By Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Neal Adams, Rich Buckler, Ernie Chan & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2655-7 (TPB)
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Savagely Sensational Sagas for All Seasons… 8/10
During the 1970’s the American comic book industry opened up after more than 15 years of calcified publishing practises in response to the censorious, self-inflicted Comics Code Authority: created to police product after the industry suffered its very own McCarthy-style 1950s Witch-hunt.
One of the first genres revisited was Horror/Mystery comics and from that sprang translated pulp star Conan the Cimmerian; initially crafted by Roy Thomas & Barry Windsor-Smith. Despite some early teething problems – including being cancelled and reinstated in the same month – the comic adventures of Robert E. Howard’s wandering warrior quickly became as big a success as the revived prose paperbacks which had heralded a world resurgence in tales of fantasy and the supernatural.
After decades away, the brawny brute recently returned to the Aegis of Marvel, who’s first bite of the cherry was retroactively subtitled “the Original Marvel Years†due to the character’s sojourn with other publishers and intellectual properties rights holders.
This third compendium of action fantasy reprints Conan the Barbarian #27-42 plus material from the first Annual and spans June1973 to May 1973 – a period when he was becoming the darling of the Comics world and when artist John Buscema made the hero his very own.
Story content was evermore redolent of pulp-oriented episodic action – much of it based on Thomas’ adaptations of Howard’s (and sometimes, other writers) “heroic†rather than fantasy fiction. Also on show is the inking of long-time Conan illustrator Ernie Chan, using at this time for reasons unimportant now the pen-name “Ernie Chuaâ€.
First up is ‘Blood of Bel-Hissar’: a tight, taut tale of banditry, treacherous hill-chieftains and jinxed gems set in the aftermath of the recently ended War of the Tarim, followed by a gripping jungle-set horror story. ‘Moon of Zembabwei’sees the Cimmerian battling rival thief Thutmekri, witch-dancers and a golden monster ape before ‘Two Against Turan’has the sell-sword joining the army of Howard’s analogue of an Arabic super-state (and how prescient was that?).
Effete and ineffectual King Yildiz – father of Conan’s greatest human enemy, Yezdigerd – features in a tale displaying all of the barbarian’s most compelling qualities as he rescues agitator and new drinking buddy Ormraxes from the city’s torturers: a mistake that almost costs him his life…
Closely following is ‘Hand of Nergal’: another mystic adventure and one not taken directly from a Howard original, although it is derived from a Lin Carter novelette based on Howard’s notes. When Yildiz’s legions clash with the armies of a rebel satrap, sole survivor Conan is eventually pitted against the sorcery-possessed revolutionary and trapped at ground-zero of a clash between elder gods/demons…
Sporting a stunning Windsor-Smith cover, Conan the Barbarian Annual #1 was a reprint vehicle. It’s represented here by the aforementioned pic and text feature ‘The Hyborian Page’ before we head back to the monthly mag where #31 sees Thomas, Buscema & Chan at their brutal best. ‘Shadow in the Tomb’ has become an iconic Conan scenario due to the movies, but it’s a fairly standard monster and mayhem yarn where the allure of sudden wealth awakens something old, arcane and angry…
Further deviating from the prose canon, what follows is a 3-chapter epic based on the novel Flame Winds by Norvell W. Page – author of most of the 1930s pulp adventures of The Spider – with Thomas substituting Conan for wandering crusader Prester John, and setting the tale in Howard’s fabulous and fabled analogue of ancient China: ‘Khitai’.
Beginning in ‘Flame Winds of Lost Khitai’ with the unwelcome Barbarian caught in a war between the seven ruling sorcerers of the city of Wan Tengri, expanding ferociously into urban unrest and eldritch carnage in ‘Death and 7 Wizards’ and cataclysmically concluding with Conan confronting ‘The Temptress in the Tower of Flame!’ and overturning millennia of oppressive civilisation, this roaring romp deals out politics, magic and greed for Conan to overcome before he decides the Orient is not for him…
Heading towards the middle east with aggravating new flunky Bortai, he is driven by desert raiders into trackless wastes to discover a shattered abandoned city. A skeleton grasping an azure gem should be warning enough, but greed overwhelms common sense and before long ‘The Hell-Spawn of Kara-Shehr’ is loosed on the Barbarian and those who still pursue him. That yarn was freely adapted from Howard’s The Fires of Assurbanipal, but ‘Beware the Hykranians Bearing Gifts…’ is all-original: finding Conan finally back in Aghraphur and reporting to King Yildiz, just in time to save the impotentate from mystic assassination, after which Neal Adams steps in to spectacularly limn ‘The Curse of the Golden Skull’ with Conan and new comrade Juma captured by a mad wizard keen on creating a dynasty with the princess they’re bodyguarding.
His Lemurian arts and monsters eventually prove no match for brawny thews and determination after which Buscema and Chan return for Thomas’ spin on Howard’s The House of Arabu. ‘The Warrior and the Were-Woman’, sees the barbarian involved in petty palace politics and targeted by the mate of a monster he recently despatched, and is followed by epic all-original yarn ‘Dragon from the Inland Sea’ wherein Conan sets out to rescue a sacrificial maid from a very determined, very big lizard: a tale with mythological antecedents graced with Buscema inking his own pencils …
Chan is back in in #40 inking Rich Buckler’s pinch-hitter pencilling on ‘The Fiend from the Forgotten City’. Plotted by Michael Resnick, it sadly suffers a notable lack of panache and verve but still provides a solid tale of treachery and tomb-raiders, after which Buscema, Chan & Thomas reunite for new tale ‘The Garden of Death and Life’, as the nomadic mercenary lands in a nameless desert village sustained by a monstrous predatory tree…
We close for now on the ‘Night of the Gargoyle’ – adapted from Howard’s The Purple Heart of Erlik – bringing the action to a halt to a close on a spooky note as Conan returns to thieving and attracts the extremely unwanted attention of mystic adept Lun-Faar and his menagerie of horrors…
These classic tales are burnished by more behind the scenes extras such as a picture feature on the 1974 Conan commemorative coin and Marvel Value Stamp, plus contemporary house ads, 4 Buscema pencil pages and a previous Omnibus Collection cover by Dale Keown & Jason Keith.
Stirring, evocative, and deeply satisfying on a primal level, this is one of the best volumes in a superb series of a paragon of adventurers. What more does any red-blooded, action-starved fan need to know?
© 2021 Conan Properties International, LLC (“CPIâ€)