Rumold.
Contrary to popular belief, however, the name was NOT chosen after the mythical Atlas who bore the weight of the heavens on his shoulders. Rather, it was in reference to King Atlas of Mauretania (roughly corresponding with modern Algeria and Morroco) who was allegedly the wise philosopher, mathematician and astronomer who made the first celestial globe. An image of King Atlas is in fact on the title page of Mercator's book.
A century later, Dutch merchants were using Atlas (the Greek) as a sort of patron saint. (A statue of Atlas adorns the top of the Royal Palace in Amsterdam to this day.) Thus regional map makers of the time began using images of the titan on their collections of maps, making a direct association between the two.
The symbolism does make sense. Although the original myths held that Atlas bore the weight of the heavens, which was generally depicted as a globe, it would be easy to mistake/substitute the Earth in its place without altering the meaning substantially. It's certainly a more compelling visual than a mere portrait, and it's little wonder that map-makers would use the titan's likeness to grace the covers of their collections. Indeed it was a likeness that was compelling enough to write comic stories about! Without doing exhaustive research on this point, I found comic book stories that feature the classical Atlas as early as 1948, pre-dating Goodman's use of the term for his company by 3 years. (Curiously, though, he remains relatively untapped as a source of comic stories compared to other Greek heroes.)
Atlas Comics "debuted" in 1951. It was really just the same company Goodman had been running for years under a few dozen different names. The question that strikes me, though, is: why "Atlas"? Why not "Zenith" or "Red Circle" or any of the other names he'd been using to publish comics?
The reason why Goodman used so many company names at first was a hold-over from the 1940s. It wasn't uncommon for one publisher to use multiple company names to skirt any number of laws, one of the most obvious being paper rationing. A publisher was only allotted a certain amount of paper they could use, but if one person ran two publishing interests, he could obtain twice the amount of paper. Thus, many publishers of the time would run one company under several names simultaneously to get the benefits of multiple corporations.
But that approach didn't make as much sense going into the 1950s, as World War II ended and things got back to "normal." Goodman also saw the benefit of having a single brand identity, one banner under which he could promote the likes of Patsy Walker, Captain America, and Kid Colt. There was no reason to hide behind multiple company names, and plenty of reasons to coalesce under one. But, again, why "Atlas"?
The reason is Goodman's other business as a periodical distributor. Goodman believed he could make even more money by distributing his comics and magazines; why pay a middleman to do that? So he ditched his current distributor, Kable News, and established the Atlas News Company. In this context, "Atlas" begins to make sense. Goodman didn't publish just comics; he also had several lines of general interest and adult (but not that adult!) magazines. He was in several fields and probably paid little attention to the comics end of things. The name "Atlas" for a distributor would imply that his reach covered the entire globe; all walks of life, all corners of the Earth. That wasn't necessarily accurate, of course, but it gave an immediate implication that his operation was bigger and more grand. Goodman then simply applied the "Atlas" name to everything, including his entire publishing arm. Thus "Atlas Comics" were born.
Atlas News Company lasted until 1957. Goodman basically took a look at the finances and decided that he really wasn't making all that much money on distribution, so he closed that business to focus exclusively on publishing. It was ultimately a huge mistake from his perspective, though, as the new distributor he partnered with -- American News Company -- folded only a few months after they began distributing Atlas-published books due to a Justice Department lawsuit. With his own distribution setup eliminated and the country's largest distributor (American News) gone, Goodman was left with few options but using Independent News, which was owned and operated by his business rival, DC Comics (then National).
The Atlas brand that Goodman had spent the better part of a decade establishing was almost wiped out overnight. Independent would only distribute eight of their comics (down from 30+) a month. But in those years that Atlas was producing comics, there was some great and innovative work from the likes of Jack Kirby, Joe Maneely, John Severin and John Romita Sr. to name just a few. It's in honor of those great works that so many comics-related businesses are named.
Now, I could go on to explain where "Marvel Comics" came from, but that's another story that's probably longer than you'd expect!
I'm not sure where I came across it now, but a month or two back, I read that the All-Winners Squad were retroactively made the first superhero team to take up residence in the Baxter Building, decades before the Fantastic Four made it their headquarters. As an FF fan from way back, and one who generally enjoys the archeology of sifting through Marvel continuity, that sounded like something I had to dig into myself. Particularly since it didn't seem like the type of thing Marvel has really done much of since the turn of the century.
