Founding The company name is a combination of those of its founders, former
Marvel Comics production manager Sol Brodsky ("Sky") and low-budget entrepreneur
Israel Waldman ("wald"), whose
I. W. Publications (also known as Super Comics) in the late 1950s and early 1960s published unauthorized comic book reprints for sale through
grocery and
discount stores. Skywald was based in New York City. Brodsky, who also served as editor, brought in
Al Hewetson – briefly an assistant to Marvel chief
Stan Lee and a freelancer for the
Warren Publishing horror magazines and others – as a freelance writer. "Archaic Al", as he later jokingly called himself in print, quickly became the associate editor, and when Brodsky returned to Marvel after a few months, Hewetson succeeded him as editor. Hewetson, aiming at a more literary bent than the work of industry leader
Warren Publishing, developed what he called "the Horror-Mood" and sought to evoke the feel of such writers as
Poe,
H. P. Lovecraft and
Kafka. Skywald's first publication was
Nightmare #1 (
cover-dated Dec. 1970). The first issues of magazines like
Nightmare and
Psycho featured some original work and a lot of reworked reprint filler, mostly from horror comics published by
Avon Comics in the 1950s. In an unusual arrangement, Hewetson managed editorial from his home in
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, though the publisher was based in Manhattan. As he described in 1973,
Non-horror magazines Skywald also produced two issues of the magazine
Hell-Rider (Aug. and Oct. 1971), featuring a vigilante motorcyclist with a
flamethrower-equipped bike. The character was created by
Gary Friedrich (who would go on to co-create the Marvel motorcyclist
Ghost Rider) and
penciler Ross Andru. Backup features were "The Butterfly" and "The Wild Bunch", both written by Friedrich, with art credits disputed by different sources for issue #1; the second-issue "Butterfly" story is credited to penciler
Syd Shores and inker Esposito, the second "Wild Bunch" to penciler-inker
Rich Buckler. Another two-issue title,
The Crime Machine, consisted solely of comic-book
crime fiction reprints from the 1950s. Hewetson said in 1973, "We produced, when this company began, a production called
The Judy Garland Book which is the most threatening thing which ever happened to our company. We printed far too many copies and we sold maybe four or five. We lost a lot of money." Skywald published two issues of the men's adventure title ''King: The Magazine for the Man's Man'' in 1971; the first issue featured a Harry Rosenbaum cover and interior illustration by
Boris Vallejo.
Comic books The short-lived color comic-book line, edited by Brodsky, comprised the
Western titles
Blazing Six-Guns,
The Bravados,
Butch Cassidy,
The Sundance Kid, and
Wild Western Action; the
romance title
Tender Love Stories; the
horror series
The Heap; and
Jungle Adventures. "The color comics, more or less, broke even," Hewetson said in 1973. "I think we could've continued with them to try and establish a color comics area, except for the fact that, at the very same time as Skywald began the color comics,
National and
Marvel were engaged in a price war which hurt just about everybody."
Demise Editor
Al Hewetson, in an interview given shortly before his death of a heart attack on January 6, 2004, asserted the demise of Skywald was caused by: Skywald lasted through early 1975, with
Psycho #24 (March 1975) being its final publication.
Nightmare published 23 issues and
Scream put out 11 issues. ==References==