Fifty years and three months ago, DC Comics’ releases for November, 1974 featured this house ad, hailing the upcoming debut of a new hero…
So new a hero, in fact, that the guy apparently didn’t even have a name yet. Read More
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
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
In December, 1972, Marvel Comics published the final issue of Conan the Barbarian drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith. Again.
The young British artist’s first departure from the book had come just ten months earlier, with Conan #15. But after a mere three issues away (the first of which in fact reprinted earlier work by Windsor-Smith), he was back on the book. reuniting with writer Roy Thomas on Conan #19 to launch an ambitious new multi-issue storyline, the “Hyrkanian War” epic. Read More
Gil Kane’s cover for Conan the Barbarian #23 is a fine piece of work. Nothing to complain about here. I mean, it’s Gil Kane, right?
That said, I’ve always regretted that the story it illustrates, “The Shadow of the Vulture!”, wasn’t published under the cover that Barry Windsor-Smith had originally drawn for it… Read More
When we last left Conan back in December, he and his two companions — Zephra (daughter of Conan’s old foe, the wizard Zukala), and Elric (ruler of an otherworldly realm called Melniboné) had just fended off an attack by Prince Gaynor the Damned and his Chaos Pack of beast-men. We now pick up the tale where Conan the Barbarian #14 left off, as presented by the same storytellers — plotters Michael Moorcock (creator of Elric) and James Cawthorn, scripter Roy Thomas, artist Barry Windsor-Smith, and co-inker (with Windsor-Smith) Sal Buscema: Read More