Tower of Shadows #1
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeTower of Shadows #1 (September 1969) marks Marvel's first genuine attempt to revive the EC Comics–style horror anthology within the constraints of the Comics Code Authority — a genre that had been effectively suppressed in American comics since the mid-1950s. Its lead story, Jim Steranko's "At the Stroke of Midnight!", won the 1969 Alley Award for Best Feature Story, making it the only story in the series run to receive that distinction and cementing the premiere issue's place in the award history of the medium. The issue also introduced Digger — the gravedigger host who became the series' mascot and was later folded into the wider Marvel Universe as an Earth-616 character — giving the issue a dual significance as both an artistic statement and a universe-building moment. As the launchpad for a title that assembled an extraordinary concentration of late Silver Age talent working outside the superhero genre, this issue represented Marvel's most ambitious step toward broadening the medium's storytelling vocabulary before the Code reforms of 1971 opened the floodgates further.
In "At the Stroke of Midnight!", Stan Lee and John Buscema deliver a chilling tale of ambition and transformation, as an obsessed scientist seeks immortality through an elixir drawn from a centuries-old Redwood. When his mute assistant takes matters into his own hands, the experiment spirals into a haunting metamorphosis—leaving one man forever bound to the earth, a living tree in every sense. The cover by John Romita captures the eerie moment with striking detail, making this 1969 issue a standout in Marvel's early horror anthology series.
In "At the Stroke of Midnight!", Digger warns of a fate that comes not with a bang, but with the chime of a clock—when greed and cowardice collide with a curse older than the house itself. A meek man, pushed by his domineering wife, steals from his uncle’s isolated mansion, only to find himself and his spouse swept into the blood-soaked chaos of 18th-century France, where their lives hang by a thread and their true identities are lost in the storm.
In "From Beyond the Brink!", a young man named Digger stumbles upon a chilling mystery tied to a man whose obsession with exposing frauds may be the key to his own unfinished journey. As the line between the living and the dead blurs, the truth of a skeptic’s final quest begins to unravel in ways no one could have foreseen.
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Marvel launched Tower of Shadows in mid-1969 as a direct competitive response to DC's flourishing horror anthology titles House of Mystery and House of Secrets, pairing it with a companion title, Chamber of Darkness, debuting the same season. Editor-in-chief Stan Lee recruited Jim Steranko to anchor the premiere issue, but the collaboration quickly deteriorated: Lee rejected Steranko's prepared cover (a stark red-and-black design that has since been widely reproduced and discussed), clashed with Steranko over panel layout, inserted dialogue Steranko considered superfluous, and replaced Steranko's original Lovecraft-homage title "The Lurking Fear at Shadow House" — reportedly proposing "Let Them Eat Cake" at one point before the two settled on "At the Stroke of Midnight!" John Romita Sr. also made substantial alterations to the interior art throughout the issue, a fact confirmed in the letters page of issue #4. The creative conflict proved irreconcilable, and Steranko ceased freelancing for Marvel in its aftermath, though the two parties eventually cooled and Steranko returned to produce covers for the publisher in 1972–73.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Digger (Roderick Krupp), the gravedigger host who narrates the anthology's stories and later became an active Earth-616 villain, eventually joining the supervillain team the Night Shift.
- Lead story "At the Stroke of Midnight!" — written and drawn by Jim Steranko — won the 1969 Alley Award for Best Feature Story, one of the most prestigious fan-voted honors in comics at the time.
- The issue contains three original stories: Steranko's "At the Stroke of Midnight!"; "From Beyond the Brink!" scripted and drawn by EC Comics veteran Johnny Craig (with John Romita alterations); and "A Time to Die!" scripted by Stan Lee with pencils by John Buscema and inks by Don Heck.
- The cover was drawn by John Romita Sr. after Lee rejected Steranko's original cover design; Romita also made significant alterations to Steranko's interior art — a fact later confirmed in the letters column of Tower of Shadows #4.
- Steranko's original title for his story was "The Lurking Fear at Shadow House," an intentional homage to horror author H. P. Lovecraft; Lee did not recognize or accept the reference and imposed the published title.
- The series was conceived as Marvel's answer to DC's House of Mystery and House of Secrets, and was launched alongside a companion title, Chamber of Darkness — both of which sold poorly despite their exceptional creative rosters.
- "At the Stroke of Midnight!" was reprinted in Vampire Tales #2 and later collected in Marvel Visionaries: Jim Steranko (2002); the full run of Tower of Shadows #1–9 was collected for the first time in Lost Marvels Vol. 1: Tower of Shadows (Fantagraphics, April 2025).
- The series ran nine issues under the Tower of Shadows title before being retitled Creatures on the Loose with issue #10 (March 1971), which then evolved into a sword-and-sorcery and sci-fi vehicle that eventually introduced Man-Wolf.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in El Enterrador #1 (1970), Comix: A History of Comic Books in America #[nn] (1971), Comix: A History of Comic Books in America #[nn] (1971), Tower of Shadows [Special] #1 (1971), Dracula #1/[1972] (1972), Dracula #2/[1972] (1972), Hallucinations #29 (1973), Super Giant #[nn] (1973), Doomsday #8 (1973), Vampire Tales #2 (1973), L'Écho des Savanes Spécial U.S.A. #4 (1975), Tales of Terror #2 (1978), Eclipso #66 (1979), Marvel Superheroes and the Occult Winter Special #[nn] (1980), 3ª Geração #2 (1981), Captain America Special Edition #1 (1984), Inferno #4 (1997), Marvel Visionaries: Jim Steranko #[nn] (2002), Lost Marvels #1 (2025)
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