Damn, the Seventies ain't what they used to be.

I remember picking up the first issue of Skull the Slayer back when it first came out, and I have the dim memory of being rather taken with the comic. Pretty sure I collected the entire 8 issue run.

But, beyond a vague memory of dinosaurs, I couldn't remember a damn thing about the characters or storyline. Turns out that was mostly a good thing.

This was never a well-written comic. Wolfman set the initial tone with a sarcastic narrator that said "baby" a lot. Well, your luck is about to change, baby!. It became quite irritating.

But even more irritating were both Skull (Jim Scully) and Dr. Corey. Corey's your stereotypical educated, angry black man, pissed at being held down by the Man. And he basically never lets up on Skull, but it's a one-note anger: "You're a murderer, Skull!"

Jim Scully was likely conceived as a deeply troubled Vietnam vet, but when you find out he gets along with no one, survived a year as a POW because of pure luck, and then came home to find both his parents dead and his brother a junkie who he accidentally kills within about a minute of reuniting with him, he just comes across as a dick. And that continues pretty much through the ten issues collected here (the full Skull run, plus two Thing team-up issues).

Then there's the story. Is it dinosaurs? Is it robots? Is it the Time Tower? Are Skulls companions dead? Between Marv Wolfman's hippie dialogue and set up, Steve Englehart's abrupt change in direction for a single issue, or Bill Mantlo's attempt to come back around to Wolfman's story, Skull simply couldn't find a footing.

The only constant was Skull's assholery. ( )