Lost Marvels - Tower Of Shadows!

In the summer of 1969 Marvel decided to spread its wings and attempt to return to making magical mystery comics as they had done less than a decade before. The supernatural was popular again, so much so that the Comics Code had done little when DC brought forth a truly scary The House of Mystery under Joe Orlando's editorial control. DC was onto something and Marvel wanted a taste. To that end they announced two new titles -- Tower of Shadows and Chamber of Darkness. Fantagraphics attempted to reprint Tower of Shadows but is only able to do so in an incomplete form. For some reason two stories based on H.P. Lovecraft stories were not able to be reprinted, much to the detriment of this otherwise handsome volume.  

"At the Stroke of Midnight!" by Jim Steranko is the first and the best story in the series. Steranko was at his very best, offering up a haunted house story that fragmented time for the characters and the reader as well.  "From the Brink!" by Johnny Craig gives us a dandy tale of a man who is seeking to root out fake mediums and then he finds a real one. "A Time to Die!" by Stan Lee and John Buscema and Don Heck is a tale of a mad scientist and his even madder assistant and what happens when the former discovers the secret of immorality.  Cover by John Romita, replacing one by Jim Steranko which Stan Lee rightly deemed in my eyes as less effective. 

"Witch Hunt!" by Roy Thomas, Don Heck and Dan Adkins tells the tragic story of a man looking for witches but gets surprised when he finds something else. "Look Out, Wyatt -- Automation's Gonna Get Your Job!" by Gary Friedrich, John Buscema and John Verpoorten is a story set in a mine where men fear machines will take their jobs, but one man finds that fear ends up threatening them even more. "One Hungers" by Neal Adams and Dan Adkins has a few hippies uncover a voracious menace from across time.  Cover by John Romita for the Adams story. 

"The Moving Finger Writhes...!" by Len Wein, Gene Colan and Mike Esposito is the story of a man who is a failure until he finds a special book which lets him glimpse the future, but what's there is both wonderful and terrible. "Midnight in the Wax Museum!" by Gary Friedrich, George Tuska and Marie Severin features a reporter who wakes up one day and discovers a house has appeared from nowhere and then he finds aliens. "The Terrible Old Man!" by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith finished this issue but sadly is not in this collection. Cover by Marie Severin for the Friedrich and Tuska tale. 

"Evil is a Baaaaad Scene!" by Allyn Brodsky and Don Heck has two hippies seeking cheap thrills but find more than they bargained for when they let an evil mystic cast spells in their apartment. "One Little Indian!" by Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan and Dan Adkins tells the story of a cruel man who is cursed and is warned to avoid Indians, which he tries to do. "To Sneak -- Perchance to Dream!" by Tom Sutton is a sequel to a Chamber of Darkness story in which two spies occupy a living house in order to blow up a plutonium plant. Cover by Marie Severin and Herb Trimpe for the Brodsky and Heck tale. 

"The Demon that Devoured Hollywood!" by Roy Thomas, Barry Windsor-Smith and Dan Adkins is about a famous horror film actor famous for his make-ups, but who has a terrible secret which ultimately destroys him. "Flight into Fear!" by Wally Wood tells of a lame young man who falls asleep on a gargoyle and before you know it finds himself a giant in a land of people needing a sword-wielding hero. "Time Out!" by Gerry Conway and Syd Shores gives us the story of a desperate couple who find themselves locked in a haunted house, and they lose something but gain something as well. Cover by Barry Windsor-Smith and Bill Everett for the Thomass-Windsor-Smith story. 

"The Ghost-Beast!" by Wally Wood is another sword and sorcery story in which a character named Beowulf fights a deadly monster, but it turns out he is a menace as well. "Contact!" by Tom Sutton is a two-page bit of fun about a power-hungry old man who makes contact with aliens, much to his regret. "The Scream from Beyond!" by Steve Skeates, Gene Colan, and Dan Adkins tells the story of an evil man who causes crashes to record the sounds, but who finds a sound he doesn't want. Cover by Marie Severin for a reprint story "Man in the Rat Hole!" by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. (Not in this collection.)

"The Scream of Things" by Allyn Brodsky, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Vince Colletta is about a researcher and an evil girl who find more than they can handle in a cursed mansion. "Of Swords and Sorcery!" by Wally Wood is another sword and sorcery effort, this one filled with an evil sorcerer, an elf, and a transformed dwarf in addition to the usual hero and damsel in distress. Cover by Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Marie Severin for the reprint story "I Was Trapped by Titano, the Monster the Time Forgot!" (Not in this collection.)

