Category: Conan the Barbarian

By Roy Thomas & Barry Windsor-Smith (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 1-59307-061-0

During the 1970’s the American comic book industry opened up after more than fifteen years of cautious and calcified publishing practises that had come about as a reaction to the censorious oversight of the self inflicted Comics Code Authority. This body was created to keep the publisher’s product wholesome after the industry suffered their very own McCarthy-style Witch-hunt during the 1950s.

One of the first genres to be revisited was Horror/Mystery comics and from that came the pulp masterpiece Conan the Cimmerian, via a little tale called ‘The Sword and the Sorcerers’ (from the horror anthology Chamber of Darkness #4) whose hero Starr the Slayer bore no little resemblance to the Barbarian. It was written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Barry Smith, a recent Marvel find, and one who was just breaking out of the company’s Kirby house-style.

Despite some early teething problems, including being cancelled and reinstated in the same month, the comic-strip adventures of Robert E. Howard’s were as big a success as the revived prose paperbacks that heralded a world boom in fantasy and the supernatural.

This volume collects the first eight landmark issues with a new, rich colouring make-over that does much to enhance Smith’s developing art style meaning work that was drawn for a much more primitive reproduction process is now full-bodied, substantial and lush.

Follow young Conan from the first meeting with a clairvoyant wizard who predicts his regal destiny (‘The Coming of Conan’), through slavery in ‘The Lair of the Beastmen’, experiencing a small Ragnarok in ‘The Twilight of the Grim Grey God’ before becoming a professional thief in ‘The Tower of the Elephant’. In issue #5 he met the haunting ‘Zukala’s Daughter’, then battled ‘Devil Wings over Shadizar’, escaped ‘The Lurker Within’ and finally ends this volume with ‘The Keepers of the Crypt’.

Thomas’s plan was to follow Conan’s career from all-but boyhood to his eventual crowning as King of Aquilonia, adding to and adapting the prose works of Howard and his posthumous collaborators on the way, and this agenda led to some of the best, freshest comics of the decade. The results of Barry (not-yet-Windsor) Smith’s search for his own graphic style, aided in these issues by inkers Dan Adkins, Sal Buscema, Frank Giacoia, Tom Palmer and Tom Sutton, led to acclaim and many awards for the creative duo.

Dark Horse hold the current license to produce Conan comics, and that same plan and those same canonical texts are being reinterpreted by a new generation of creators. But there’s room for both visions and these pure, honest, direct, beautiful tales have as much appeal and thrills plus a Universal Rating, meaning kids can read as safely as adults. So you all should.

©1970-1971, 2003 Conan Properties International, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Mike Ploog & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 1-84576-137-5

The eighth volume of reprinted Marvel Conan stories is a true treat, as it features not just the magnificently recoloured artwork of John Buscema partnered with some of his most gifted inkers – Tom Palmer, Frank Springer, Pablo Marcos and Steve Gan – but also reprints one of the last comic stories of the tragically under-rated Mike Ploog. The book ends with Buscema, though, who returns to begin the epic “Queen of the Black Coast” story line that ran from issues #58 – 100 of the monthly comic book. Parts one and two can be found here along with issues #52 through 57.

Conan is undergoing something of a revival at the moment, both as prose and comic book character, not to mention all those figurines that could find homes on the shelves of the faithful, and there’s always the promise of another movie. Still and all, and whilst admitting my bias, if you can’t actually have more Robert E. Howard, you can’t do much better than these thumping good yarns that kept the legend alive in the long-ago, hip again 1970s.

© 1975, 2005 Conan Properties International, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Roy Thomas, John Buscema and others (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 1-84576-028-X

Volume 7 (issues #43 – 51) begins with shorter tales ‘Tower of Blood’, ‘Of Flame and Fiend’, and the eerily memorable ‘Last Ballad of Laza-Lanti’ before concentrating the remainder of the book (originally six issues) on a protracted and loving adaptation of ‘Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse’, originally penned by the prolific and justifiably legendary Gardner Fox, (if anybody deserves the title of Elder God of the comic book world it must be Fox!) with the cantankerous Cimmerian once again embroiled in a war between wizards and wading through totty and gore in equal amounts.

