A week ago, writing about the advent of the short-lived comics publisher Atlas/Seaboard, I touched briefly on one of the company’s first color comic-book releases — the barbarian-themed Ironjaw #1 — which, as you may recall, I didn’t rate very highly.  At the time, I promised you we’d be taking a look at the other sword-and-sorcery comic Atlas put out in November, 1974 — a book which was perhaps somewhat more generic than its immediate predecessor, at least on the surface level, but one which ultimately proved a more satisfying entertainment experience overall, simply by virtue of being so very well drawn… well, that, and not being poisonously misogynistic, as the Michael Fleisher-written Ironjaw unquestionably was.  And now, here we are. 

The writer as well of the artist of Wulf the Barbarian #1 was Larry Hama, a young creator who’s turned up in a couple of our previous posts over the last year or so — first, as an uncredited assistant to his friend Ralph Reese on the artwork for a short story in Marvel Comics’ Worlds Unknown #1, then, as the first penciller to follow Gil Kane on the new “Iron Fist” feature in Marvel Premiere.  Before breaking into the business under his own name, Hama had — like may of his peers — apprenticed with other, better established artists, including Wally Wood; most recently, he’d been working at Neal Adams and Dick Giordano’s Continuity Associates studio, where he’d been among the group of inkers credited in various Marvel and DC comics as the “Crusty Bunkers”.

Hama’s breakthrough gig on the martial arts-themed “Iron Fist” began with Marvel Premiere #16 and continued for the next three issues; by mid-’74, however, the artist was growing restless with the assignment.  As he’d later recall for an interview published in Comic Book Artist #16 (Dec., 2001):

Cover to Howard Chaykin’s The Scorpion #1 (Feb., 1975), which came out one week after Wulf the Barbarian #1. Art by Chaykin.

I wanted to do something else other than martial arts stuff. They kept saying, “Well, that’s what you do!”  I’d say, “Well, that’s what I do because this is the only job I’ve got!” [laughter] …  So, I was sort of unhappy at Marvel and was bringing in some pages to Marvel, and Howard Chaykin was standing outside of Marvel’s door, downstairs on Madison Avenue, directing artists as they came in the door to go across the street over to the Atlas/Seaboard office! [laughs]  He’d say, “Look, why don’t you go across the street, they’ll double your rate!” [laughter]  We’d say, “What? You’re kidding!”  He’d say, “No, no, they’ll double your rate!” [laughs]  So, how could I beat that?  I went over there and signed up right away.

Regarding his initial conversation with Atlas/Seaboard’s’ Jeff Rovin, Hama recalled that the editor “wanted something like Conan, but not quite.”  Hama, who’d already done some comics scripting for the “Sally Forth” and “Cannon” features produced by Wally Wood for the military market, was game to give that somewhat vague notion a go.  But while he was happy to take his main cues from pulp author Robert E. Howard’s brand of sword and sorcery fiction, he wanted his new heroic fantasy comic to reflect other sources of personal inspiration as well; these included Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Norse mythology, and the samurai movies that had been a big part of the third-generation Japanese-American’s boyhood.

A few months later, the results of Hama’s blending of his various influences were revealed to comic-book readers when the first issue of Wulf the Barbarian went on sale on November 19, 1974…

The inker of Wulf’s premiere outing was Klaus Janson, a former assistant to Dick Giordano* whom Hama knew from Continuity.  Interviewed in 2001, Hama remembered Janson as being “a kid” at the time; in November, 1974, however, Janson would actually have been twenty-two (Hama himself was only twenty-five), and had been inking for Marvel for well over a year, working on such features as “Black Panther”(in Jungle Action), Captain Marvel, and Doctor Strange.

At the wine shop, Wulf is indirectly abused by the same well-dressed, well-fed bailiff who was one of those mocking both Stavro and himself earlier, as the official sneeringly asks the shop’s proprietor, “Are you going to serve this outlander scum?”  “Now, now, good bailiff,” Bashir says placatingly, “his gold’s as good as any man’s…”

Hama seems to have based Baerholm mostly on the Germanic cultures of the early medieval period (what we used to call the “Dark Ages”) — Saxons, Vikings, and so on; however, the sport of falconry (which didn’t really arise in northern Europe until several centuries further along) suggests a later, more developed “High Middle Ages” civilization.  This may be a small thing, but it serves to make Wulf’s people come across as at least a little more sophisticated than most of the “barbarians” you find in 1970s fantasy comics.