"Sanctuary!" by Wally Wood is yet another sword and sorcery tale about a man who would be king and seeks a crown in a forbidden place. Cover by Berni Wrightson for the Wood tale. The rest of the issue is comprised of reprints featuring artwork by Steve Ditko and Don Heck. (Not included in this collection.)

"Pickman's Model" by Roy Thomas and Tom Palmer. Cover by Berni Wrightson. The balance of the issue was filled with work drawn by Don Heck and Jack Kirby. Only Wrightson's cover is included in this collection. 

This one-short King-Size Special cover by John Romita is included as well. 

Here is Jim Steranko's rejected cover for the debut issue of Tower of Shadows. It's an awesome piece of artwork, but I have to agree with Lee that Romita's was likely to sell more books. 

With both Tower of Shadows and Chamber of Darkness, Marvel wanted to tap into that EC horror host vibe as both Warren and DC had done. To that end they created Digger, above seen in a distinctive outfit by Steranko. 

John Buscema renders him in his more traditional look for the third story in the first issue. Buscema's version is less offbeat but creepier. 

Digger shared hosting duties with the official host of Chamber of Darkness, one Headstone P. Gravely. Both Digger and Gravely show up in the early issues of Tower of Shadows, but soon Marvel lets them fade away in favor of letting the artists introduce their own tales. I hated to see the hosts go, but using the real talent was actually quite in keeping with Marvel's general trend of promoting that talent for the fans. 

Tower of Shadows changed its title to Creatures on the Loose and became a home to more vintage monster stories from the Atlas days and sword and sorcery, specifically Marvel's first King Kull story by Berni Wrightson, and later Gullivar of Mars by Gil Kane and Thongor of Lemuria by a host of talents. Man-Wolf finished off the series. But for all that, I never forgot Tower of Shadows and really enjoyed this chance to tumble into its pages again. 

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Tennis, Anyone?

I adore this single page by the incomparable John Buscema and George Klein. These two blended their talents all too briefly on the Assemblers, but they created some exciting pages between them in that tiny period of time.

For one thing I like comic book pages where characters read comics, especially recognizable comics. It's fun, and suits the personality of Hawkeye (not yet revealed to be Clint Barton yet) perfectly.

And for another thing, his page is a clever multiverse-bending ending to a story from Not Brand Echh #12. That's a delightful cover by Marie Severin by the way. 

The whole story can be found here at the Diversions of the Groovy Kind Blog. The story by Roy Thomas and Tom Sutton is pretty funny and involves these "Revengers" at a very particular time in their history when they were arguably at their weakest. The team consisted of Goliath, the Wasp, Hawkeye, the Black Panther and brand-new member the largely untried Vision.

In fact, this story had to happen in between issues #58 and #59 of The Avengers run since that is the only possible time that the assembled team pictured so elegantly by Buscema and Klein ever existed. The Vision became an Avenger in issue #58 and the erratic Hank Pym doffed his Goliath duds to become Yellowjacket in issue #59.

So, it is in the pages of Not Brand Echh of all places, in this weird fusion of the of the Marvel and Marble universes where we find this Avengers team assembled for the one and only time really.

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Seeker 3000!

This evocative and graceful 1978 Marvel Premiere cover by Dave Cockrum and Joe Sinnott dropped out of nowhere. The saga of Seeker 3000 immediately put me in the mind of those classic Star Trek adventures, a dynamic captain and his determined and varied crew in a sleek spaceship poised to cruise across the depths of space. That was doubtless intentional.

The actual comic book story by underrated scribe Doug Moench and painfully underrated artist Tom Sutton gives us something a bit stranger still. It's rather high-concept sci-fi. 

In 1998 Marvel decided to finally exploit this lost gem. First, they reprinted the story from Marvel Premiere #41 under a new cover by Andrew Currie and Art Nichols, which intentionally evokes the Cockrum original. This was done to promote the four-issue limited adventure written by Dan Abnett and Ian Edgington. Here is the complete cover gallery.

Apparently, the series never caught on, and these six comics are all that exist of the intriguing universe of Seeker 3000. I've never read the follow up stories, but I suspect they might be found in many a back issue bin. Might be worth the time, or perhaps not.

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Schlomo Raven Day!

Tom Sutton was born on today's date in 1937. He was a potent artist for Charlton Comics in the early 70's on their many ghost books and at Warren Magazines as well.  He shifted over to DC and Marvel doing some great inking but then turning his attention to sci-fi series such as Star Trek. 

