Tom Lammers writes (and I am grateful to him for this data)…
The Atlas globe logo appeared on the cover while Goodman's books were still distributed by Kable News. The Atlas globe logo was added to covers beginning with the November 1951 issues. Kable News' "K" logo and the North American map that symbolized the independent distributor's union to which Kable belonged remained on the covers through the August 1952 issues. This 10-month co-existence of the Atlas and Kable symbols suggests to me that Atlas was not just a distributor's mark. The fact that it continued to appear on covers through Oct 1957 cover date, even though Goodman closed his distributorship down on 1 Nov 1956 in favor of distribution by American News. The interior page bottom margin blurbs ("For the best in [whatever] tales, look for the Atlas globe on the cover!"] also supports Goodman's intention to use it as a product identity.
I didn't mean to suggest that Goodman never intended "Atlas" to be a company brand-name…but he didn't push that notion a lot; not to the extent DC or Harvey or EC or almost any other company put a big company logo on all their books.
Years ago, the late Don Rico (who was an editor there for many years) explained to me why Goodman listed some of his comics as published by Canam Publishing and some by Vista Publishing and so on. I didn't fully understand the reason and don't remember enough of it to give a coherent recapitulation…but it had something to do with a New York state law back then that gave certain tax advantages to small businesses. It apparently saved money for Goodman to claim he had fifty or sixty small businesses, as opposed to one large one. Rico also said — and this may have been a theory on his part — that Goodman was out to separate his assets so that if some grouping of titles lost too much money, he could declare bankruptcy for the "company" that published them without impacting the rest of his line. In any case, he may have not played up the Atlas insignia too much because he wanted to be able to claim he really did have separate companies that just happened to have the same owner, same offices, same staff and same distribution. Like I said, I don't fully understand this.
However, if he added the Atlas symbol to his covers ten months before Atlas began distributing his own titles through his own company, that suggests to me he did intend it primarily as a distributor's mark. He must have known a year before he shifted distribution that it would happen so, I'm assuming, he slapped the Atlas name on there to begin establishing the identity of his forthcoming distribution company. He left it on when he shifted to American News Service because, by then, it did have that value for product identity…but when American went under and he moved over to Independent News, he chucked the Atlas name. So at that point, it was more important to get rid of it to disassociate himself with his old distribution than to keep it to denote his product line. And to those of you who come here for the non-comic book postings, my apologies…but this is the kind of thing some of us think is important.