In his 2001 Comic Book Artist interview, Larry Hama reminisced about how he and several other young comics artists he knew during this era frequently employed photo reference:

The writer/artist himself posed for the figure of Stavro in the last panel of the page shown above.

We really were getting into using photo reference at the time.  I even had a darkroom at Continuity!  We’d just get all our friends together to pose for reference and go, “All right, you’re this person and you’re that person,” and just act it out!  And I found that other artists made the best models, because they knew a neat way to hold their body that would make good drawings.  So, I’d use [Michael] Kaluta, Ralph Reese, Neal Adams, and all those guys.

With Wulf clinging to his back, Stavro mounts up within the encircling protection of the shield wall.  Then Lady Lenore bids the faithful warrior, “Ride swiftly…”

Up until that last panel, most of Hama’s design choices regarding architecture, costume, and so forth could be seen as derivative of real-world precedents.  But the wildly imaginative look he’s given Drakenroost serves notice, every bit as much as have the trolls and the dragon, that we’re reading a fantasy story, rather than historical fiction.  It’s an approach we’ll see the creator continue to employ on the next page following…

The preceding page can be taken as a teaser for future stories; alas, not a one of these intriguing locales received a more substantial visit during Wulf the Barbarian‘s brief run.

The exhausted, hungry duo make their way to the city’s marketplace, where Stavro is forced to decide whether to spend his single gold coin to buy Wulf and himself a single meal each — or to purchase “the means to buy many” such meals.  Not too surprisingly, the old soldier opts for the latter…

As time continues to pass, we’re shown how young Wulf is given no time to play with other children… or, a bit later, to explore his awakening interest in girls…

Not to spoil the gravity of this moment, but what a difference a skin-tight mail shirt makes, amirite?

OK, it’s probably a little too pat that not only is it the Grinner himself who’s been dispatched by Mordek to kill Wulf, but that he ‘s carrying Wulf’s dad’s very special sword to boot.  Still, it’s a very satisfying moment when Wulf employs the training he’s received from Stavro — in juggling as well as in swordplay — to take a measure of vengeance, both his parents and for his mentor, with that same sword.  And, given that the series would meet its end well before Wulf ever got close to taking vengeance on Mordek himself, it’s hard, in retrospect, to begrudge the character — or his creator, Larry Hama, for that matter — that small amount of resolution.

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When Wulf the Barbarian #2 arrived on stands in January, 1975, it once again carried credits for Larry Hama as writer and penciller, and for Klaus Janson as inker; but the credits box also carried a note offering “special thanks” to the following artists: Neal Adams, Ralph Reese, Ed Davis, Wally Wood, Bob McLeod, Pat Broderick, Vicente Alcazar, Paul Kirchner, and Jack Abel.  These friends and colleagues of Hama’s had helped him meet Atlas/Seaboard’s deadline for the issue at a time when the creator was also having to deal with a serious personal matter.

As Hama recalled in 2001 for his Comic Book Artist interview:

…the thing was, my mom was dying of cancer, that deadline for the second issue was happening right when she was on her last days.  I was having a hard time making that deadline.  People pitched in and helped me…  Some of it was penciling help, some of it was — it was “everything” help.  But it’s all my layout, design and storytelling…

 

I really appreciate everybody helping like that, because there was this tremendous sense of community and family, and people just didn’t think anything of it, they just dropped what they were doing and came to help out.

Considering how many different hands ended up contributing to Wulf #2’s artwork, it’s a testament to Hama’s design and storytelling chops, as well as to the professionalism of his pals at Continuity and elsewhere, that the finished product looks as consistent, not to mention as good, as it does.  As for the story itself, it’s a perfectly serviceable standalone S&S adventure — though one which, doing nothing to move Wulf’s central quest forward, is, in the end, neither as memorable or as satisfying as the series’ first installment.

