Jim Aparo & Neal Adams In The House Of Mystery

As well as covers often featuring kids in peril, one of the favoured tropes at The House Of Mystery was kids whose imaginations had been stifled by adults, or who simply didn't believe their little ones when they told them something terrible was lurking in the basement.
Two of the best examples of this type of story, absolute cast-iron classics both, were by Jim Aparo & Neal Adams, and here they are. So remember, the next time your kid tells you there's something lurking under the bed, check, just in case...

Wulf The Barbarian: The Beast Of Famine

Here's the second, and last great, issue of Wulf The Barbarian, before it all went belly up for Wulf in general and Atlas Comics in particular. It's a rollicking good Arabian Nights style adventure wherein the blond battler gets himself some new pals, including Grey Mouser like thief / sidekick Rymnstrdle.
As you can see from the hacked together cover, this is one of those Diverse Hands / Crusty Bunkers pieces where everybody and his uncle helped out to meet a deadline. As well as creator Larry Hama, and regular inker Klaus Janson, you also get Neal Adams, Ralph Reese, Bob McCleod, Pat Broderick, Vincente Alcazar, Paul Kirshner & Jack Abel all pitching in. Larry credits Wally Wood too, but I don't spot him in there, so maybe this issue was done in his studio?
Anyway, this is a great fun romp of a comic, with Wulf slightly deviating away from his mission of revenge, which was already getting old halfway through issue #1.
On the basis of The Beast Of Famine, I'll say it again. Wulf The Barbarian could've gone places.
After all, his world was bigger than mortal comprehension, so there were plenty of places for him to go to.

Aquaman & Deadman ( Sort Of ) Team-Up

Poor old Aquaman, he never gets any respect. Long seen by many as the most pointless member of the JLA, he never seemed to be anyone's favourite character. Even Family Guy has had a pop at him.
And, personally, compared to his direct opposite over at Marvel, he couldn't ever be as angry, edgy or interesting as Subby.
And before anyone asks, yeah, I saw the film. Meh.
But wait, there was a time in the Bronze Age when Aquaman was briefly cool.
Dick Giordano put together some great teams and comics when he moved from Charlton to DC, and The King Of The Seven Seas got himself Steve Skeates & Jim Aparo, plus previous artist Nick Cardy stayed on to contribute some of the most stunning covers of his career. If I was Aquaman, I'd be praising Neptune every day for a creative team like that.

From the start, Skeates, Aparo & Giordano tried to make Aquaman an experimental superhero book, playing around with form and content, and riffing on westerns, Mickey Spillane, Harlan Ellison, and that familiar trope of the '70's, social relevancy, amongst others. Each issue was a bit different, a bit out there, and for a while there Aquaman could go anywhere, both as a book and a character.
Here's one of the most fun ideas, a kind of jam session between the team and Neal Adams. According to Skeates, Giordano had suggested doing a back-up strip, which immediately meant that every spare writer at DC barraged the team with ideas for it.
Giordano didn't like any of the suggestions until Adams came up with the idea of tying the back-up strip into the main feature, so Skeates deliberately left all the plot threads dangling so that Neal had to finish them off with his now included Deadman back-up. All of which goes to prove you should never volunteer for anything, 'cos you'll always get more to do than you intended.
Everybody involved here contributes dynamite work, particularly Aparo, who's clearly having a blast. Apparently, Aquaman at the time was a book no one was reading, particularly the higher ups at DC, so these guys did more or less what they wanted, and this really feels like a free-form Charlton book like E-Man more than something from the towers of Superman.
Oh, and there's THAT in-joke of all in-jokes splash panel. You'll know it when you see it.