LOST MARVELS Volume 1 Tower of Shadows

In 1969, with its revolutionary superhero line well established, Marvel took a chance on the kind of supernatural, EC-style anthology series that had been banned since the formation of the Comics Code in the 1950s. Tower of Shadows began featuring entirely new stories with a staggering array of artists: Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, Barry Windsor-Smith, John Buscema, Berni Wrightson, Wally Wood, John Romita, Johnny Craig, Tom Sutton and others. Atmospheric gems of twisted suspense and sardonic horror. Not only do these nine issues feature Marvel’s best creators working at their peak, but Tower of Shadows is one of the lost, never-collected Marvels. In the first of a new series of Lost Marvels, Fantagraphics and Marvel join forces to introduce these pages to a new generation of readers and restore this series to its rightful place in comics history. Steranko offers up one of his most interesting solo stories here; Wally Wood contributes a cover and four stories over as many issues, in his case with a dark sword and sorcery twist, with barbarians, castles and all the great Woody tropes. One story features him sitting at his drawing board...very much an update of his hallowed "My World" done for EC Comics. Windsor-Smith provides 3 stories, albeit these are pre-Conan while he's still learning his craft; a very young newcomer Berni Wrightson does the covers of #8 and 9! Also here: Gene Colan, Marie Severin, and George Tuska. Due to legal issues, they could not include two stories that were H.P. Lovecraft adaptations. They hope to collect them in  future volumes. And with the last couple issues, Marvel started to run reprints of earlier monster stories, such as a Ditko story that first appeared in Strange Tales years earlier. These are NOT included; this volume only collects the newly created material for this series. All stories and covers are restored and in vivid color. A highlight is an 11-page introduction with background and analysis, plus wonderful contemporary (in 1970-72) photographs of Neal, Berni, Len Wein, Marie Severin, Steranko, Smith, Buscema, Wood and others...all the young creators at this time, by comics journalist Michael Dean. Handsome embossed cover, oversized. Very well done! Here's a review: ‘Strange Bedfellows’ Marvel and Fantagraphics Team Up for New Archival Line - The inside scoop on Lost Marvels by Rob Salkowwitz for Publishers Weekly.com The first title to hit the shelves is Tower of Shadows, collecting most of the stories from a short-lived horror/fantasy anthology published in the early 1970s, featuring some of the best artists of that era. The series came out as the Comic Code loosened restrictions on certain horror and supernatural content that had been in effect since the days of EC Comics in the 1950s, and shortly after Marvel had obtained newsstand distribution that allowed it to dramatically expand its lineup. The stories followed predictable genre formulas and were often used as tryouts for young writers like Gerry Conway and Len Wein, who went on to better things, but the artwork was truly the star. The first issue features one of the final Marvel stories by Jim Steranko, and is one of his most polished and formally innovative works. Other stories were drawn by a virtual who’s who of top American comic artists of the era including Neal Adams, John Buscema, Gene Colan, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Bernie Wrightson, plus old EC stalwarts like Johnny Craig, Marrie Severin, and Wally Wood. The art is reproduced from files provided by Marvel, using original color schemes. The deep blacks preserve the quality of the linework and the color pops nicely on the non-gloss white paper. Fantagraphics’ production is definitely the best of the licensed archival Marvel work currently in the market, without the problems that occur when trying to simulate the cheap and distressed look of the comic pages too closely, or else recoloring and “remastering” the work in ways that destroy the original atmosphere. It’s a fine line, but Fantagraphics, which has specialized in this kind of work for over 40 years, knows how to navigate it.