Monday, July 18, 2022

SKULL THE SLAYER #1

"THE COMING OF SKULL THE SLAYER!"
Stan Lee, publisher, presents the beginning of an epic by:
Creator/Writer/Colorist: Marv Wolfman | Artist: Steve Gan
Letterer: Pablo Marcos | Editor: Len Wein

The Plot: Vietnam veteran Jim Scully is aboard a military plane for extridition from Bermuda to the United States, where he is wanted for the murder of his brother. But en route to the U.S., the plane flies into a time/space warp in the Bermuda Triangle, then splits apart and crashes in an prehistoric world. Scully emerges from the front end of the plane, its sole survivor. Meanwhile a trio of additional passengers survives the rear segment's crash.

As Scully hunts for food, he is attacked by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Elsewhere, the other survivors are spotted by a group of primitive humans. Scully battles and eventually kills the T-Rex when he stabs it in the eye and sends it plummeting over a cliff. But as he recovers, he is struck in the head by a flung rock, and is surrounded by more primitive beings.

Continuity Notes: Our cast, at least as of issue 1, seems to consist of Jim Scully, and the three other survivors: a man called Doctor Corey, a woman named Ann, and a mostly-silent young man whose name is yet to be revealed.

Rather than recap Scully's backstory, I'll just mention that he was a special forces fighter dispatched to Vietnam and immediately captured, and then I'll let Marv Wolfman's ridiculous narration take it from there:
My Thoughts: I hope I'm not gonna regret this... The artwork in this issue is absolutely beautiful, but I could barely handle Wolfman's over-the-top narration. His dialogue is fine, mind you, but the ridiculous number of captions, the weird semi-conversational style that periodically addresses the characters directly, calling them things like "baby" and "kid" -- and the fact that the issue reads as openly hostile to Vietnam veterans... it's nearly all too dumb and tasteless for me to handle. Which is unfortunate, because as I mentioned last week, I've been interested in this series for some time. I'm fascinated by the idea that Marvel attempted to publish such a clear pulp homage comic in the seventies (and without even a tryout in MARVEL PREMIERE or something beforehand).
I should note that I don't think Wolfman himself means to present veterans in a negative light; I think he's trying to do so for the war itself. But by making Scully, so far, an unlikeable psychopath, he's muddling his viewpoint and not doing himself any favors.

Anyway, we've got two more Wolfman-scripted issues to slog through before the series is turned over to other writers, so I think I can tough it out. But if issues 2 and 3 are anything like this one, it won't be easy!
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6 comments:

  1. BlamJuly 19, 2022 at 2:53 PM

    The narration really is something.

    I think both captions and dialogue from the other passengers aboard the plane — Corey, at least — blame Scully’s circumstances on the general horror of that war as well as on the military for not preparing him (or caring whether he was able) to cope on his return to society. Which isn’t to say that Scully bears no culpability for his actions but it feels like the story is setting him up to “find” himself in this new land.

    You’re right about it being strange that this wasn’t launched in a tryout mag. This issue has a text page written by Wolfman on Skull’s development from conception years ago to realization at Marvel under Roy Thomas, who brought Wolfman into the fold, although Len Wein has succeeded Thomas as editor by publication time. So it’s possible (albeit pure conjecture on my part here) that Wolfman was promised his own newly created series in the deal when circumstances allowed.

    I couldn’t just let the mention of “a town somewhere in Nebraska which his sergeant couldn’t pronounce without giggling” pass without trying to figure out whether a real location was being referenced, so I looked up a list of Nebraska towns and stopped when I got to Beaver Crossing.

    Gan’s art is quite solid. Having recently gone through a bunch of DC’s horror/supernatural books from this era it strikes me how the styles of other Filipino artists filling those pages — E.R. Cruz, Ruben Yandoc, Nestor Redondo — are more like one another in their softer, lusher appearance than like Gan’s on this issue, which is reminiscent of John Buscema and Ernie Chan, but not entirely dissimilar. That could well be due to differences in genre, pulp action vs. gothic, often period, mystery/occult tales.

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    1. MattJuly 22, 2022 at 1:33 PM

      Yeah, I don't really think Wolfman was trying to read as anti-veteran, and I'm sure he probably was planning some kind of redemption arc for Skull here, but I just think he lays it on a little thick in making the guy totally unlikeable from the start. It's been a few months now since I wrote the above post, but my recollection is that Skull appeared to have no redeeming qualities in the first issue. He wasn't a jerk with a heart of gold; he was just a jerk!

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    2. MattJuly 22, 2022 at 1:34 PM

      Oh, and thanks for looking up Beaver Crossing! I remember catching that at the time and then I forgot to research it further.

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    3. BlamJuly 26, 2022 at 4:11 AM

      The drive to research — my blessing and my curse.

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  2. JackJuly 21, 2022 at 5:35 PM

    Oh lord, that narration. Wolfman's stuck somewhere between Stan Lee's "true believer" mode and Roy Thomas' "everything is operatic" mode and isn't doing anyone any favors here. I tend to find Wolfman is a classic Marvel style writer: pair him with a great artist (Gene Colan on Tomb of Dracula, and of course George Perez) and he could sing, but otherwise Your Mileage May Vary.

    70s Marvel narrative captions are, admittedly, one of my favorite parts of the era (good lord, did Don McGregor go WILD on Killraven, but that worked because P. Craig Russell's art justified it) but these are just kind of dreadful.

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    1. MattJuly 22, 2022 at 1:37 PM

      I agree; Wolfman is definitely a guy who sinks or swims depending on his collaborator. And not necessarily whether or not the collaborator is any good, mind you. I remember when I read his ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN stuff a few years ago, I found it pretty bad. And that was with Jerry Ordway, a supremely talented artist (and a fine writer in his own right)! But I think there are certain guys, like the afore-mentioned Colan and Perez, who really gelled with Wolfman's sensibilities or something.

      I've considered reading Don McGregor's KILLRAVEN (and his Black Panther material in JUNGLE ACTION) for years now, but I'm afraid they'll be too wordy for me to enjoy. But maybe someday...

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