SKULL THE SLAYER #5

"MAGIC, MYTH AND MADNESS!"
Story: Bill Mantlo | Art: Sal Buscema & Sonny Trinidad
Lettering: Karen Mantlo | Colors: Michele Wolfman | Editor: Marv Wolfman

The Plot: Demons, sent by Slitherogue and Morgan Le Fay, burst into Merlin's chamber to attack Skull, the Black Knight, and Merlin. The heroes fight off the creatures, but when Merlin casts a spell, he goes cataonic. Skull realizes that Merlin is a robot and smashes him to prove it to the Black Knight. Meanwhile, Slitherogue resurrects Ann, Jeff, and Doctor Corey, giving them to Morgan Le Fay as her army against Skull.

Elsewhere, the Black Knight brings Skull to the castle of King Arthur, where the Knight activates the robotic monarch to warn him of Morgan's attack. Moments later, Morgan leads a horde of demons, plus Skull's former friends, in an attack on the castle. Arthur's robot knights are activated and the battle is joined. Amid the chaos, Ann, Jeff, and Corey confront Skull, but Corey is hit by a stray arrow. This snaps everyone out of their blood-crazed stupor. As the battle winds down around them, the Black Knight finishes off Morgan. He approaches Skull and reveals himself as a robot too, then Skull and his friends head for the Tower of Time's doorway out of the Arthurian era.

Continuity Notes: There's one footnote in this story, referencing issue 1 when the death of Skull's brother is brought up. However there is also a non-footnoted flasback to last issue as Jeff, Ann, and Doctor Corey all recall their respective death scenes.

As noted last time, Merlin and the Black Knight, along with everyone else in this Arthurian era, are robots. Indeed, it mystifies me why Skull would think otherwise, but he's initially shocked to learn that Merlin is a robot, and even after learning the truth, he assumes, for no real reason, that the Black Knight is human even as he sees that everyone around him is not. He's legitimately shocked when the Knight unmasks himself as a robot at issue's end.

(Though this is slightly confused by Mantlo himself as, when the Knight learns that Merlin is a robot, he seems shocked -- but when he takes Skull to Arthur's castle, he nonchalantly explains that the king and his knights are all robots, and then thumbs a button on the back of Arthur's neck to turn him on so they can speak with him.)

Slitherogue explains that Skull's friends were never truly dead, but rather that he "transmuted their energies" at the moments of their deaths so that he could bring them back whenever he wished. Also, Slitherogue's motivations change a bit here. Last issue, he seemed to be a willing servant of his people, left behind to manage the Tower of Time and prepare for the eventual temporal invasion. But here, he resents his position and plans to use the Tower against his people.

My Thoughts: Perhaps I jumped the gun last week with my complaints about Steve Englehart offing the entire supporting cast in his first issue -- but I don't really think I did. There's no doubt in my mind that Englehart intended all those deaths to be permanent. He came aboard and wanted to take Skull in a different direction, and Ann and the others were just dead weight that had to be disposed of. Heck, that could be why he only lasted a single issue. Maybe Marv Wolfman, in his capacity as editor, entertained Englehart in a pinch because no one else was available for the issue. But Englehart has now departed as quickly as he appeared, and Bill Mantlo has swooped in to immediately undo his mess.

I won't suggest, by the way, that this is anything other than ludicrous. In one issue, all our heroes are killed before Skull's eyes, and he's forced to wallow in anguish over it. Then in the very next installment, they all come back to life, briefly want to kill him, and then make amends. The team walks off together and, when the next issue begins, we can pretend none of this ever happened. It's the comic book equivalent of a certain primetime soap opera declaring that an entire season had been a dream in order to bring back a dead character.

But I don't mind; as I said last week, I felt Englehart made a huge mistake by implementing such drastic changes in his very first issue. Things are back to normal now (or as normal as you can call Skull's world), and I'm quite happy for it.

Now, with all that said, I want to make one last comment that I had no space for last week: Slitherogue is such a fantastically corny name. I absolutely love it. In fact, it was actually via Slitherogue that I became interested in SKULL THE SLAYER in the first place! Many, many years ago (like probably twenty years or thereabouts), I was browsing the amazing Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe, I think looking for a villain for the old MARVEL SUPER HEROES ROLEPLAYING GAME I used to run, when I randomly stumbled across him. And I never, ever forgot about him. It's a delight to finally read his stories!