Conan

Conan the Barbarian #58 (January, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last month we took a look at Conan the Barbarian #57, an issue mostly devoted to setting up the opening chapter of writer/editor Roy Thomas’ adaptation (and very extensive expansion) of Conan creator Robert E. Howard’s 1934 short story “Queen of the Black Coast” (full text available online here).  Turning past the cover by Johns Buscema and Romita, we find issue #58 beginning exactly where #57 left off, with our favorite Cimmerian adventurer riding hard for the docks of an Argossean seaport, a contingent of the city’s soldiers in hot pursuit…  Read More

Conan the Barbarian #57 (December, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The cover of this issue of Conan the Barbarian, as produced by the art team of Gil Kane and Vince Colletta, is unquestionably a solid piece of work; if it has any real flaw, it’s that it’s a little generic.  Yes, Conan is shown holding a length of chain in one hand, which at least vaguely nods to the “A Barbarian Chained!” title blurb at the cover’s bottom (and, for the record, we will indeed see our hero so bound before this issue’s story is over and done).  But other than that, it’s just a generic Conan illustration, which could have appeared anywhere, anytime, over the past several years of the title’s run, and has little true relation to this specific issue’s contents.

But, in a way, that was an appropriate choice, back in September,1975.  Conan the Barbarian was at this time on the verge of making a major shift in direction, setting a new course that the series would henceforth follow all the way through issue #100, published more than three and a half years later.  So the cover of Conan #57 could be taken as a capper for the entire run up to this point — a run that as recently as the past year (the last for which the Academy of Comic Book Arts’ “Shazam” Awards were given) had been deemed “Best Continuing Feature” — a fact the cover itself proudly proclaims.  In that sense, this cover serves not only (or even primarily) to promote the single story contained within the comic’s pages, but to commemorate this whole era of the series… what we might call “Conan the Barbarian B.B.”. Read More

Savage Sword of Conan #6 (June, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

We’ve discussed the so-called “Filipino Invasion” of the American comic book industry during the 1970s in several previous posts.  As regular readers may recall, this development began with the arrival of artist Tony DeZuñiga at DC Comics around the middle of 1970, but really picked up steam in 1972 following a business trip to the Philippines taken by DeZuñiga, his editor Joe Orlando, and DC publisher Carmine Infantino.  That visit resulted in a deal by which DeZuñiga and his wife would act as a sort of broker between DC and his fellow Filipino illustrators, most of whom continued to live and work in the islands.  Within a number of months, DC’s mystery anthologies (along with related titles such as Weird War Tales and Weird Western Tales) were all but dominated by the art of such talents as DeZuñiga, Alfredo Alcala, Nestor Redondo, and a number of others. Read More

Savage Sword of Conan #4 (February, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The fifty-year-old comics magazine we’ll be looking at today leads off with a cover by fantasy painter Boris Vallejo that actually illustrates the issue’s lead story — something which wasn’t exactly unheard of with Marvel’s black-and-white comics of the 1970s, but wasn’t quite what you’d call commonplace, either.  About the only significant discrepancy between cover and story is that the young lady in Vallejo’s painting is depicted as wearing a little less clothing than the equivalent character drawn by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala in the story’s version of this same scene… but it really is only a little less, as we’ll soon see.  Read More

Savage Sword of Conan #2 (October, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In 1974, star comics artist Neal Adams had largely turned away from pencilling comic book stories.  But he did keep his hand in in the field in various ways, such as by turning out painted covers for Marvel Comics’ black-and-white magazine line on a fairly regular basis.  The second issue of Marvel’s new Savage Sword of Conan title is graced by one such; like most of the covers produced for the b&w line, by whichever artist, it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the magazine’s specific contents.  But I’m sure I didn’t complain when I first picked this book up half a century ago, and I doubt many other readers did, either.

Turning past that cover to the issue’s double-page frontispiece/table of contents, we’re greeted by the first published professional work of a young artist who was as unknown in August, 1974 as Adams was famous:  Read More

Savage Sword of Conan #1 (August, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In June, 1974, the Hyborian Age was clearly in full flower at Marvel Comics.  Along with the latest installment of the publisher’s successful ongoing Conan the Barbarian series (issue #42, for the record), the month also brought the fans of Robert E. Howard’s famous sword-and-sorcery hero the first issue of a brand-new quarterly companion title, Giant-Size Conan.  This new series got off to a spectacular start, featuring the first chapter of a multi-part adaptation of Howard’s one and only Conan novel, “The Hour of the Dragon”, as written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Gil Kane and Tom Sutton.

