Towering Achievement
Rise & Fall of Tower Comics Chris Irving on the history of the short-lived comics publisher by Chris Irving Below: Courtesy of Larry Ivie, the original splash page to the first Dynamo story, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1, drawn by Wally Wood. Initially writer Len Brown named the character“Thunderbolt,” as evidenced by the logo, but he was subsequently renamed by Wally Wood.
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Comic books have survived over six decades by being a resilient medium; despite any downfalls that may plague the industry and often devour whole companies, it seems that more companies sprout up in place once the industry hits another upswing. In the mid-1960s, the Marvel line of comic books made comics a commodity again, as even college students were now enjoying the exploits of super-heroes such as Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, and The Mighty Thor. Tower Books, a publishing line most known for
their inexpensive paperbacks, decided that the four-color medium may be worth pursuing. With the efforts of publisher Harry Shorten and editor Samm Schwartz, both formerly of Archie Comics, they started a new line of comics to hopefully cash in on the craze. The Tower paperback line had originally started under the World Publishing Company, a company acknowledged with the first book on Charles Lindbergh’s historic flight (titled Lindbergh, The Lone Eagle) in 1929. World was also the publishers of the Webster’s New World Dictionary. According to the World Publishing Web site, World established Tower Books in 1939, a paperback reprint line cover-priced at 49¢ each. The Tower line continued throughout the ’60s, when World Publishing was sold to Times Mirror in 1963. Although there is little information to be had on Tower Books, it is assumed Tower was part of a package deal with World. Whatever the case, the Tower line joined with Midwood Books, a publisher of mens’ paperbacks, in 1964. Midwood had published male-oriented books featuring scantily-clad women on lurid covers, many of which were beautifully painted by artist Paul Rader. Apparently, many of Midwood’s early novels featured pseudonymous works by established authors, such as Robert Silverberg, Lawrence Block, and Donald Westlake. It is very possible that, with an expanding base, Tower decided to do comic books, or was approached by publisher Harry Shorten. According to longtime Archie comic artist Dan DeCarlo, who worked for Shorten at Tower, the details were never very clear: “[Harry] was very secretive about that,” DeCarlo recalled. “We thought that it was his company and [that] he formed it.” The mid-’60s was also a boom period for comic books, the first one since the early ’50s, fueled on by the “hip” success of Stan Lee’s self-referential Marvel Comics. Tower apparently wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to join in this latest super-hero revival. “They decided to go into comic books in the mid-’60s, when other people decided to delve into them,” the late historian Rich Morrissey said. “With the Batman TV show and the Silver Age comics doing well, people were trying to get into the field. Publishers like Harvey and Archie, who had been doing non-super-hero comics, were trying to get back into the super-hero field. Tower’s superheroes were basically an attempt to combine the super-hero craze with the spy craze: James Bond and Man From U.N.C.L.E., and things like that.” The Tower Comics offices were located at 185 Madison Avenue, New York City, as part of the Tower Books office. Steve Skeates, one of the few remaining people involved with Tower recall the offices as a typical New York office. “There were one or two rooms in this wing of a floor where the Tower/Belmont books were done,” Skeates described. “Just a couple of rooms devoted to the comic book people. There were only two people there: Samm Schwartz, who was the editor of the whole line, and some assistant, a letterer.” Russ Jones, an infrequent freelance writer for Tower’s war title, Fight the Enemy, remembers, “The comics department was at the very end of a long dark hallway. Samm [Schwartz] and [his assistant Bill Vigoda] were the only two there all the time. It was not like any other company. Harry's father worked as the janitor. No kidding. This old guy with a broom and a mop and swab.” Shortly before Tower Comics’ inception, Shorten had served as a longtime editor at Archie Comics, a company formed in the late 1930s as MLJ with super-heroes such as The Shield and Hangman, characters who soon gave way to the company’s current flag characCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 14
July 2001