Recently in Conan the Barbarian Category

One of my favorite Marvel magazines of all time was Savage Tales #2, featuring Barry Smith's Red Nails adaption.  I blogged about that giant-size wonder earlier this year.  Apparently Red Nails made Savage Tales a hit, and editor Roy Thomas commissioned Neal Adams to do three covers that would spin the magazine in a different direction.

Savage Tales #3 (1974) features Conan going berserk, about to behead another barbarian before he can defile that babe in the metal bikini.  I think it's terrific; Adams always excelled at portraying characters losing themselves in rage.  A painting like this could sell a comic, regardless of the content inside (which happened to be quite good in this case).  Adams also did a series of paintings for a line of Tarzan paperbacks, which again, were quite irresistible.

The baton was passed from Conan to Ka-Zar in Savage Tales #4 (1974).  If one barbarian magazine was successful, why not two?  (If one Deadpool book is successful, if one Wolverine book is successful, if one X-Men book...you get the idea.)  This was Conan's last appearance in Savage Tales before Roy Thomas spun him off in his own super-giant magazine, Savage Sword of Conan.  It would be up to Ka-Zar and Zabu to carry ST forward.  Zabu looks very intimidating here, doesn't he?

This cover always made me think that a time travelling team-up between Conan and Ka-Zar would have been a nifty idea.

Ka-Zar took cover the masthead in Savage Tales #5 (1974), with another rip-roaring cover.  Within this painting, Adams captured all the elements that should make Ka-Zar a fantastic series.  He's surrounded by prehistoric creatures, about to get his chest ripped to shreds, with Zabu the Sabretooth Tiger as his backup.  And the requisite modern babe in the foreground waiting to be rescued.  Shanna the She-Devil and SHIELD agent Bobbi Morse (who later became Mockingbird) joined Ka-Zar in subsequent issues.

Notice also that the figures of Ka-Zar and Zabu from issue #4 were used on the corner masthead.  Nuff said.

If you were a Conan fan in the early 1970s, most likely you wailed when Barry Smith left the series, no matter how much you liked John Buscema.  Where there are a large number of fans who feel Buscema is the superior Conan artist, he was always a strong second choice for me.  Barry Smith left the color comic with the Song of Red Sonja, then he returned briefly for the epic Red Nails in Savage Tales.  After that, aside from pinups and posters, we never saw Smith on Conan again.

Roy Thomas found another artist—Tim Conrad—who briefly appeared to be Smith’s successor.

Conrad made a splash in the Savage Sword of Conan with a two part Bran Mak Morn story that blew us all away.  I kept hoping that Conrad would eventually draw Conan regularly—but all we got was this cover from the Marvel Comics Index series.  What happened to Tim Conrad after his Savage Sword stories?  I’ve lost track.  Nuff said.

Gil Kane excelled at drawing sword-fighting characters in high fantasy settings.  He published a creator-owned graphic novel titled Blackmark in 1974 and turned DC's hero Ray Palmer into a sword wielding character in Sword of the Atom.  Kane seemed like a natural fit for Marvel's version of Conan, and he worked well with Roy Thomas in Conan the Barbarian #17-18.  When it came time to launch the quarterly Giant-Size Conan series, Thomas tapped Kane as the penciller.

Giant-Size Conan #1 was 50 pages of glorious entertainment.  The lead story was a 25-page chapter (The Hour of the Dragon) from the novel Conan the Conqueror; the backup story was a reprint of an early Barry Smith issue; Thomas wrote a couple of text pieces and included another Hyborian Age map as well.  Set during the later years of Conan's life, he's conquered the kingdom of Aquilonia and seemingly ready to settle down.  His enemies have only plans, as you can see by the cover, where Conan is attacked by an invading army.  The plan was to adapt this novel over the first six issues, but Giant-Size Conan #4 was the last full color chapter.  The story was concluded in Savage Sword of Conan #8 and #10.

