Skull the Slayer #1 (August 1975) Review

The 1970s were a time of experimentation at Marvel. The House of Ideas was expanding their comic book line beyond the standard superhero tales. They had grown into horror with Tomb of Dracula, satire with Howard the Duck, science fiction with Star Wars, and even sword-and-sorcery with Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja. It seemed at the time, any crazy concept would be given a shot in the comics. Recently, I have managed to obtain a trade paperback collecting one of the crazier concepts of the 1970s: Skull the Slayer. And since it's the 40th anniversary of Skull's debut on the newsstands, let's take a look at the first issue.

Writer: Marv Wolfman
Artist: Steve Gan
Letterer: Marcos
Editor: Len Wein

I actually learned of Skull the Slayer thanks to the wonderful website known as the Appendix of the Marvel Universe. Dedicated to the lesser known denizens of the Marvel Universe, the Appendix gives out lots of information about lots of little-known characters, and quite a few I think could use a little more love. Skull the Slayer is one such character. I'd love to see him in a cartoon or an MCU movie. You could tell some real genre-bending stories with this guy.

The back of the trade paperback collecting the series describes Skull the Slayer as "Lost meets the Land that Time Forgot", and that description is indeed very apt for this series. Funny enough, there was a film made of the Edgar Rice Burroughs story released that very year. Maybe the film provided some inspiration for the series. Either way, this concept was incredibly brilliant, and I think it was criminal that it only got eight issues. Ah well.

We begin our little adventure with a group of people on an Army airplane. One is a man with two soldiers, and what appears to be three civilians: A blonde woman, a black man, and a teenager. Quite a diverse group for a military flight, almost like the people who put together the passenger list for this flight expected something interesting to happen.

We learn a bit more about the man, named Jim Scully. A former US Army soldier...and wanted killer. Scully had recently served in Vietnam (Keep in mind, the war there had recently ended when the comic was originally published), enduring quite a bit of nasty torture at the hands of the Viet Cong.

When he came home, he found that his wife had decided to go hook up with another man, his parents worried themselves to death, and his brother became a junkie. Scully and his bro got into a brawl, which resulted in the brother accidentally dying (he had a knife).

Mrs. Scully is a jerk. And shouldn't Scully have just told the police what happened to his brother? He wasn't a wanted criminal when he came home. Not to mention fleeing would've only increased the police's suspicions...but wouldn't an autopsy and evidence indicate that Scully's brother ended up killing himself? He was clearly high, wouldn't the stuff still be in his bloodstream? I get it was the 1970s, but I do think forensic science could tell what was in bloodstreams back then!

Scully fled and lived as a fugitive for a while, until he was caught in Bermuda working as a lifeguard (Scully cursed his weakness for Bermudan beach bunnies).

"I always knew those beach bunnies would get me in trouble one day..."

Anyway, that's how Scully ended up on the plane. The other passengers have their own reasons for being on the flight. The black man is Dr. Raymond Corey, an embittered government-employed physicist who blames racism for his being unable to be employed by private firms. The blonde woman is his assistant, Ann Farrow. The teenager is Jeff Turner, a rebellious senator's son who was being brought home by the military after running away. I wonder how the taxpayers would react to that usage of their tax dollars, huh? Sadly, we learn this in subsequent issues.

Dr. Raymond Corey: Blaxploitation Scientist!

Anyway, their plane goes crazy, and crashes in a strange land, where they find themselves in a strange new world.

"Somebody call Arthur Conan Doyle! Oh, it's the 1970s. Somebody call the Kroffts!"

Dr. Corey, being the Omnidisciplinary Scientist of this tale, deduces that the plane flew over the Bermuda Triangle, and it somehow may have taken them back in time to the Age of the Dinosaurs. The group debate what to do, when Jeff finds some bones, which Dr. Corey is able to identify as human. The group puzzles over them, not realizing they are being watched...

Jeff Turner makes himself useful.

Meanwhile, Scully fights a T-Rex, which is easily the most awesome moment of the book.

Linkara made being a man famous, but Jim Scully did it first.

However, the issue ends with Scully getting knocked out by mysterious shadows.

One of the biggest strengths of this comic is the concept, really. A group of people trapped in a crazy world, where science, magic, dinosaurs, monsters, and even aliens all are jammed in a crazy land beyond time and space. The first issue also does a fine job telling us about who the title character is and showing how he ended up in the mess he was in. However, the rest of the major supporting cast don't really get that much development, we only learn the names of two of the other three major passengers, and not even full names. Gan's artwork is very good.

The major weakness of the comic is really one that is not really its fault: Age. It's a product of the 1970s, and it screams it in many ways. The clothes the characters wear, and the references to the Vietnam War, and all that.

Do I recommend picking up this issue? Well, based on the concept alone, I do recommend picking it up. Get the trade if you can find it. Just keep in mind that it does show its age in places, being a forty-year-old series, so it can be a bit clunky. It's still fun, though.