So I picked up the requisite stories and was not terribly surprised to see they were written by Karl Kesel. He has a similar sensibility and appreciation of Marvel history and continuity that guys like Roy Thomas, Mark Gruenwald, and Kurt Busiek have shown. Plus, Kesel is a long-time FF fan. So that he found another way to tie Marvel's Golden Age stories via All Winners Comics to its Silver Age ones via Fantastic Four is almost expected. The primary story is largely about how Captain America inspired Jeff Mace to become The Patriot, and how he was later recruited to take up the mantle of Captain America when that character died. I kind of knew that basic story at a high level, but only barely, so I figured I'd have the added bonus here of digging into that aspect of Marvel history as well.
What I found interesting, though, was that, while the stories here were good and provided not only the historical background I was hoping for, but also had a solid emotional hook for the main characters, I definitely did not feel the familiar excitement I used to have when discovering arcane pieces of Marvel continuity. Whereas before, I might've responded with something like "Aha! Cool!" this time it was a little like just checking a box off for me, "OK, All-Winners in the Baxter Building back in the '40s. Got it."
That's certainly not Kesel's fault. The bits in question are, by design, almost thrown in as asides and that's not the point of the stories in the first place. I actually quite enjoyed following Jeff Mace's story itself. What I don't quite know is why I wasn't as excited about the Baxter Building revelation as I might've been a decade or two earlier. Some possibilities I've considered:
- I used to run a Fantastic Four website and I would have included these tidbits on the site. My excitement might have been tied to developing out new content for the site.
- During the same time period, a good chunk of my self-identity revolved around being THE most knowledagable Fantastic Four fan. Knowing this additional bit of trivia would have further advanced my standing in that capacity. (At least in my own mind.)
- It's been a decade and a half since I really followed the goings-on in the Marvel Universe. I may simply be less emotionally invested in it generally.
- I'm also a decade a half older, plus the entire country is collapsing, so it could be that I really don't have the mental bandwidth to really give a shit about an amazingly obscure and ultimately meaningless retcon any more.
Of course, it could be a little "all of the above" with each piece being a contributing factor. I may still have had a subdued reaction in, say, 2014 if I'd come across this then but the additional weight of the past several years could have dulled that even more. I find it particularly interesting in light of the more recent History of the Marvel Universe book I looked at back in April; another Marvel archeology project for me, but one where I went in with very different expectations. I'll be curious, too, to see my reaction compares against the upcoming Other History of the DC Universe, another book which has that archeology aspect to it, but with yet another very different set of expectations.
At nearly fifty years old, I don't expect to respond to comics the same way I did when I was thirty. But I think it's worth considering why so I know what to look for and what to avoid in the future.
This was a government printed pamphlet circa 1956 touting how you could be a good citizen during a natural disaster. The Li'l Abner artwork on the cover is signed by Al Capp, but the interior artwork doesn't look like his. I haven't been able to track down any solid creator information on that either.
Who was John Patler? I'll start with an extended snippet from his Wikipedia entry...[John Patsalos] joined the American Nazi Party in 1960 and shortly changed his name to Patler to make it sound more like "Hitler". Patler later became a captain in the American Nazi Party... However, he was expelled from the Party in March 1967 for alleged "Bolshevik leanings" after disagreeing with [American Nazi Party leader George] Rockwell about some of the party's policies. Patler later described his relationship with Rockwell in very endearing terms, stating "I loved him like a father and he loved me like a son". In his last known letter to Rockwell, Patler wrote "I don't think there are two people on earth who think and feel the same as we do... You are a very important part of my life. I need you as much as you need me. Without you there is no future".
On August 25, 1967, George Lincoln Rockwell was shot and killed while getting into his car, which was parked in front of a self-service laundry at an Arlington, Virginia, shopping center... Patler was arrested half an hour later about a mile from the scene of the shooting.
Patler was convicted of first-degree murder on December 16, 1967 by an Arlington jury and subsequently sentenced to 20 years in prison...
(Interesting Side Note: #174 was the last issue of Adventures of the Unknown!)
(Interesting Side Note 2: That issue is cover-dated August 1967 -- the month that Patler killed Rockwell!)
Yoe's letter is pretty innocuous. He compliments the creators on their books' quality relative to earlier comics, and notes that he was glad they printed fans' addresses because he likes "writing and exchanging views with fans in my own state—Ohio." That evidently was enough to encourage Patler to send him a copy of his comic. Seems to me like a bit of stretch to see that as code for "I want to communicate with Nazis" but as evidenced by his killing this alleged father figure, it doesn't sound like he had a very firm grasp on reality.
