Ok, we finish up our two-day Skywald extravaganza (courtesy my pal Craig Wichman, who suggested the membership designation F.O.R.K.--Friend Of Rob Kelly. Hmm, I dunno...) with Nightmare #6, sporting a quite beautiful Jeff Jones cover. After a creepy(oops!) frontspiece about Medea by Mike Kaluta, we get a letters page and a short interview with Jones, and then the Love Witch is back, in "The Battle of The Living Dead" by Marv Wolfman and the unusual art team of Ernie Colon and Jack Abel.
Ok, when talking about the Love Witch story in Psycho, I wondered who this Jack Purcell guy who drew like a sloppy Ernie Colon. Well, I guess the joke was on me since it's obvious that was Ernie Colon, perhaps trying to bang out the story on a tight deadline. Here there's a lot of smoothing out of Ernie's naturally loose and ragged line, but the spark of life he brings to all his work is still evident. Also evident in this story? Well...boobs! The Love Witch is nude a lot in this story, much more than you saw in most Warren stories, especially for 1971! Take that, Vampirella!
Next is the ongoing feature "The Living Gargoyle", this time by Jerry Siegel(misspelled "Siegal" here...I wonder if there's a metaphor for how the comics industry treated this man and its unending inability to ever spell his name right?) and Carlos Garzon, who does a beautiful job here, with great layouts, interesting angles, and a great use of lights and darks. The dialogue is pretty ehh("The statue is looking at me hatefully!"), but I think it says something about companies like Skywald and Warren, who occasionally employed the near-destitute Father of Superman, mainly because they felt he deserved better. If only one of these guys was running DC.
Third is the sad tale "Broke Sparrow" by Larry S. Todd, about a helpless alien found by some humans who they try, and fail, to take care of. Even though you know where the story is going, anyone with compassion for the helpless creatures of the world can't help but feel for the poor little alien in this tale.
Next is a text feature on Boris Karloff(just how many text features was Karloff the focus of, between Skywald, Marvel, and Warren?), with some nice photos of him in one of his more obscure roles, Fu Manchu.
"Corpse by Computer!" by Bob Kanigher and Doug Wildey, is about a guy who builds a computer to run his life but didn't plan on it getting jealous, so much so it impales the guy's girlfriend on the opening page! I bet Bob didn't even bother submitting this to DC.
"The Cosmos Strain" is a tight little tale(six pages) by Steve Stern and Kaluta, about two space explorers who make the ulimate sacrifice to save the universe from the title evil bug. It allows Kaluta to draw the evilness itself as a full page, and it looks like a Ditko version of a Yes album cover. Very EC-ish and a good read.
Pat Boyette does the honors on the final story, "The Geek!" about a guy keeping a weird little creature holed up in his cabin as a sort of pet. The kind of pet that kills people, removes their heads, and digs up corpses, but still...
So far from what I've read, these Skywald books were better than their reputation sometimes suggested. I thank Craig again for the chance to look some of 'em over, and I know this won't be the last time we look at Skywald's output.
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