Way back in 1976 comics came in relatively few formats. At the time prices for the regular comic book pamphlet was rising ever few months, since cutting pages had finally reached a nadir. The publishers played around with some different things, but by and large the basic comic held sway over the market. Then one day Fiction Illustrated appeared. It was a digest-sized comic, square-bound. It wasn't exactly like other comics in that it cost a cool dollar and seemed to be targeted to an older crowd. It had my attention. It was produced by Byron Preiss who had already launched Weird Heroes, a paperback series which attempted to revive the action and adventure of the classic pulps, but with a modern twist. Much of that same vibe is here in the first installment of Fiction Illustrated, a slap-happy collection called Schlomo Raven. 

Preiss himself is the writer of this tome, but it is the artistry of Tom Sutton which sets it apart for me. Sutton was a comic artist who worked a great deal for Marvel when I was just starting to collect, but he  had also worked for DC and Warren and at this time focused much of his attention on weird stories for Charlton Comics. Sutton was the first artist to illustrate the luscious lines of Vampirella. In Schlomo Raven Sutton is channeling his love of classic MAD comics from the days of Kurtzman and Elder. 

The two stories here are wild farces featuring the diminutive "Public Detective" Schlomo Raven. The first is the most successful and is titled "The Farx Job". This story revolves around the supposed kidnapping of the famous "Farx Brothers" ("Grippo, Heepo,Choocho, and Zeepo"), who were film comedians. Schlomo is brought into the case and the trail takes him to the home of various versions of famous Hollywood celebs such as "Bela Bugosi", "Martin Barloff", "Maria Astoria", and "Bumphrey Hogart". It's a hectic race to the conclusion and a fun read. 

Less entertaining is "Rosebug" which puts Schlomo squarely in the center of a national chase for spies in the theater and brings him cheek to cheek with the equally tiny Orsini Wells. Wells is producing a play titled "The American" which is a theatrical variation of Citizen Kane from our universe. There are plots within plots and mountains of exposition. This makes reading "Rosebug" more of a task than a joy unfortunately. 

Fiction Illustrated was a worthy experiment. It would last for four issues. The second one was a science fiction yarn called Starfawn showcasing the art of Stephen Fabian. The third was Chandler in a noir adventure titled "Red Tide" by Jim Steranko. The fourth had art by Ralph Reese and featured The Son of Sherlock Holmes. 

But that's not all. 

I likely said this before, but alas it remains true -- Tom Sutton is one of the most underrated artists of his generation. The Yoe Books publication Tom Sutton's Creepy Things gives us a nifty insight into one of the finest stylists of the Bronze Age of comics. Sutton's career in comics was an off and on again affair for many years before he finally began to submit work to Warren Magazines. There Nicola Cuti became aware of him since he illustrated some of Cuti's scripts and when Charlton needed talent during the expansion of the early 70's he tagged Sutton and the "Bear" as Cuti called him found a home.

(Tom Sutton's first Charlton cover art -- not included in this collection.)

This volume showcases many of Sutton's outstanding covers for the little Derby company, notorious for its small by reliable payments and also some of his best stories. Some are written by the old pro Joe Gill and many are penned by Cuti. But more than a few of these are written and drawn by Sutton himself. Among them are masterpieces like "Terrible Teddy" and "Bones" from Ghost Manor, "Journey to Lost Rlaak" from Haunted Love, "Grave Story" from Midnight Tales, "Subway Stop" from Haunted, "The Game Keeper" from Ghostly Haunts, "The Kukulkaton" from Monster Hunters, "The Well" from Creepy Things, and "Through a Glass Darkly" from Ghostly Tales. Many of the stories were written by Cuti and drawn by Sutton for Midnight Tales, the stellar anthology overseen by Wayne Howard -- among those are "Lost in Transit", "The Kilgore Monster", "Goo", and "The Tower Maiden". And there are more stories such as "The Weirdest Character I've Ever Known", "Mother's Boy", and "Where's Cyrus Bull?" written by Joe Gill. Great stuff.

(Sutton in the Charlton years.)

The volume also features a number of pages derived from original artwork from the collections of editor Michael Ambrose (of Charlton Spotlight fame and a friend of the Dojo in times past) and Bryan Fowler. These pages really allow you to see with startling clarity the potency of Sutton's art. This volume is a gem for any Charlton fan and a must for any fan of Tom Sutton.

Here are most of some great Sutton covers featured in this tome.

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