Which I think is true for anyone who is that ruled by hatred. If you let your life be run by such negative emotions that it directs even your creative free expression, maybe you need to re-think your life and your priorities. That shit will drain your soul, and make you considerably less human than even the imagined sub-human qualities you see in other races. Sure, not every racist is going to wind up murdering someone like that, but there are still plenty of Kyle Rittenhouses, Jonathan Mattinglys, and Travis McMichaels out there who will seemingly still gleefully kill someone because they've got too much melanin.
I'm not naive enough to say, "Why can't we just all get along?" But damn, if you see someone oozing that much hatred, try to get them some help! Living with hate like that just isn't healthy!
"What happened in August 1972," you ask? How about this...
- DC released their big, honkin' Justice League of America #100
- Marvel kicked off two new titles: Defenders and Warlock...
- Archie's new series: Archie at Riverdale High...
- The fourth comic convention in San Diego, later to become known as Comic Con International, took place. It was the first time to be held at El Cortez Hotel, which was the show's primary location for the rest of the 1970s. Bob Clampett, Harry Harrison, Jack Kirby, Mel Lazarus and Roy Thomas were guests.
- John Barrett, Bud Plant and Robert Beerbohm opened the first Comics & Comix, about a week after the convention. Though it was not the first comic book shop to open, it helped paved the way for a number of other shops and shop owners, notably Beerbohm and Plant who are both still active today.
- Yours truly was born. (My birthday was last week, FYI.)
- Snoopy, Come Home was released in theaters. It featured the first appearances of Woodstock and Franklin onscreen.
- Ben Affleck -- who later went on to play Daredevil, Batman and George-Reeves-playing-Superman -- was born.
- Fantastic Four #125
was released. This was the last issue of the title where Stan Lee is credited as the writer until #296, the 25th anniversary issue.
First Second has been putting out some excellent non-fiction comics the past few years, and Chris Schweizer's The Roanoke Colony: America's First Mystery is no exception. You might be familiar with the basic story: there was a settlement established on Roanoke Island in the late 1500s, but when the governor sailed back to England and returned, he found the settlement was gone with only the "mysterious" word Croatoan carved into one of the trees. Where did the settlers go? What does "Croatoan" mean? Ooooo, spooky!
At least, that was the presentation I always heard. Starting from grade school history class up through... well, when I started trying to learn things on my own basically. And I learned that it was known even from back then that Croatoan was a nearby island where some tribes of Native Americans lived, and wasn't it curious that some of these younger natives now were lighter skinned, with even a few sporting blonde hair? Well, this great mystery starts to unravel itself a bit then, doesn't it?
Schweizer cleverly starts his book with that old, overly dramatic premise that this whole town just mysteriously vanished... only to subvert that a few pages in with a second narrator castigating the first for exaggerating things too much. Schweizer quickly establishes that yes, this is the story of THAT Roanoke, but there's a fair chance that the version you heard is bunk. He then backs up to talk about the Secotan tribe that lived there before the English came and started mucking things up, and covers the backstory of why the English tried settling there in the first place. By the time we catch back up to Sir Walter Raleigh discovering the abandoned village, readers already can make some of their own educated guesses on what might have happened. Schweizer then proceeds to spell out some of the theories that have come up over the years -- some decidedly more outlandish than others -- and ultimately provides what science thinks is the most logical way to fill in the gaps of what we don't conclusively know. I don't think it would spoil things to say that they're pretty sure it wasn't aliens.
If you're familiar with any of Scweizer's other work, you'll find his artistic and storytelling chops here enjoyably on par with any of his other stories. The book narratively flows very smoothly, and has light tone making it more than readable for youngsters who might not be emotionally ready for some of the more violent aspects of this portion of history. Those aren't ignored, but they're handled in a discrete manner -- I believe all the actual deaths occur off-panel. But I detected little to no white-washing; the English are clearly shown to be the assholes here, despite also being the protagonists. (You can almost taste the sarcasm Schweizer imbues in the book when he has John White proclaim, "We haven't done anything terrible this time!")
