Skull the Slayer #2 (November 1975)

All the way back in 2015, I looked at the very first issue of an obscure short-lived Marvel series: Skull the Slayer. I'm a big fan of obscure characters, and the concept of Skull I found really cool: a military man and three other people forced to survive in a lost land where time has no meaning, where aliens can battle dinosaurs, ninjas can encounter cyborgs. Such an idea is ripe for storytelling possibilities. Shame it didn't last very long. Personally, I think it was because the book never held down a creative team for more than an issue or two. But enough of that, we've seen how Jim Scully and his companions came to this lost land, as well as the origins of Scully himself. Where did they go from here? Let's find out in Skull the Slayer #2!

The cover is a Gil Kane and Tom Palmer piece. It's really cool, in my opinion. You got our man Skull engaging a dinosaur to save the fair Ann Reynolds, while he's being watched by an alien and some cavemen. It's the most entertaining thing they've seen all week. Skull's book also gets a new masthead logo. It's a spiffy logo, but I think I preferred the first one. Not because it was the first, but because I felt it fit Skull and the book better. Anyway, this cover is a bit deceiving, you'll see what I mean.

"Gods and Super-Gods"
Writer: Marv Wolfman
Penciler: Steve Gan
Inker: Steve Gan
Colorist: Michele Wolfman
Letterer: Tony San Jose
Editor: Marv Wolfman
Editor-in-Chief: Marv Wolfman

The story begins right after the events of the first issue. We get a brief recap, followed by the revelation of who gave our man Jim Scully after he got the blow to the head in the last issue.

"We need some women here, guys!"

Yup, a bunch of cavemen have got their hands on our man Skully. The narration reveals that Skully has a rather thick...skull. Not meaning he's dumb, but the blow didn't quite rattle him as much as it was believed. He is brought to the cavemen, who look him over rather curiously. They also note his pants. They think he has some nice pants. I don't blame them; Skully has good taste in pants. Anyway, the men start brawling over Skully...because they want to eat him. We got cavemen cannibals here!

Luckily, while the cannibal cavemen were all left brawling, our man got rescued by his fellow passengers from the plane that brought them here: Ann Farrow Reynolds, Dr. Raymond Corey, and Jeff Turner. Corey is not happy about it, as he thinks Scully is a cold-blooded murderer. Scully gets in the scientist's face, as he hates being called that. As was shown in the last issue, Scully did kill his junkie younger brother, but it was accidental. Jeff Turner defuses this, pointing out that right now, the four need each other, as they're all they have in this strange world. 

Turner notes that Corey's hostility towards Scully is due to his own anger over white people's racism. He asks if Reynolds has a gripe of her own. She admits she does have a gripe of her own. Like Corey, she has her own anger issue with society. She was a smart gal in her own right, top of her class. Thing was that employers wouldn't hire her because they thought she'd leave in a year after getting married and having kids. Reynolds isn't interested in being a parent, but it seemed men didn't care about that. As Jeff Turner points out, all four of these people have gripes with society and each other. However, they are in a strange place full of dangers, and they have to work together to survive. 

Like Scully, they were captured by these cannibal cavemen. But our man has a plan.

Scully calls out to the cavemen and challenges the leader to a fight. Despite the language barrier created by the fact that James Scully is a modern man and they are cavemen, they understand, and Scully fights the leader.

The leader is strong, and he tries to grab a club. However, Scully is smarter, and he is trained in Marine Corps CQC, or defendu. The fight gets broken up, not by the cavemen or Scully's new "friends, but a bunch of angry stampeding Styracosaurus. 

"BLAST IT, JERRY! WE TOLD YOU TO LOCK UP THE PEN!"

The cavemen and modern people flee, but Ann falls over. One of the Styracosaurs is about to trample her. However, Scully brings out his inner action hero and decides to do something insane, yet awesome. He jumps on the lead Styracosaurus, grabs its horn-covered frill, and makes it move away, directing the stampede away from Reynolds. Corey chooses now of all times to pick a fight with Scully.

Seriously, Corey. Dude just fought cavemen and redirected a Styracosaurus stampede. This is not the time for this! The cavemen return, but not to pick another fight. They want to show the four modern humans something. Something really cool.

"You guys wanna see a dead body?"

Yeah, they definitely have not been knocked backwards in time. That is a genuine alien spaceship. Corey had long believed that aliens had made contact with humanity...because they did. This is the Marvel Universe. Of course they have! Scully notes that the dead alien is wearing a belt. The belt buckle's design resembles a skull. Scully's like "this belt is neat. I want that belt". As such, he tries to take it. After all, that alien doesn't need it anymore. But when the man grabs for it, he gets shocked.

Corey has a good laugh about it, but he and Reynolds notice the alien hieroglyphs on the walls. That gets the two scientists fascinated. Scully, however, really wants that belt. So, he borrows one of the cavemen's spears to pry the belt away. This causes him to remember when he was tortured during his days in Vietnam. Or Siancong nowadays, thanks to History of the Marvel Universe. Yeah, that's a whole thing. He succeeds, and the alien's corpse crumbles to dust. This enrages both Corey, who believes Skull thoughtlessly destroyed an important scientific find, as well as the cavemen, who were likely worshipping it. The cavemen attack Scully, and he takes them on, telling his three comrades to flee.

The four flee to a river and try to cross it. But this lost land is not done providing hazards for our little group.

"FRIGGIN' JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES! GET OUTTA MY LAKE!"

A plesiosaur-like creature (Corey mistakenly refers to it as a "brontosaurus") is in the river, and it is not happy to see them. Scully manages to save Ann, and he starts pounding on the plesiosaur's head, his body glowing like he's being filled with power. Scully must have eaten his spinach today.

Scully manages to kill the plesiosaur with his bare hands, much to his surprise. The others notice that he is glowing as well. It must be his alien belt, somehow enhancing his strength. Looks like our man Skull is living up to the "Slayer" part of his book's title.

I enjoyed this comic. There are aspects to it that do remind me that this comic was from the 1970s, the mentions of Vietnam, Corey and Reynolds's attitudes, that kind of thing. But still, it was a fun read. Lots of action, and some building out of this crazy lost world. Combine that with some good art, and you got yourself some fun here. I did get a good laugh out of Scully taking an alien belt simply because it had a skull on it.

If you want to read this for yourself, I recommend tracking down the 2015 trade paperback Skull the Slayer. Thanks for reading this blog entry! If you liked it, show it off! Take care of yourselves and each other! See you next time!

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.