Blood on Black Satin episode two

'Blood on Black Satin' episode two
by Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy
Episode Two (from Eerie #110, April 1980)

Blood on Black Satin Episode Three

'Blood on Black Satin' episode three
by Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy
Episode Three (from Eerie #111, June 1980)

Here's the concluding installment of the series, scanned from the original magazine at 300 dpi.....

Loner from Wildcat

Loner

Eagle / Wildcat, 1988 - 1990

The British boy's paper Wildcat was introduced in October, 1988, by UK publisher Fleetway. 

Wildcat was a sci-fi paper and featured four individual comics, all centered on the premise of the starship 'Wildcat' and its search of the galaxy for a new home for mankind. The captain of the Wildcat was a man named Turbo Jones, and its crew included the feminist Kitten Magee ('ex-leader of World Campaign Against Male Domination'), an alien named.....Joe Alien.........and Loner, a 'former mercenary'. 

Wildcat only lasted for 12 issues, until March 1989, when it was merged with the fellow Fleetway boy's paper Eagle. The four comics featuring Turbo Jones, Joe Alien, Kitten Magee, and Loner rotated through issues of Eagle until April 1990.

According to the Down the Tubes website, the artists for the 'Wildcat' strips consisted of  David Pugh, José Ortiz, Ron Smith and Vanyo working on all or most issues, with additional contributions from Massimo Belardinelli, Joan Boix, Ian Kennedy, Horacio Lalia, Carlos Pino, Jesus Redondo and Mike White.

'Loner' (and the other three Wildcat titles) didn't stray too far from the formatting that worked so well for Fleetway's premiere science fiction comic, 2000 AD. The black-and-white strips, usually about six pages in length per installment, emphasized action, and in the case of Loner, a remarkably inventive population of bug-eyed monsters (!). 

The casting of Loner as a black man with a Jimi Hendrix-style afro and headband is worth noting, as to my eye he seems very much a cousin to the character 'Sabre', created by the U.S. team of Don McGregor and Paul Gulacy in 1978 and later released in 1982 as an Eclipse comic book.

Below are two installments of Loner from Eagle from early 1989. Some great artwork here, well deserving of being reprinted for a modern audience.

Sabre issue 3

'Sabre' issue 3

Eclipse Comics, December 1982

The first issue of all-new content for 'Sabre' is a disappointment.

'An Exploitation of Everything Dear' opens with a hackneyed contrivance from writer Don McGregor: the phantasmagorical 'hallucinaton' sequence. This was over-used by McGregor when he wrote for Marvel's Killraven series. Here, it again seems like a contrivance, an excuse for a provocative cover: Sabre's girlfriend is trying to slice him up with a knife ? Wow....I need to purchase this comic book right away !

Paul Gulacy, who provided excellent artwork for the first two Sabre issues, is replaced by Bill Graham, whose artwork is mediocre, at best. Here's a three-page segment featuring the cowboy antics of Governor Slaughter....

 

The best part of issue three is not the Sabre component, but actually the 8-page 'backup' strip, featuring Sabre's sometime comrade-in-arms 'Blackstar Blood'. 

In this adventure, Blackstar winds up paying a gruesome price for being a lothario...the distorted artwork and cramped panel composition have a definite 'retro' feel to them, reminiscent of a comic book from the 40s......

The Trespasser Part Two: Dusk

The Trespasser
Part Two: 'Dusk'
by Don McGregor (script) and Paul Gulacy (art)
from Eerie No. 104 (September 1979)