The Tower of the Comic Book Freaks Review

I attended my first comic book "convention" in 1985. I use quotes because, while there were comic books and people did convene at one location to see them, the only similarity between that convention and the ones you're likely more familiar with was a dealer's room. There were no special guests, there were no panel discussions, there was no one doing cosplay... it was just one room rented out in a hotel with a bunch of dealers set up at tables selling whatever they had. You could see everything in an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half if you went through every single long box of back issues very meticulously. It would be another two years before I went to a "proper" convention with guests and panels and such.

I use that as a preface to say I was very much not going to comic book conventions in 1971 when Ron Kasman's The Tower of the Comic Book Freaks is set and, in fact, I was pretty well removed from that scene by over a decade before even mentioning whatever differences might be found between a convention in New York City versus one in Mansfield, Ohio. However! As I have done a fair amount of studying of comic book fandom and there weren't too many radical shifts in comic fan culture until the late '90s/early '00s, I think I can evaulate The Tower of the Comic Book Freaks reasonably as a piece of historical fiction.

See, the story is about a group of teenagers who drive down from Toronto to New York to attend the 1971 New York Comic Book Convention. They're all headed down for different reasons: Stevey wants to get his portfolio reviewed and enter an art contest for a spot working for a comics publisher, Joel is looking for rare back issues for his collection, Gilbert isn't even really all that interested in the convention and is mostly acting as a scout for his father's business trying to distribute American porn magazines up in Canada... The story, though, mostly centers on Harold. By a couple of coincidences, he almost immediately and accidentally ingratiates himself with a Golden Age horror artist who's been experience something of a career resurgence. Almost before he knows it, Harold is queued up to become the man's assistant and do the pencils on his next comic.

He then proceeds to spend the rest of the weekend running menial errands for the artist, talking with publishers, and learning about the personalities of the people he just got sucked in to working with. And it's that last part that becomes the most enlightening for him. When the teens eventually leave to go back to Toronto, none of them leave empty-handed, though most of them not with what they expected.

What struck me most about the book was the atmosphere. Every bit of this feels like a big comic book convention in the early 1970s. If you never attended a convention prior to, say, 1995, a lot of this will likely look unfamiliar. You might be wondering why there's no mention of a big publisher presence or how there are under-the-table type deals that can get a kid like Harold a professional gig without even a portfolio review. You might question how casually everyone dismisses obvious and gratuitous exploitation. You might wonder about that weird description of a dealer table with the comics laid out flat with a large sheet of plexiglass on top of them. All of that was how conventions operated back in the day. There was a very different vibe back then, and Kasman captures it very well. Even better, he reports on how it was, not how nostalgia has tricked him into believing it was. (After reading the book myself, I came across Scott Edelman's review in which he says it was exactly how he remembered the show -- himself being a 17-year-old attendee at that specific con -- with the exception of some of the names being changed.)

The story moves well and, while we focus on Harold, like I said, it does give a character arc for everyone to some degree or another. If I might offer up a criticism of any sort, it would be that some of the characters aren't always drawn super consistently, so there were a few instances where I wouldn't recognize someone until they were expressly called out by name. That typically only happened with unusual facial expressions or with an extreme close-up where suddenly a lot more details are visible. It didn't happen a lot, but enough that it did interrupt the story flow as I tried to suss out who I was talking to whom.

I think this book would be great if you want to check out what comic fandom looked like in the 1970s. I enjoyed it as it helped to offer some additional color to the fandom research I've already done. I expect, if you're more like Edelman, you'll be more interested in the nostalgia that it might unintentionally invoke. And if any of you are newer fans and just want to get a sense of what cons were like before you started going yourself, this is definitely a good vehicle for that. The book did come out back in 2016, so it might be a little harder to come by these days. The book originally retailed for $18.99 US but I don't believe it's still in print, so you're a little more subject to market forces; as of this writing, I'm seeing copies available from online retailers ranging from $3.48 to $28.72 without doing too much searching. (For the record, I found my copy in a physical comic shop and paid cover price.) It's a solid story and a good reflection of what comics looked like back in the day; worth picking up if you come across a decent copy.

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