“The Coming of Skull the Slayer!”
Writer: Marv Wolfman
Artist: Steve Gan

Jim Scully is a pilot who is shot down in Vietnam. He spends five years being tortured as a P.O.W. Once free he returns home to find his wife divorced him and is now with another man. His parents are dead and his brother is a junkie. The brother blames Scully for their deaths and in his drugged state tries to knife him. Only he accidentally gets stabbed and Scully goes on the run. They finally catch him in Bermuda and put him on an government transport back to Miami.

This is the Bermuda Triangle though and the plane goes through some sort of time warp. It ends up in a land filled with dinosaurs. The plane breaks in two and the front end with Scully crashes with him the only survivor. In the rear end three survive, a black physicist, a young guy and some hot blonde chick. Scully seems to adapt well to the environment and makes himself a spear and hunts game. Only while doing this he is attacked by a T-Rex. Scully manages to lure it over a cliff where it falls to it’s death. Scully thinks he is safe but is knocked out by a thrown rock. Some primitive cavemen take him back to their camp for dinner.

“Old Funny Animals”
By Marv Wolfman

An article on how this series came about. Marv had the idea four years ago at while working at another company. It involved a whole office building getting transported back in time. Years later he mentioned the idea to Roy Thomas who loved it and cutting it down to four manageable characters and a cool name it makes it’s debut.

I finally got around to reading this. I thought a cool story of some characters being trapped in a weird island in the Bermuda Triangle filled with dinosaurs and aliens sounded real cool. I was right and I loved this first issue. It reminds me of the TV series Fantastic Journey which came out a little later. This is very seventies type story since all the crypto-science type stuff like time warps in the Bermuda Triangle was very popular. What surprised me was the adult nature of the story. A guy who was a P.O.W. of the Vietnamese and was tortured returns home. His wife left him and his parents dead. Not to mention his brother is a junkie and gets accidentally killed by him. A very dark subject matter for a kids comic series of the seventies. Marv Wolfman is one of the old time great writers. He really delivers a powerful story. They sadly don’t make writers like this anymore. I am looking forward to reading this series.

One thought on “SKULL THE SLAYER #1

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