Kane was inked by Tom Sutton on the first three issues.  It's interesting how well Kane worked with a variety of inkers--Sutton brought his own art style but kept the essence of Kane's work intact.

While Giant-Size Conan faded away, Kane continued to draw covers for the regular Conan the Barbarian color comic.  Conan #30 might have been the second comic I bought featuring the barbarian, after I became enamored with King-Size Conan Annual #1.  Kane is inked by Ernie Chan on this cover.  Conan's stance on a slanted hill, swinging his sword, is a dynamic pose.  The giant bat drawn on a separate color plate and the girl he's saving are pretty cool, too.

Conan #48 is another eerie scene featuring the character attacking an army while the specter of Death looks upon him.  All three of these covers feature Conan fighting on battlefields, loaded with details on the armor, horses, soldiers, etc.  Perhaps I am reading more into it to assume that Kane was a bit more excited to draw Conan than regular super-hero characters?  I think I've read that before in numerous interviews.  Nuff said.

Every once in a while, I get obsessed with a crazy idea.  Sometimes, it is related to work and that is a good thing, as I will knock myself out trying to write some C# code that makes everything work better.

And sometimes, it is something related to comics.  Like, I have to have a mouse-pad with my favorite Giant-Size cover of all time, Giant-Size Defenders #1:

I'm so happy with this, a little collectible that only I have.  How did I make it?  I tried a number of websites in vain.  Zazzle rejected my content because they were copyrighted images.  Finally I just decided to go to Fedex.com's Photo Services site and create my own.  Just upload the scan of the cover and you are done.  I don't believe it is illegal as I am not selling this to anyone else.

Since you save on postage if you get two mouse-pads at the same time, I also had my favorite King-Size Conan Annual #1 made:

Obsession complete, my mind can go back to something resembling work.  Nuff said.

I described about how I fell in love with the world of Conan the Cimmerian after buying that King-Size Annual.  I was surprised, when I started reading the regular Conan series, that Barry Smith no longer drew it.  The art was handled by John Buscema, who I also liked, but I wanted Barry Smith.  Would he ever return to Conan?  I only had a to wait a few months in 1973 to see this Marvel house ad…

Whoa, big news!  I had heard fables and whispers about Savage Tales #1, which appeared two years earlier.  Apparently few people were able to buy it.  Savage Tales #2 was a very big deal indeed, as we read on the Bullpen Bulletins page…

If this did not stoke the fires enough to get us excited, there was Roy Thomas’ special editorial in Conan the Barbarian #30…

Note that in the editorial, Roy makes reference to a common occurrence in comics.  Whenever a popular artist leaves a series, no matter how good the replacement is, the readers always hate him and demand the previous guy come back.  John Buscema turned out to be very good indeed on Conan and drove sales to record heights.

I was on the lookout for Savage Tales #2 for at least a month, and then I saw this cover in the magazine section of The Book Cache in Anchorage, Alaska:

Now there’s a remarkable thing about this cover.  It’s painted by John Buscema!  I think this may be the only painting he did for the Marvel magazines.  I thought I had read somewhere that John Romita had done a cover rough sketch and Buscema did the rest.  Now open up the cover and see the table of contents page…

This was done in the style of many Marvel magazines, with a nice illustration accompanying the contents listing.  The drawing of Conan on a moonlit night is wonderful, drawn by Pablo Marcos, who I already knew about from Tales of the Zombie.  Now let’s flip forward a few pages to see if Barry Smith is really in this issue…

Oh.  My.  God.  Not only is Barry back, he’s better than ever.  The composition on this splash page is spectacular.  Smith’s detailed line work can be appreciated in full glory, without the four-color process muddying it up in any way.  I’ve seen Red Nails colored for both the Marvel Treasury and Dark Horse collected editions, but the color just seems to me to mess it up.  Red Nails must be appreciated in black and white, just like Citizen Kane or Manhattan.  The Red Nails logo and lettering are amazing.  Now as far as the story itself…

Better than most movie-blockbusters at the time.  The longer format of the magazine allowed Thomas and Smith to slow down the pacing and make the action more intense.  There’s a scene where Conan and Valeria are chased by a dragon.  Valeria stumbles and twists her ankle.  Conan carries her and runs, then when the dragon is almost upon them, hurls Valeria away, turns around and slices into that creature’s head.  Wow!  Each page of this story was worth drooling over.  The story had a kinky turn when Conan and Valeria stumble into a castle, where a witch has plans to make them human sacrifices.  And it was only part 1.  Part 2 would appear in Savage Tales #3.