Our hero’s quest hasn’t quite been forgotten, however, as we’ll see when we drop in for “The Beast of Famine”‘s final page, which finds Wulf taking leave of the new friends he’s made over the course of the story…

The way Hama ends his second Wulf story certainly seems to suggest that he expected to be back for the next issue.  However, when Wulf #3 arrived in April, 1975, there was someone new at the helm: Leo Summers, a veteran illustrator best known for his magazine work, was credited as the plotter as well as the artist for “The Colossus of the Iron Citadel”, while the script was by Steve Skeates.

Where had Larry Hama gone?  To California — if only briefly.  As he related to interviewer Jon B. Cooke in 2001, “I just decided to cool out for a while.  I
went to California and hung out on a beach. Then I came back and all this acting stuff started!”

“Acting stuff?”  That’s right; in one of the more intriguing career detours taken by a well-known comic-book professional, following his return to New York Hama was invited to audition for a part in the new Stephen Sondheim musical Pacific Overtures, despite his having very little prior stage experience — and he got it.  The show wasn’t a hit, but between its preview performances, a 6-month Broadway run, and finally a 5-month tour, it kept Hama employed through 1976 — and too busy to draw or write comic books.

When Hama did return to comics, it would be primarily as an editor and writer, rather than as an artist.  He became an editor at DC in 1977, overseeing such titles as Jonah Hex and Wonder Woman until the infamous “DC Implosion” of 1978, in which he and other recent hires lost their staff jobs.  After that, Hama “rebounded back to Continuity” (as he put it in Comics Interview #38 [1986]); he also did a little acting (including appearing with Martin Sheen in an Apocalypse Now sketch on the Dec. 15, 1979 episode of Saturday Night Live).  Before long, however, he was back to comics editing, this time at Marvel, where he took the helm of the Mad magazine knockoff Crazy beginning with its April, 1980 issue.  Still interested in writing, in 1982 Hama took on an assignment which, by his own account, no one else at Marvel wanted — a licensed comic based on an upcoming toy line.  So began Larry Hama’s very fruitful association with G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero — an association which would eventually span five decades, two publishers, and close to 300 individual comics (to date), and would ultimately prove to be the contribution to the comics field for which he would be best known to several generations of fans…all to the bemusement of a certain small set of somewhat older nerds (I may be the only one, actually), to whom he’ll likely always be “the Wulf the Barbarian guy”.**

And speaking of Wulf the Barbarian… back in 1975, the new creative team of Leo Summers and Steve Skeates that had been installed with issue #3 was gone without a trace by the following issue, as Wulf #4 arrived in late May with a new writer, Mike Friedrich; a new penciller, Jim Craig (who’d gotten a head start on things by drawing #3’s cover); and inks attributed to the “Atlas Bullpen” (which, according to the Grand Comics Database, consisted in this case of Dan Adkins, Pablo Marcos, Frank Giacoia, Aubrey Bradford, and maybe others, besides).  “Death-Night in the Darkling Forest!” was Wulf’s least inspired, most by-the-numbers outing to date, but it hardly mattered; despite a “Next Issue” blurb promising a “Return to Castle Silverkeep!” (a title that suggests that Friedrich might have been planning to wrap up the hero’s vengeance quest and set a new course for the series), this was the end of the road for the blond barbarian from Baerholm.  His publisher wouldn’t long outlive him, either, as Atlas/Seaboard itself would be issuing its last releases over the next couple of weeks, and would then be gone for good; that sad story, however, is one we’ll have to save until next June.

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UPDATE, 4/14/2025:  In conducting my research for this post last fall, I inadvertently missed the fact that Wulf the Barbarian was briefly revived in 2011-12 as part of an effort by Jason Goodman (Martin’s grandson) to reboot the Atlas/Seaboard line.  Evidently sharing no continuity with the original series, Wulf ran for six issues, all published by Ardden Entertainment; this version of the character also appeared in three issues of a team/crossover series, Atlas United.  And now you know.

 

*Per the Grand Comics Database, Hama’s pencils for Wulf #1’s cover were inked by either Janson or Giordano.

**I should note here that Hama’s editorial slate during his 1982-87 sojourn at Marvel would eventually include The Savage Sword of Conan, Conan the Barbarian, and Conan the King; he’s also done some writing for the character over the years, most recently in the 25th issue of Marvel’s 2019 Conan the Barbarian series.  So, it’s not like he’s ever left barbarian sword-and-sorcery behind completely.