Crazy #1
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeCrazy #1 (cover-dated December 1953, released September 10, 1953) is the opening shot of Atlas Comics' entry into the MAD imitation wave that swept American newsstands in the early 1950s, making it the first humor/parody publication ever launched by the company that would become Marvel Comics. It assembled a murderers' row of Atlas talent — Bill Everett, Joe Maneely, Dave Berg, Al Hartley, and Ed Winiarski — in a single anthology, offering a rare snapshot of the publisher's creative bench operating outside their usual genre lanes of horror, war, and monster comics. While the series ran only seven issues and never dethroned Harvey Kurtzman's MAD as the dominant voice of comics satire, it planted a seed for Marvel's humor tradition that flowered again in the 1973–1983 Crazy Magazine run and informs the company's self-parodying instinct to this day.
In "Frank N. Stein," the mad scientist and his nervous assistant dig up corpses to build a monster, only to discover their latest specimen lacks a brain. When Quasamatter retrieves a criminal’s brain—only to drop it and return with a regular one—the creature flees in terror, leaving Quasamatter to seek refuge with a young girl. Meanwhile, Frank N. Stein and his assistant end up confined in a sanitarium, their experiments coming to an abrupt and unexpected end.
ComicBooks.com Value
Show all 19 grades ▾
Find on ebay
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
When EC Comics' MAD became a surprise commercial hit in 1953, publisher Martin Goodman moved quickly to field a competing humor title under his Atlas Comics imprint, with Stan Lee serving as editor — the same role Lee held across virtually the entire Atlas line at the time. The issue was published under the indicia of Classic Syndicate Inc., one of the many shell-company names Atlas used, and carried the Comics Code seal, reflecting the mid-decade industry capitulation to the newly formed Comics Code Authority. Atlas would simultaneously develop companion humor titles such as Wild, demonstrating that Goodman viewed the parody genre as a sustained market opportunity rather than a one-off experiment.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First issue of Crazy Vol. 1, published by Atlas Comics (the 1950s predecessor to Marvel Comics); released September 10, 1953, with a December 1953 cover date.
- Edited by Stan Lee, with cover art and interior story art and script by Bill Everett (creator of Namor the Sub-Mariner and later co-creator of Daredevil).
- Interior art contributions from Joe Maneely, Dave Berg, Al Hartley (signed as 'Astro Hartley'), and Ed Winiarski — five major Atlas-era artists in a single issue.
- Although the indicia title is simply 'Crazy,' the full cover title reads: 'Hey, Dig This Crazy Little Mixed-Up Mag!' — a deliberate echo of MAD's irreverent branding.
- The issue's six stories parody then-current pop-culture targets: the TV sci-fi serial Tom Corbett Space Cadet, the Frankenstein/Dragnet genres, the radio/TV program Gangbusters, and The Three Musketeers, among others.
- Dave Berg, who contributed art to this issue, would later become a long-tenured cartoonist at MAD Magazine itself — a pointed historical irony given Crazy's origins as a MAD imitation.
- Al Hartley, another contributor, later went on to work for Archie Comics and then Spire Christian Comics, giving this roster unusual career range.
- The series ran for seven issues (1953–1954) before folding; Atlas's broader humor output at the same time included the companion title Wild, reflecting Goodman's pattern of launching multiple titles to test a new genre simultaneously.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Arrgh! #2 (1975)
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.