This is classic pulp/comic action in all its unashamed exuberance and should be a guilty pleasure for old time fans and newbies of all persuasion.

© 2005 Conan Properties International LLC. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Roy Thomas, John Buscema and others (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 1-84023-983-2

When Dark Horse acquired the comic book publishing rights to Robert E. Howard’s legendary Barbarian they not only began issuing new monthly adventures and adaptations. Supplementing their excellent monthly Conan comic with these lavishly recoloured reprintings of the character’s Marvel run must have seemed something of a risk, but the stories here stand up remarkably well.

Volume 6 (collecting issues #35 – 42) is brimming with scurrilous rogues and scarce-clad maidens, and lot and lots of action, as scribe Roy Thomas continued his then practise of adapting not only Howard’s prose output, but also the cream of whatever other pulp fiction he could lay fair claim to.

John Buscema’s epic artwork absolutely shines in this format, even with the inking of Ernie Chan, whose efforts seem to be an acquired taste for many fans. There’s an added treat for art lovers of a more naturalistic temperament with ‘The Curse of the Golden Skull’. Originally this was a fill-in issue, but illustrated by legendary comics iconoclast Neal Adams. After reading the excellent-as-usual Afterword by the author I can only squirm at the realisation of what a naive and sheltered child I must have been when first I read this little gem!

Buscema and Chan return for ‘The Warrior and the Were-Woman’, adapted from Howard’s “The House of Arabu”, and the all-original ‘Dragon from the Inland Sea’, both fine swords-and-sandals yarns, but Rich Buckler’s pinch-hitter pencilling on ‘The Fiend from the Forgotten City’, plotted by Michael Resnick, suffers a notable lack of panache and verve. Buscema’s return for the new tale ‘The Garden of Death and Life’, and especially the final tale ‘Night of the Gargoyle’ – adapted from Howard’s “The Purple Heart of Erlik” – bring the book to a close on a spooky, action packed note.

These classic tales, chromatically enhanced, are superb examples of the graphic sword-and-sorcery genre. For sheer exuberant fun, you really can’t do much better.

© 2005 Conan Properties International LLC. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Roy Thomas and John Buscema (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 1-84023-985-9

This volume, reprinting the original 1970s Marvel comic tales of Conan the Barbarian (issues #27 – 34), is the first all John Buscema package. He actually took over the drawing from Barry Windsor-Smith for the final chapters of the mega-epic ‘War of the Tarim’ – featured in the previous volume).

It features a much more “pulps” oriented style of episodic action – much of it based on writer Roy Thomas’ adaptations of R E Howard’s (and some other pulp writers) “heroic” rather than fantasy fiction. Also on show is the inking of long-time Conan illustrator Ernie Chua/Chan.

First up is ‘Blood of Bel-Hissar’, a tight tale of banditry, followed by the excellent Jungle horror story ‘Moon of Zembabwei’. ‘Two Against Turan’ sees Conan join the army of Howard’s analogue of an Arabic super-state (and how prescient was that?). The effete and ineffectual King Yildiz – father of Conan’s greatest human enemy, Yezdigerd – features in a tale that shows all of the barbarian’s most compelling qualities.

It is followed by ‘Hand of Nergal’, another mystic adventure and the first in this volume not taken directly from a Howard original, although it is from a Lin Carter novelette based on Howard’s notes.

‘Shadow in the Tomb’ has become something of an iconic Conan scenario due to the movies, but it’s a fairly standard monster and mayhem yarn. The chronicle concludes with a three chapter epic based on the novel Flame Winds by Norvell W. Page, author of most of the pulp adventures of The Spider, with Thomas substituting Conan for wandering crusader Prester John, and setting the tale in the fabulous Chinese equivalent of ‘Khitai’.

Despite the critical acclaim of the Windsor-Smith issues, the solid thriller tales represented here were the actual beginning of the sales phenomenon that Conan became. With the addition of glossy twenty-first century colouring techniques they read better than ever.

© 2004 Conan Properties International, LLC. All Rights Reserved.