By the summer of 1957, Atlas was experiencing difficulties and began shedding freelancers. Shortly afterward, Martin Goodman stopped distributing his own titles and switched to American News Company, which soon closed, temporarily leaving Atlas without a distributor and resulting in all staff other than Lee being fired. Maneely continued to work with Lee on the "Chicago Sun-Times"-syndicated comic strip "Mrs. Lyons' Cubs", which debuted in newspapers February 10, 1958. He also did a limited amount of freelancing for DC Comics during this time, including for the supernatural / fantasy anthologies "House of Secrets" and "Tales of the Unexpected"; Charlton Comics; and Crestwood Publications.