I think one of the ways Schweizer is able to pull this off is by making the narrators Manteo and Wanchese, members of the Croatan and Roanoke tribes respectively, who were actually there to witness many of the events first-hand. Readers are thus able to sympathize more readily with them, as the story is told from their perspectives. And that they're from two different tribes, they're able to provide slightly different takes on what the English do and how they might react to them. This reinforces that "Native American" covers a wide array of groups, and they don't all think and act as one. Particularly as the story progresses, they take decidedly different approaches to dealing with the English.
I'm a big proponent of correctly learning the decidedly incorrect stories I was taught in school. I've enjoyed pretty much every First Second book I've picked up, and every Chris Scweizer book I've picked up. The actual story is more interesting, in my opinion, than the legend and Schweizer is an excellent person to tell it. I think there are plenty of great reasons to pick this up.
I was doing some research on another book several years ago, and stumbled across this ad running in the middle of one of the comics...Now this was from 1948 -- before the Kefauver hearings or Seduction of the Innocent and all that -- but it still caught me off guard a bit. The cloaked dude looks like he just pulled that blade out of the cop's bleeding chest. The officer's head and arms look twisted in an unnatural manner as well. It's not really a gory image per se, but it's still fairly explicit. Especially with the word "CORPSES" taking up a good chunk of visual real estate nearby.
I was curious: was this a real book? Was this actually published? Or was the ad something the publisher just threw out there to gauge interest?
Turns out it was a real book all right...What struck me, though, is that the cover has a less graphic image. Namely, the office is not shown with a puncture wound or blood. The tip of the blade also seems to have shortened a bit in the ad. I tend to think the wound was edited out for the cover, rather than added for the ad. The cop's uniform is shown with wrinkles and folds throughout, but the area over his heart on the cover is strangely undetailed. Perhaps they felt it looked too gruesome when the blood was actually colored red.
The series was actually called Ideal and "The Corpses of Dr. Sacotti" was the first story of issue #2. The first issue debuted with "Antony and Cleopatra" but there was a clear indication that the editors/publishers thought the Sacotti story would be a hit. Here's a two page ad (courtesy of Atlas Tales) from Ideal #1 also promoting the story...
Curiously, it seems it was issue #3 that drew more ire. It featured historical accounts of Joan of Arc and the Second Boer War, but The Evening News of London claimed the editors had an "anti-British slant." Issue #4 focused on Richard the Lion-Hearted, but #5 changed the format to love stories, even changing the logo to read "Ideal Love and Romance." Issue #6 was entirely retitled Love Romances.
From "The Corpses of Dr. Sacotti" to "Hearts Dance on High!" inside of a year!
Back in 1984, apparently to compete with Kenner's Super Powers and Mattel's Secret Wars action figure lines, Remco obtained the license for and produced a small run of figures based on Archie Comics' Mighty Crusaders!
Michael Neno pointed these out recently on a Facebook post, and I was genuinely surprised I don't recall ever hearing about these. I was never a big Crusaders fan, but they were apparently sold primarily at Kmart, which was a store my family frequented a fair amount back in the '70s and early '80s. (They were cheap, very close, and frankly there weren't many other options we could reasonably get to back then.) So even though I didn't read any Crusaders comics, I was in the Kmart toy aisle pretty regularly in 1984-85. It's possible I did see them and dismissed them out of hand as cheap knock-offs because the production on these is, by all accounts, inferior.
You can clearly see the figure proportions are awkward. Like they were aiming for mimicking the broad/squat He-Man figures, but those figures, while not realistically proportioned, were proportioned well unto themselves. Here, the heads are too big, while the legs are far too short and narrow, and connect at the hip uncomfortably. Not to mention just being crudely sculpted with sloppy paint jobs. Not that Remco was ever known for producing high-quality toys! And when they were competing directly agaist better quality figures from Kenner and Mattel, who had more popular licenses, it's no real surprise these figures found their way to the discount bins really quickly.
(As an aside, Remco was no stranger to comic book licenses. They had produced the "Energized Spider-Man" in 1978, "instant" Hulk muscles in 1979, Sgt. Rock and Warlord action figure lines in 1982, and Crystar action figures in 1983. The Warlord figures more closely resemble the He-Man proportions, so I can't imagine how/why they missed so badly on the Crusaders. They literally could have re-purposed the Warlord bodies mold and been miles ahead, both in terms of sculpting quality and cost savings!)