When Red Nails took a break, there’s was still plenty more to read.  There was this Robert E. Howard poem, illustrated by Barry Smith.  These were reproduced from Smith’s pencils:

I don’t think I appreciated poetry until I read this.  You can judge it as a good or bad poem, but somehow Smith made poetry look cool.  I remember from this point on, wanting to explore more poetry from people like TS Elliott and Gary Snyder.  Robert E. Howard must have a been a man who suffered from depression, as he committed suicide shortly after his mother died.  The words in this poem sound very bleak, I think there is some indication here of his mental outlook.

If Barry Smith wasn’t enough to set this issue on fire, there was an additional story featuring King Kull, drawn by Berni Wrightson!  It was a reprint, but I had missed it the first time it appeared in Creatures on the Loose #10.  Creatures on the Loose used to be called Tower of Shadows.  Wrightson originally drew a cover for the original title, but it had to be replaced when the title was changed.  Thomas reprinted the cover here.  It’s early Wrightson, but early Wrightson is better than most people today.  Later, Wrightson would join Barry Smith at “The Studio” where they would share space for their drawings/paintings.

Now let’s go to the end of Savage Tales #2, for the cherry on top of the cake…

Even the next issue teaser page was incredible!  I cannot get over how good this looks.  Perhaps it was an illustration that Smith did for something else and it was used here.  You can see here Marvel’s aggressive scheduling in effect, promising that the next issue would be available the end of September 1973.  Savage Tales #3 would not appear on newsstands until late February 1974.  The delay was well worth it, Red Nails was completed by Smith and turned out to be a masterpiece.

I cannot tell you how many times I read this issue as a kid!  So much entertainment, well worth the “six bits” I spent.  I have bought many different collections with Red Nails in it, but no edition is better than the original Savage Tales magazine.  Nuff said.

I never thought I would ever read a comic about a barbarian in a million years.  I saw Conan on the newsstands and passed it by every time…until one day in 1973, I saw this incredible cover to King-Size Conan Annual #1.

Now that’s a cover that makes a barbarian look super mofo cool.  Conan’s glaring at the reader as if they were his enemy, daring them to take him on.  He’s got gobs of tiny nicks and cuts over his body, beads of sweat, and he is carrying an axe and a bloodied sword as well!  The detailed line work is amazing.  I love the swirling (fog or magic?) around his ankles, the cobblestone streets.  And that signature by Barry Smith!  I had never seen any artist sign his work so creatively.

Here’s another look at the cover with a different color scheme:

I still prefer the original King-Size cover.  It got me to buy that annual and run home to read the stories: Lair of the Beast-Men and Tower of the Elephant!  The latter tale had a shattering ending that left me completely hooked into Conan.  I bought everything from that point on: Conan’s regular title, Savage Tales, Savage Sword of Conan, and, of course, Giant-Size Conan.

But what was this “Academy Award” that Conan had won?  Rascally Roy explains it all in The Hyborian Page!

The Academy of Comic Book Arts existed in the early 1970s.  They did many things for the good of comic book professionals, but they also handed out awards, which Conan won, in 1970 and 1971.  What I really dig about this editorial page is Roy Thomas’ style of explaining all these things to the reader, a bit less egotistical than Stan Lee used to, but it really got me excited.  The map down below definitely peaked my interest in Conan’s world, and that red-head in the panels (Red Sonja) definitely made me want to buy more Conan comics.

Bravo, Barry Smith and Roy Thomas!  Nuff said.