Sorry for the delay

Hi,

I am one of a few people collecting and commenting on Timely/Atlas books from the fifties on the Yahoo Timely/Atlas group. I also contribute to the Atlas Tales website, that collects all information about these books, edited by Stan Lee for publisher Martin Goodman.

I also am a big Lost fan, so I applaud your efforts to scan the pages of this book for us. As the story says... this treasure belongs to the future, not just one man.

Let me comment on the story and the book itself without making any connections to the show first. The Hidden Land is one of many stories they did with the word Hidden in the title. In most cases, it doesn't refer to anything connected to this story or a hidden world. There are many more stories like this one, though - about hidden lands or hidden people. Often these hidden lands are in Tibet. This all comes from the movie Shangri-La, which had a huge impact on the postwar generation. Shangri-La was a hidden land of mystical powers in Tibet. It was used a lot in pulp stories. I believe it is where The Shadow got his powers. Stan Lee even used it in many of his superhero origins, such as the one for Dr. Strange. Any connection to Lost seems to run via that pulpy basis. My guess is that the writers took this book as a reference to what was on the stands at that moment in John's life. The most important echoes seem to be in the title and the cover... the city mirrored in the clouds seems to indicate a 'moving' location. Did you know, by the way, that these covers were often drawn just from the title of the insid story by a seperate artist who did not know what the story was about (or didn't care, as long as he could come up with an arresting image)? 

Let's see, what else can I add. The story was drawn by Manny Stallman. Aside from all sorts of other Shangri-La stories in the Timely/Atlas books, there are many stories about cities or worlds in another dimension, people who are hiding among us with special powers, trips to and from the future and even people thinking themselves into the future.

Hey, there even was an artist called Sawyer.