And that wasn’t even the biggest news in Conan comics this month; rather, that distinction went to the main topic of today’s blog post, The Savage Sword of Conan #1 — the first issue of a brand-new black-and-white bi-monthly magazine devoted to the barbarian adventurer and his fellow Howardian heroes.  It was, in some ways, Conan’s third coming as far as the b&w comics market went, following as it did both the initial release of Savage Tales in January, 1971, and the subsequent relaunch of that title with its long-delayed second issue in June, 1973.  It was also the biggest black-and-white comic Marvel had yet published — a square-bound number that weighed in at 80 pages (as compared to the then standard 64), and cost a whole buck (as compared to Marvel’s other b&w offerings’ going price of 75 cents).  Read More

Savage Tales #4 (May, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As we previously discussed in our post about Savage Tales #3 last October, back in the fall of 1973 it seemed that Marvel’s one-and-only sword-and-sorcery-centric black-and-white comics magazine was about to be cancelled — for the second time.  The first incarnation of Savage Tales had seen but one issue published in January, 1971 before Marvel’s then-publisher Martin Goodman pulled the plug; then, the second iteration, launched in June, 1972 following Goodman’s departure from the company he’d founded, had come under the scrutiny of an auditor for the conglomerate (Cadence Industries) that now owned Marvel.  According to a rather downbeat editorial by Roy Thomas that ran in ST #3, a go-ahead for producing further issues wouldn’t be given until sales numbers had been received for the relaunch; and if you read between the lines, the signs didn’t seem very encouraging. Read More

Conan the Barbarian #37 (April, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

At the time the topic of today’s blog post was originally published, January, 1974, new interior comic book art by Neal Adams wasn’t yet as rare as hen’s teeth — not quite.  Still, it was a good bit rarer than it had been just a year or so earlier, and thus it was a treat to see a second full-length story illustrated by the star artist come out just one month after the last one, which had appeared in DC Comics’ Batman #255.  (For the record, there was another story by Adams that came out in December, 1973, as well — a 10-page “Green Lantern” back-up in Flash #226, which my younger self managed to miss.)  Adding to the fun was the fact that Adams did all the art in the issue, pencilling and inking the issue’s cover as well as the whole 19-page story within.  (Or, at least, that’s what the credits said; per the Grand Comics Database, Joe Rubinstein assisted Adams in the inking of backgrounds.)  Read More

Savage Tales #3 (February, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As we covered in our discussion of Savage Tales #2 back in June, the promise made on that magazine’s last page — that the following issue would be on “on sale September 25 A.D. 1973 in this the Marvel age of swords and sorcery” — turned out to be off by almost exactly one month.  Savage Tales #3 would in fact not come out until October 23rd — its delay being a result, according to editor Roy Thomas, of business-based concerns over the title’s overall commercial viability.  And even now, the book’s future was far from secure — though we’ll wait and let Mr. Thomas deliver that fifty-year-old bad news himself per his ST #3 editorial, coming up later in this post.

For the moment, however, we’ll move right into the main event of the issue — the reason that my younger self would have continued to wait for ST #3 as long as required back in the day, and still considered the result to have been worth it: the conclusion of Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith’s adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s final story of Conan the Barbarian, “Red Nails”. Read More

Kull the Destroyer #11 (November, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

By August, 1973, Marvel Comics had been publishing comics about Robert E. Howard’s sword-and-sorcery hero King Kull for over two and a half years — or, to be more precise, for thirty-two months — but only had ten issues of Kull the Conqueror to show for it.  That record was in marked contrast to that of Howard’s better known barbarian protagonist, Conan, who’d made his American comic-book debut just five months before Kull’s, but who’d so far racked up thirty-one regular issues of his own title, plus a “King-Size” reprint special and two appearances in the black-and-white magazine Savage Tales, to boot.  But while from our contemporary perspective it may seem obvious that Kull of Atlantis — despite his having actually preceded Howard’s Conan of Cimmeria in terms of the chronology of their respective creations by Howard — was destined to always come in a distant second to his younger compatriot in terms of audience appeal, fifty years ago, the powers-that-were at Marvel — especially editor-in-chief (and Howard fan) Roy Thomas — had yet to receive that memo.  Read More