Paul Neary's The Argo Standing By

There's been some love for the inking of Paul Neary on twitter over the weekend, so I wondered who else knew that, back in our era, Paul's beautifully stylish art graced many a Warren magazine.
Turns out there were a few people who'd never seen full pencils & inks Neary, so let's remedy that right now.
The Argo Standing By is from Creepy #73, a sci-fi special where each tale told The End Of The World from a different angle. Budd Lewis' script is poetic and mournful, and Neary sells it beautifully, especially when you stop to realise he's illustrating a story that basically consists of one man walking around a cavernous spaceship. Actually quite a difficult task for an artist.
If you want to see more of Paul's wonderful work, there's more of it sprinkled throughout the blog. You know what to do.

Hulk Comic

Hulk Comic came out from Marvel UK in 1979, and for a while was unmissable. Here's what you got for your shiny new ten pence:

In other words, an original Hulk story, an original Black Knight serial by Steve Parkhouse, an original Nick Fury by Steve Dillon, Night Raven by David Lloyd AND..... an old Ant Man reprint.
As you can see from the cover above, this was the time when The Incredible Hulk was rampaging across UK TV screens, and these stories are very much cut from the show's cloth.
Here, from issue #1 for instance, is Dave Gibbons basically saying to America: ' Superheroes? No problem. When d'you want it done by? '

While here's John Bolton with an oddly Conan-esque Hulk.

And finally, Paul Neary & John Richardson taking over for a while.

Sadly, that's about it for The Hulk's original british adventures, and we were soon back to american reprints again. Maybe it was too cost prohibitive, I don't know, but don't worry David, you'll be back next week.

Hunter 2

How do you bring back a popular character when you've made a big deal about killing him off, without using that old: He escaped / it was a dream / he was actually a Skrull excuse?
You do a sequel about a character with the same name of course.
Hunter 2 is set some time after the original Hunter series, and is a slightly different beast than it's predecessor, Hunter being about a vengeance driven loner single-handedly wiping out a world full of post apocalyptic mutants. It was as mean and tough and black-hearted as it's protagonist and is one of Warren's best remembered series.

Hunter 2 takes the idea in a whole new direction, being by comparison a kind of Tolkeinesque fantasy quest, albeit one where the magic is actually long-forgotten science and the demons are actually mutants. And though it has the same edge of darkness all Eerie series had, it's a little more hopeful that things will work out alright, and has a new Hunter who's more Luke Skywalker than Frank Castle.
The first chapter here is a little exposition heavy, but stick with it and you'll be rewarded by more fantastic Paul Neary art, some rollicking good gory action, and the return of an old friend from another Eerie series.
Hunter 2 is easily as good as it's inspiration, and is a neat way of continuing the franchise, though I could never figure out why Karras Hunter felt the need to strap on his predecessor's helmet, it having no practical or mythological use whatsoever. Maybe just because it looks cool.