Berni
Wrightson is considered by many to be the greatest horror artist of the modern
era. Inspired by the gruesome (and eventually banned) splendor of the EC Comics
of the 1950s (Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, et al.), he rose to
prominence during the Bronze Age on the strength of his work on Swamp Thing and various “mystery” titles
for DC. He later attained further fame by providing illustrations for Mary
Shelley’s seminal science fiction/horror novel Frankenstein and for various projects in collaboration with author Stephen
King, including The Stand and, most
notably, Cycle of the Werewolf.
While
he is most frequently associated with the macabre, Wrightson is, perhaps not
surprisingly, also a sword & sorcery enthusiast. It’s easy to see the
influence of Frank Frazetta in Wrightson’s work, and one can make a reasonable
case of attributing the enduring popularity of Robert E. Howard’s Conan to the
former’s remarkable paintings. When Marvel acquired the license to produce
comics based on the barbarian adventurer in 1970, Wrightson expressed enthusiastic
interest in drawing the title, but it wound up going to Barry Windsor-Smith
instead. Marvel decided to throw him a bone, however, offering him the
inaugural King Kull (another Howard character) story in Creatures on the Loose #10 (formerly Tower of Shadows). Even though he was not particularly a fan of the
character, he accepted.
“The
Skull of Silence” is a mere seven pages long (the rest of the issue consists of
a Jack Kirby reprint from the early 1960s), but it represents the work of an
artist on the verge or greatness.
(Incidentally,
as far as I’m concerned, this comic has one of the worst-looking covers of all
time. I don’t know why they didn’t just have Wrightson draw it. After all, he
had provided the series’ two previous ones.)
The
story opens with King Kull of Atlantis and his warriors returning home,
presumably after a battle. The monarch spots a castle, which he suggests as a
good place to seek refuge for the night. He is, however, warned by a wise slave
in his entourage that the structure is The Skull of Silence, wherein an ancient
wizard imprisoned “silence” itself. Undeterred, Kull approaches the castle
gate, ignoring the admonition carved on the seal: that opening it will unleash
the evil force locked within.
When
Kull throws the doors wide, all sound melts away, and tendrils of, well,
silence ensnare him. He fights against it and ultimately manages to drive it
away by banging on and ultimately shattering the jade gong next to the
entrance. It seems that the “silence” was some sort of otherworldly entity
beyond human ken, which somehow possessed the nature of absolute silence, a
terrible thing indeed. (I read recently about a group of scientists who had
constructed a room capable of absorbing all sound. No one was capable of
spending more than forty-five minutes inside when the lights were turned off.)
It’s
not much of a story, to tell you the truth, but Wrightson manages to make a
silk purse out of sow’s ear, even if things didn’t turn out the way he had
planned. In Berni Wrightson: A Look Back
by Christopher Zavisa, the artist explains:
“One of the features of the story was a skull [sic] which, when the door is opened,
robs all sound. How are you going to do this in a comic book? Since you cannot
play with sound effects in a comic book, I figured out a way—slowly drain away
the color until the scene ended up being black and white. […] I took the
completed job in to Marvel and was told it was fine. Months later, the comic
comes out and everything has color on it.”
Thanks
to this fiasco, he refused to do any more work for Marvel for years. Can you
blame him?
As
far as I know, this story has never been reprinted anywhere, which I’m sure
suits Wrightson just fine. I think it would be a nice gesture for whoever has
the license to Kull these days (if anyone even does) to offer him the
opportunity to color it the way he originally intended and publish it in a
collection (like DC did for Brian Bolland with The Killing Joke). I don’t think there’s a lot of interest in the
character these days, though (the horrible Kevin Sorbo movie notwithstanding),
so it’s not likely to happen.
