Before Marvel Comics was Marvel Comics, it was a company of many monikers. A man named Martin Goodman owned it, though he had some of its components in his wife's name. In the early forties, most of its publications were the output of Timely Publications. Eventually, for some obscure legal reason, Goodman's comics were published by an array of at least 59 front companies ranging from Animirth Comics to Zenith Publications, Inc. The distribution company he owned was named Atlas and since its logo appeared on all his covers, fans took to referring to the company as Atlas Comics. Even after he changed distributors and the Atlas seal disappeared, readers referred to the line as "Atlas" until such time as the Marvel logotype was established on his covers. (Within the industry, almost no one used the Atlas name, by the way. Artists and writers would say they were working for "Timely" — a name that remained on the office door, long after it was off the comics — or they'd say, "I'm doing a story for Goodman" or "I'm doing a job for Stan Lee.")
Atlas published thousands of comics of all kinds: ghost comics, westerns, war, funny animals, etc. For the most part, Goodman's modus operandi was to see what was selling for his competitors, then to clutter the stands with like product, crowding others off the newsracks. Most of his comics were concocted under the editorial supervision of Stan Lee but, generally speaking, and with occasional exceptions, the stories in them were of minimal interest — never very bad but rarely very good. That may have been less because of the competence of the writers than the restrictions of format, which called for short, non-connected tales with simple premises and, wherever possible, gimmicky endings where the punishment fits the crime.
Of more interest today is the artwork in these comics. Goodman did not pay well but in a time when the comic book industry was wildly unstable and included some less-than-honest publishers, he usually had work available and his checks always cleared. As a result, just about everyone who worked in the New York comic book talent pool passed through his titles and some of the better artists — men like Bill Everett, Joe Maneely, Russ Heath and Dan DeCarlo — did an awful lot of pages. This makes a lot of their comics fun to collect and study…and if you can't afford to collect, you can at least study covers at two online galleries. Nearly 3000 cover images can be viewed at the Atlas Tales site and another 600 (including much overlap) are at The Timely-Atlas Cover Gallery. The scans don't always do justice to the material but they may give you some idea of how good some of the artistry was on some of their books…and you'll get a sense of Goodman's "flood the stands" style of publishing.
And there's a large point of irony to be noted: Goodman sold Marvel in the late sixties, though he planned to stay on and run it with his son, Charles Goodman. Both Goodmans were squeezed out and in the mid-seventies, they launched a new company and called it Atlas Comics. DC and Marvel promptly increased the number of titles they published and neatly crowded the new Atlas off the newsstands, just as efficiently as the old one had smothered many of its smaller competitors. It was another of those gimmicky endings where the punishment fits the crime.