While the Mighty Crusaders as a group didn't appear until late 1965, some of the individual characters date back to the early 1940s. Interestingly, the original characters were largely born out of the desire to ride the coattails of the success of Superman and Batman. When they were brought together as a team in 1965, it was done because of the success of The Justice League of America and The Avengers. That 1960s title lasted a scant seven issues (with a few appearances in other comics) before it was cancelled. The title was brought back in 1983, apparently designed specifically to promote the upcoming toy line, much the way Secret Wars was developed. That version lasted thirteen issues. A 1992 series lasted eight issues.
It would seem that the Mighty Crusaders, always trying to follow trends and seemingly never trying anything that isn't derivative, is always behind the curve enough that they're never very successful. Both in comics and in action figures.
There is one interesting thing of note to comic fans about these otherwise pedestrian and generally unremarkable action figures. The illustrations on the back of the card showcasing the entire figure line were by none other than Steve Ditko! I daresay this is the best these heroes ever looked! Thanks for bringing all this to my attention, Michael!
I was originally going to dash off a kind of quick, snarky piece today about how the mascots for Comic-Con International and WMMS radio out of Cleveland could be brothers...
I figured I should include a little background since the Buzzard probably isn't all that familiar outside northeast Ohio. What I found struck me as pretty interesting in its own right.
First, the Toucan, though. Rick Geary moved to San Diego in 1975. He began working on comics and was a regular contributor to National Lampoon, and later had work published in Heavy Metal. Not surprisingly, he became somewhat involved with Comic-Con and, in 1984, came up with a toucan character to be used on letterheads and other stationery. Geary has noted, “At the time, I was big into animals in human clothing, so I drew this generic big-beaked bird, never intending it to be a toucan. Also, I understood at the time that this was just to be used for a few things. I had no notion of it becoming Comic-Con's permanent logo.” But it got to be used more and more, the illustration getting streamlined in the process and, though, in 1995 CCI adopted the "eye" logo they still use today, the toucan (whose name, as far as I can tell, is "Toucan") has continued to show up in various ways.
Although, a radio station in Cleveland using the 100.7 MHz frequency dates back to 1946, the station changed identities several times over the years before landing on a progressive rock format branded as WMMS in 1968. At the time, their logo prominently featured mushrooms and a smoking fairy-like creature. In 1974, listener David Helton sent in a complaint letter in the form of a cartoon. It featured a buzzard perched atop a mushroom, suggesting that the station was dying as evidenced by some format changes he thought they'd recently introduced. (In fact, the change he was complaining about -- that the National Lampoon Radio Hour was cut from an hour to a half-hour -- was a joke by the show itself. "Ha ha! We have a show with 'hour' in the title but it's only 30 minutes long!") In any event, the new program manager John Gorman liked the buzzard character; he thought it tied in with the general sentiment at the time that Cleveland itself was a dying city. They hired Helton to work the buzzard up into the advertising, and he debuted as the station's official mascot in April 1974 in an alternative weekly paper called Zeppelin. The character (who's only ever been called "The Buzzard") has likewise been streamlined over the years, and become more mainstream like the station itself.
Now, here's where it gets interesting. Helton explained his art style from the mid-1970s: “The Buzzard is an oddly drawn fellow — some of my peers say he's hard to draw for them — but of course it came gradually as well. As I grew as an artist and cartoonist and being young I had many influences. The Buzzard started out looking like an 'underground comix' character because I was highly influenced by [Robert] Crumb, [Jay] Lynch and other underground comix artists.”
While Geary, by contrast, cites the likes of Winsor McCay, Franklin Booth, and W. Heath Robinson as influences, that he was living just up the coast a bit from Crumb during the height of the underground comix movement, it's hard to believe there wasn't some influence on his work as well. While Toucan and The Buzzard may not exactly have been brothers, I think there's actually a pretty strong argument that they're cousins.
Yesterday was Jim Davis's 75th birthday and Tom Heintjes shared this photo of him...
What I find interesting is how much we can glean from him by other elements in the shot.
First, in the upper right, you can see the bottom of the famous Farrah Fawcett poster, allegedly the single best-selling poster in history. The poster was actually the idea of Pro Arts Inc. who hired Bruce McBroom to shoot Fawcett, who did her own hair and makeup for the shoot as she was still mostly known for small, bit-parts on television at the time. The poster came out in early 1976 and was so popular that it led to her getting a starring role in Charlie's Angels later that year. The poster sold even better after the show's popularity took off. I mention the history a bit here because there's an implication that he kept that poster up for several years, as we'll see in a minute.
