Back in my look at
INVADERS #4, I called out a needless and convoluted plug for Marvel's SKULL THE SLAYER series. Then, in the comments to that post, I considered reading SKULL next after I finished with INVADERS. It is, after all, only an eight-issue series (plus a 2-part finale in MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE), and I
unboxed the trade paperback collection way back in 2015, but I've never touched it since. So, why not? I've long had a curiosity about this series. Three writers over the span of eight issues feels like a trainwreck in the making (and yet is somehow not at all surprising coming out of 1970s Marvel), but there's something about the series' premise -- a puply, "Doc Savage" type having adventures in the mysterious Bermuda Triangle -- that speaks to me.
At nine or ten weeks (I'm not sure yet if I'll do the TWO-IN-ONE issues separately or as one single post), this will take us up into mid-late September, and serve to wrap up a solid year-plus of seventies Marvel (INVADERS began last September, and SONS OF THE TIGER before that started in May). After that, we'll move into something non-Marvel for the autumn months, and then I've got something very, very big planned for the remainder of the year, into 2023 -- and probably even beyond.
Be here next week as Skull's adventures begin!
Available from Amazon.
I’m not sure how many issues of this I have but it looks like it’s on Marvel Unlimited. A few years back — which is to say, based on the file date of what I’ll shortly be mentioning, nearly a decade back 8^{ — there was a discussion… somewhere… about the cover to #8 when, I think, the original art for it showed up in a Heritage auction… or something. I feel like it was the Grand Comics Database list, but it might’ve been Facebook since this was shortly after I’d finally joined, and I also feel like Tony Isabella was involved so it might’ve been at least partly on his blog. None of this would matter if I didn’t have a side-by-side comparison of Marie Severin’s blue-line sketch for the cover, Jack Kirby’s pencils, the finished original inked by Frank Giacoia, and the cover as published sitting here on my virtual desktop. Of course it still might not matter, but I’ve written this far, so here’s a link to it that hopefully works just because I think it’s cool.
ReplyDeleteOh, I guess I should add that I had next to zero memory of Skull the Slayer even being a thing before that cover discussion, which led me to pick up at least a couple of issues over the next few years when a local comics shop had a sale going, comics from my personal Golden Age being the only part of my collection that I even remotely care to grow rather than shrink anymore.
DeleteThanks for the link, Blam! I like the note, I assume from Kirby, saying that he can't tell what the "flying objects" are. He must have eventually been given reference, as he wound up drawing what we see inside the issue -- a bunch of warriors riding pterodactyls.
DeleteI think I became aware of Skull when Mark Gruenwald reinvented him as the Blazing Skull in CAPTAIN AMERICA. Though I didn't really bother to learn much about him until some years after that.
It’s Kirby’s handwriting for sure. What really surprised me was that Marie Severin’s figure of Skull/Scully on the blue-pencil sketch looks uncannily like the work of Bruce Timm!
DeleteAhh, more 70s Marvel, my favorite era of comics when Marvel was basically throwing things at the wall to see if it stuck. I think the only Skull the Slayer I ever read was the Marvel Two in One story, but I'd not be shocked if I read any of it and just plain forgot it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, three writers in eight issues? One of them HAS to be Bill Mantlo. It's not 70s Marvel if he doesn't just show up randomly mid-run.
You're exactly right, Jack -- Mantlo comes in about halfway through and with that other 70s mainstay, Sal Buscema on art, stabilizes the creative team. They remain aboard until the series is cancelled with #8.
DeleteI swear, if you read a 70s Marvel run and don't come across an issue or few by Mantlo or Buscema (or better yet, both), you're doing something wrong!