Tower Comics

[crimsoncrusader]

Would love to see
    * Dynamo (4 issues, a T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents spin-off)
    * Fight the Enemy (3 issues, war title)
    * NoMan (2 issues, a T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents spin-off)
    * Teen-in (4 issues, teen comics)
    * T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (20 issues)
    * Tippy Teen (27 issues, teen comics)
    * Tippy's Friends Go-go and Animal (15 issues, teen comics)
    * Undersea Agent (6 issues, minimal ties with T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents)
in the Silver Age section every issue but the first issues of Undersea and Thunder are missing copyright notices to my knowledge.

[narfstar]

Somehow Carbona was able to get a copyright on Thunder Agents. Tippy should be OK though. I have several

[narfstar]

not sure what he pulled off

[crimsoncrusader]

Carbona owns the first issues so he can have a legitimate claim to the characters who appear in them, but the other nineteen issues of THUNDER Agents and the other five of Undersea would be public domain since they have zero copyright notices and were also not registered. Understand though if we want to play it on the safe side.

Here's a link to the copyright office search results:
http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=Tower+comics&Search_Code=NALL&PID=D-GyAozBp6T-hpn06lOvX9_qD&SEQ=20100310175105&CNT=25&HIST=1

[narfstar]

John C and Aussie are our public domain gurus. Janus is looking for someone to help in this area.

[DennyWilson]

Somehow Carbona was able to get a copyright on Thunder Agents. Tippy should be OK though. I have several

Guess he didn't care about Tippy

[narfstar]

But she had more issues than any of their other books. With two spin-offs they must have sold well

[darkmark]

Teen comics often sold very well, they weren't cued into the Batman craze (the fall of which caused many companies back then to quit pubbing superheroes), and editor Samm Schwartz was a former and later Archie artist so he had a vested interest in Tippy.

[DennyWilson]

But she had more issues than any of their other books. With two spin-offs they must have sold well

But Carbona must have not seen value in the charater long term like the Heroes.

[comicsnorth]

Since the Archie characters seem to be the sole survivors of this once mighty comic book genre, is there really that much value these days for any non-Archie teen characters?  After all, you don't see DC or Marvel dusting off their collections of such characters to keep the trademarks active the way they do their War, Western, & Horror features.

-Comicsnorth

[phabox]

For what its worth John Carbona has now passed away but his estate may still have a claim on some of these properties,

[Astaldo711]

True. I can remember when He-Man came out as a toy. It pretty cool. It was like Conan. The pictures on the boxes were of these tough, strong guys with big axes and stuff. I thought the cartoon was going to be good. Then along came...Adam....yikes.

[OtherEric]

I vaguely recall hearing some Tippy stories were reprinted (under a different name) at Marvel in the early 70's.

In general, given the lawsuit history on the Tower books I don't think we should mess with them.  It's not like the material is hard to find with the DC Archives, anyway.

Total side note:  Has anybody else ever seen a copy of "Fight the Enemy" 2?  I think it has the only story Boris Vallejo ever penciled for comics.

[Astaldo711]

Wow, that would be great to see. Has Lou Fine ever done art inside a comic? I love the covers he did for Fox.

[narfstar]

I think I only have one issue of Fight the Enemy and not sure which one. I am also missing a few Tippy (and spinoffs) and maybe an issue of Undersea Agents.

BTW Astaldo Lou did a lot of inside work
http://www.comics.org/penciller/name/lou%20fine/sort/alpha/