Kull

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

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

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

Savage Tales #2 (October, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As I’ve noted in previous posts, Marvel Comics’ Savage Tales #1 — the company’s second attempt to break into the black-and-white comics magazine market, following Spectacular Spider-Man (or, if you prefer, its third, following Pussycat; or even the fourth, if you want to go all the way back to 1955’s Mad knock-off, Snafu) passed my then-thirteen-year-old self by upon its January, 1971 release.  Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I passed it by.  I was doubtless aware of it, since it had been plugged in Marvel’s Bullpen Bulletins columns; but, at the time, I hadn’t dared to take so much as a peek at the “mature” black-and-white offerings then available on the magazine racks (my first Warren Publishing purchase wouldn’t happen until that summer) — unless you counted Mad, which I didn’t.  Plus, I hadn’t even sampled the adventures of Savage Tales‘ headliner, Conan the Barbarian, in his titular Comics Code-approved color series yet (my first issue of that book would be #4 — which, as it happens, came out just one week after Savage Tales #1).  But even if I had been inclined to give the new magazine a try, I would likely have been too intimidated by the “mature” cover painting by John Buscema (not to mention the big “M” label positioned adjacent to that painting’s bloodily severed head) to risk sneaking it into my very Southern Baptist household.  Read More

Conan the Barbarian #25 (April, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In January, 1973, the cover of Conan the Barbarian #25 — a collaboration between Gil Kane and Ralph Reese — hardly gave any hint of the enormous artistic shift this issue represented for Marvel Comics’ award-winning series.  After all, Kane had pencilled four Conan covers prior to this one, and while two of those had graced issues that also featured Kane art on the inside (the first of those, #17, also happened to have been inked by Reese), the other two — including the most recent one, for issue #23 — had fronted stories drawn by the title’s original and primary regular artist, Barry Windsor-Smith.

So, if you were a regular Conan reader who’d somehow managed to miss issue #24 (and if you were, you have my sympathies), you may well have been startled to open #25 to its first page to see that the story had been drawn by a penciller previously unseen in these pages (though his name and work were hardly unfamiliar to Marvel fans)… namely, John Buscema:  Read More

Kull the Conqueror #7 (March, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in April, we took a look at the third issue of Marvel Comics’ Kull the Conqueror, featuring the titular hero’s first all-out battle against the undead sorcerer Thulsa Doom (a character who’d actually been introduced in another comic published a few months previously, Monsters on the Prowl #16).  Today, we’ll be examining Kull #7, in which the barbarian king of Valusia meets his evil arch-foe again… for the first time.

That seemingly paradoxical statement refers to the fact that this comic book features an adaptation of the short story “Delcardes’ Cat” — the first and only story by Kull’s creator, the pulp writer Robert E. Howard, in which the skull-headed villain ever makes an appearance.  Oddly enough, Howard only seems to have come up with the idea for Thulsa Doom well into the story, requiring him to go back and write another version in which the baddie gets referred to as a known threat a few times early on, just so that he doesn’t seem to come out of nowhere in the tale’s final scenes (which, as we’ll see soon enough, he kind of does anyway).  Even so, Howard wasn’t able to sell the story during his all-too-brief lifetime; like most (though not all) of his Kull stories, the tale remained unpublished as of the author’s death in 1936, not seeing print until Lancer Books released its paperback collection, King Kull, in 1969.

Got all that?  Great!  Now, on with our comic…  Read More

Marvel Premiere #4 (September, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in April, we took a look at Marvel Premiere #3, which relaunched Doctor Strange as an ongoing solo feature following a 32-month absence.  That comic, featuring a script by the Master of the Mystic Arts’ original writer, Stan Lee, and art by rising young star Barry Windsor-Smith, inaugurated a story arc centered on a mysterious new menace — someone as yet both unseen and unnamed, but powerful enough to compel the service of Nightmare, one of Dr. Strange’s mightiest foes.  The issue ended with the sorcerous superhero returning home to his Sanctum Sanctorum following his defeat of Nightmare, unaware that a silhouetted stranger waited there for him.

Two months later, Marvel Premiere #4 picked up exactly where the previous episode left off — but with a significantly changed creative team.  In his 2009 introduction to Marvel Masterworks — Doctor Strange, Vol. 4, Marvel’s then new editor-and-chief (and once and future Dr. Strange scripter) Roy Thomas provided this explanation:  Read More

Kull the Conqueror #3 (July, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In April, 1972, the third issue of Marvel Comics’ Kull the Conqueror arrived on stands — a full eleven months after the release of issue #2.

Of course, as folks who’ve been regular readers of this blog for a while already know, while Kull, the comic book, had been absent for almost a year, the same could not be said of Kull, the character.  Marvel’s associate editor Roy Thomas, who in 1971 had launched this second series based on a Robert E. Howard fantasy hero in the wake of Conan the Barbarian‘s success (as relatively modest as that was, so far) was evidently determined to keep Conan’s literary forbear in the public eye — perhaps in hopes of eventually resuscitating the cancelled Kull title, or maybe just because he liked the hero and his milieu and/or was enjoying his collaboration (as the series’ writer) with sister-and-brother art team Marie and John Severin, who’d both come aboard Kull with issue #2.  Read More

Monsters on the Prowl #16 (April, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

You know, Marvel may have never quite licked the horror/mystery/fantasy/science fiction/what-have-you anthology format during the Bronze Age of Comics — at least not in the color comics arena — but you’ve got to give them points for trying.  From 1969 to 1975, the publisher launched at least sixteen titles that can be grouped within that admittedly broad category (more, if you include all the title changes).  It’s quite the bewildering array of funnybooks to try to get a handle on half a century later, even if you were buying and reading Marvels all through the era (as your humble blogger indeed was).  Trying to account for all those Loose Creatures and Dwelling Monsters, not to mention the Shadowy Towers and Crypts and the Chambers offering you a choice of either Darkness or Chills, can feel like a real Journey into Mystery at times; honestly, it can be hard to know if you’re coming or going.  Or Prowling or Roaming, if you catch my drift.

But never Fear, faithful reader — Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books is here to help.  While I can’t promise you’ll possess a comprehensive understanding of all the varied aspects of this little chapter in comics history by the time you finish reading this post, I believe that I can at least relieve you of feeling like you’re trapped within a Tomb of Darkness, informationally speaking.  Something like that, anyway.  At least for the first couple of years of the phenomenon.  Read More

Conan the Barbarian #10 (October, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

One week ago, in our post about Amazing Spider-Man #101, we shared the two lead items from the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page that ran in that issue (as well as in other Marvel comics shipping in July, 1971), which explained how, due to editor Stan Lee taking a couple of weeks off his comics-scripting duties to work on a screenplay, other writers would be temporarily stepping in to handle his titles.

But Stan’s sabbatical wasn’t the only big news out of Marvel that month, as was indicated by the very next Bulletin:  Read More