I’ve blogged several times about how DC in the late 1960s was desperately trying new things to see what would work (most of it didn’t). Bat Lash.
Adding relevance to comics.
As I mentioned last week, reading the comics of 1969 as part of my Silver Age Reread has made me aware Marvel was also struggling to adapt to a shifting comics environment. It turns out that includes trying new things, as witness My Love #1.
Marvel was no stranger to love comics, but they hadn’t had a romance anthology book (as opposed to series like Linda Carter, Student Nurse) since 1963, when Love Romances closed its doors. Now here they are, trying again, and with the good sense to give the first issue a cover by romance giant John Romita.
In 1969 this comics genre was still going strong and would keep going at DC until 1977. My Love was successful enough to last until 1976 but apparently not that successful: Marvel didn’t try any further love comics and the last couple of years were all reprints, some of them from earlier issues of My Love. Apparently it didn’t have enough fans that Marvel worried about anyone noticing the recycling.
Marvel had more success, sort of, when it jumped into the horror anthology line. DC was having roaring success, first with House of Mystery, then adding The Witching Hour and House of Secrets.
Marvel dealt itself in with Tower of Shadows in 1969, once again launching with a Romita cover.
Much as I admire Romita, I don’t think it’s a patch on DC’s covers. And the book, as a horror anthology, only lasted through 1971, when it became Creatures on the Loose, reprinting pre-FF monster stories with new sword-and-sorcery leads (Kull, Gullivar Jones, Thongor). Similarly Chamber of Darkness, which debuted a couple of months after Tower, quickly became Monsters on the Prowl, reprinting more monster stories. Other Marvel reprint books followed in that vein.
Art by Nick Cardy, Carmine Infantino, Steve Ditko, Bob Brown, Romita, Neal Adams, Romita again.
Also worth noting: after years of providing new stories in Annuals with backup reprints, Marvel’s switched to all-reprint this year.