« If you don’t go over the top you can’t see what’s on the other side. » — Jim Steinman
On this blog — and these several past countdowns — I haven’t devoted much attention to the 1970s Skywald “Horror-Mood” line, mostly because it doesn’t often catch my fancy. My idea, my sense of Hallowe’en — and horror — is rather moodier and/or more whimsical, more innocent than the strain of the weird gathering momentum by the dawn of the decade, as exemplified by the Skywald line.
But what makes this entry an exception? Well, this thing’s so enthusiastically bombastic that it’s hard to take seriously. Yet the craft on display is tough to deny. Courtesy of Messrs Alan Hewetson, writer (also the rag’s editor) and Jesús Durán Castillo, illustrator, “13” is a messy patchwork of dangling bits purloined from Ambrose Bierce‘s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Edgar Allan Poe‘s The Pit and the Pendulum, and (what the heck) traditional French-Canadian folk song Dans la prison de Londres (Hewetson’s Canadian, let’s not forget). It’s also a jaunty, bracing scamper on the bonkers side, a wild ride on the escalating, circular chain of delusional obsession. Buckle up!
Who knows… was this, in some queer fashion, an inspiration for the 1997 Joe Pesci vehicle 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag?
-RG
Who's Out There? 
My opinion at the time of the many artists with Hispanic surnames that found their way onto the pages of magazines from Warren and Skywald was that, while most were truly talented drawers, they were best suited to be single-page book illustrators. That opinion has not changed.
For me, their comic strips—to be polite—lacked pop, punch, or pizazz, like the one above. At the time, I preferred the work of Jerry Grandenetti, who I considered less than mediocre at the time.
Fortunately, that opinion has changed as my appreciation for Mr. G has grown appreciably in the past few years due mostly to an article titled “Into the Inky Shadows With Jerry Grandenetti” that I read somewhere . . .
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Oh, I know exactly what you mean, Neal… the work is pretty but static (arresting but arrested?). It doesn’t help that too many of the Spanish artists relied on a shared bag of tricks and techniques — after the initial exposure, ink blown through a straw and X-acto scratches quickly become tedious.
Still, the top panel of the story’s penultimate page is a marvel of design and (forgive me) execution!
Oh, and thanks for your kind words on my Grandenetti article — that means the world!
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