The 13 Dead Things

Is this the most gruesome strip Skywald ever printed? I dunno, but it's pretty damn gruesome. What's that? Oh really? You've seen worse and anyway it's nothing like as bad as... holy crap, look at THAT!!!!
By the way, if you're searching for old Skywald mags on the ebay, that cover trumpeting this story? The strip actually turned up two issues later...

A Happy Ending For The Heap

So whatever happened to Skywald's very own muck-monster, The Heap, in the end? Well, it was an open secret that editor / writer Al Hewetson hated this particular character so, after some great opening shots from Ross Andru, Mike Esposito & Tom Sutton, Archaic Al let the strip slide a bit.
Episode after episode passed by, each one more nonsensical than the last, with Al clearly writing the whole thing through gritted teeth.
But then he decided to end the serial in the most bizarre way possible. With a happy ending.
Following a story where The Heap loses all intelligence and reasoning, putting him at about the same level as Atlas' The Brute, Hewetson gave up the ghost entirely and provided the bog beast with a finale Swampy, Manny and the rest would give their right ( regrown ) arm for.
As for the poll at the end, where readers are asked to write in if they want The Heap back, well, Skywald went out of business before Al had to make good on that promise.
Which is a shame, because when he started, Heapy was a pretty great strip. Still, as I say, I don't recall any other character ever ending his series quite like this.

Dave Kraft - Killer On The Road

I love it when writers or artists shoehorn themselves into one of their own stories, something that these days would be called an easter egg, but back then, it was just fun spotting such obvious in-jokes aimed at the reader.
Always liked Man-Wolf / Defenders scribe and FOOM editor Dave Kraft too. DAK was a long-haired rocker, like wot I was, and never missed an opportunity to title amost any story or character after a Blue Oyster Cult or Rush track, probably making devil hand signs while typing his scripts to boot.
That's Dave with Roger Slifer in FOOM #16, hitch-hiking cross country on a conventioneering vacation.
The story below always put me in mind of that photo, so here, from the Psycho 1972 annual is what I'm saying is Dave ( in spirit, if not actually in 100% likeness ), alongside artist Villanova hitch-hiking cross country on a killing spree. But where's Roger?
Well, what's left of him's in DAK's backpack.

Hunger Of The Slaughter-Sludge Beasts

This is the way the world ends. Here's Doug Moench alongside Saga Of The Victims' Jesus Suso Rego, scratching that perennial Bronze Age itch, the ecological horror story. 

Doug ( who apparently never slept during the '70's, judging by his output ) channels the Skywald style perfectly, in fact you'd swear this was written by Archaic Al Hewetson, and Suso is as great as ever.

And anyway, if you could resist a story with a title like this, you wouldn't be here.

Al Hewetson Meets The Shoggoths

Meanwhile, over at Skywald, chief writer / editor Archaic Al Hewetson was desperately trying to warn the world about the greatest threat to ever face mankind: The Shoggoths!

The Shoggoths series was one of the most fun ideas in Nightmare. Very loosely adapted from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, they were hideous beings who'd existed since the dawn of time, lurked right underneath our feet, and looked upon humanity alternately as interlopers or foodstuff.
But instead of giant tentacled blobs, as Lovecraft described them, Al went for more of a Tasmanian Devil look:

After a couple of intro stories, the series mostly consists of Al himself travelling around the world, in the company of whichever artist drew each instalment, trying to provide absolute proof of the creatures' existence to a disbelieving populace. In one of the neater ideas for a fan club, he even urged kids to join his crusade, and to write in whenever they found one of the Shoggoth's hidey holes out in the woods:

It was a great, fourth-wall breaking idea, and could've gone on much longer. Here's Al with artist Jose Cardona on one adventure. Interestingly, although that photo of Archaic is easy to come by, I couldn't find any pictures of Jose. Maybe the Shoggoths got him...