The next item of interest is the calendar. Although the date is a little fuzzy, the image helps to confirm it's March 1979. The image is a relatively identifiable Kliban cat cartoon. Bernard Kliban's cat comics first became quite popular in 1975 with his first book, and the first Kliban cat calendar came out in 1977. The first calendar was the best-selling calendar of that year, and Kliban calendars continued to be the best-seller every year through 1981. Although not visible in the black and white photo above, that cat above the March 5-6 boxes is colored orange like Garfield.
Next, there's a comic section from the newspaper visible on Davis's desk. I'm guessing it's The Chronicle-Tribune based out of Marion, IN. Davis, I believe, was actually living in nearby Muncie at the time but the Muncie newspaper is The Star Press, and there seem to be too many letters in the masthead for that. Regardless, plainly visible before the fold are the top two panels of a Peanuts Sunday strip. I believe that's the March 4, 1979 strip; there are only two Sunday strips between 1976 and 1980 that feature Charlie Brown by himself in the first panel, and him with Lucy in the second. (It's possible that it's an even longer timeframe there; that's just as far as I went in either direction.)
So the photo is at the earliest from March 4, 1979, although possibly a little later. Davis would have been a little shy of 34th birthday and likely had that Fawcett poster hanging up for at least a few years by that point.
The Garfield strip Davis seems to be work on, though? We can actually see the whole thing pretty clearly. It actually ran in newspapers on October 29, 1978, about four months prior to the earliest date this could've been photographed.
My guess is that he wanted to use a Sunday strip since those are just bigger and would take up more of his art board, and four months seems that it would be about the right amount of time for a syndicate to get his original art back to him after he sent it in for production. (Recall this is 1979 and you couldn't send files electronically yet.) So I can see it being possible that this was actually the latest Sunday strip he had original art for, but had already been published. I can also see him not wanting to use an as-yet-unpublished strip as that might give away the joke before readers saw the actual strip itself in their newspaper. But I could be over-thinking it, and he just simply liked that strip for whatever reason.
What I find interesting is the three non-Garfield elements we can use to date this photo are three of the most popular pop culture items of their respective genres. The most popular comic, the most popular calendar, the most popular poster. You could say they were the most broadly appealing items of their day. I find it interesting that Davis gravitates towards that so strongly, even in his personal life. Davis was always clear that he tried to write Garfield to be as broadly appealing as possible. In a 1982 interview, he stated, "It's a conscious effort to include everyone as readers. If you were to mention the football strike, you're going to be excluding everyone else in the world that doesn't watch pro football... I don't use rhyming gags, plays on words, colloquialisms, in an effort to make Garfield apply to virtually any society where he may appear. In an effort to keep the gags broad, the humor general and applicable to everyone, I deal mainly with eating and sleeping. That applies to everyone, anywhere."
So that he himself is so strongly influenced by and seeks out the most popular is interesting. What I don't know is that because he just liked stuff that everybody else seemed to like, or was he actually studying those items to determine what made them popular? In that same interview, he also said, "I'd like to say it was some sort of a divine inspiration that created the strip. In fact, it wasn't so much that as a conscious effort to come up with a good, marketable character. I've been trying to get syndicated for eight years. That's a lot of time to try to figure out what makes some strips go and others fail... It's essentially a formula. I notice dog strips are doing well, and I knew an animal strip would be strong. People aren't threatened by an animal. They have a lot of latitude. Do a lot of things that humans can't. By virtue of being a cat, Garfield's not black, white, male or female, young, or old or a particular nationality. He's not going to step on anyone's feet if these thoughts are coming from an animal."
So did he get that Kliban calendar because he actually likes Kliban cats (I've never heard him mention Kliban as an influence) or was he just doing research for how to make Garfield more marketable? The cynic in me says the latter, particularly in light of multiple times Davis has claimed that he chose to make Garfield a cat because he "noticed that nobody had yet created a popular comic about a cat." It seems hard to claim that when he had a Kliban cat calendar on his wall only a few months after he created the character. I can't find Davis mentioning Kliban at all until 2015, although he clearly had at least an awareness of him early on.
I've kind of felt this way for a while, but I feel it kind of makes Davis seem more and more like Bob Kane, and I'm left thinking he's better at crafting a story about himself than he is about crafting one for the comics pages.
A century later, Dutch merchants were using Atlas (the Greek) as a sort of patron saint. (A statue of Atlas adorns the top of the Royal Palace in Amsterdam to this day.) Thus regional map makers of the time began using images of the titan on their collections of maps, making a direct association between the two.
