Sometimes when I cover comics on here, I get a negative comment that I pretty much agree with. It's that I usually focus a little bit too much on authors: Roy Thomas, Michael Fleisher, Chuck Dixon, Christopher Priest, Jim Zub... and too little on the great illustrators of those comics. I'll try to take a step in the right direction with that here today, because the Marvel Graphic Novel Conan the Rogue is The John Buscema Show.

Buscema is an interesting character in the Marvel chapter of Conan the Barbarian. To hear him tell it, he doesn't even really like comics very much, especially not superhero comics. I watched an interview where he said he was assigned to draw Amazing Spider-Man for seven issues and despised it. Hated Spider-Man, hated all the supporting characters. Who doesn't like Spider-Man? Big John B, I guess.

The one thing that John liked to draw at Marvel was Conan, and it shows in his body of work. He drew nearly 150 issues of Conan the Barbarian. He drew dozens upon dozens of issues of Savage Sword of Conan, King Conan, and did the daily strip for a while. He preferred the more naturalistic style of the Hyborian Age than drawing rocket ships.

Even when Buscema was doing Conan, he wasn't always satisfied with the results. He was picky about who inked his work and the resulting pages. 

Within the comic book creation process, Buscema would sometimes do pencils, which in comic terms meant producing fully-completed pencil sketches with line work and shadows, and could do about three or three and a half pages a day. 

Other times, he would do just the layouts or "breakdowns," which were only incomplete pencil sketches without blacks or shadows, leaving the rest to his inker. Buscema was adamant that he really only did this out of necessity to keep up with the pace that the books came out. He would've liked to ink his own drawings. Whoever was inking his work- for good or ill- always left their own mark on the image, and I'm sure you can see why John wasn't always a fan. I'm completely ripping this comparison idea off from the book Big John Buscema: Comics & Drawings, where they zeroed-in on several different inks over specifically Conan's eyes. All of the following are penciled by John Buscema.

Buscema's Conan is strong, balanced, and muscular. He draws him with more dynamism than Gil Kane did, though they both draw Conan more like an action figure than the pantherish youth that Barry Windsor-Smith drew. He doesn't really go in for the "square-cut" black mane. While I know it's not the most faithful representation of Howard's Conan, he's kind of become the platonic ideal for the modern Cimmerian.

During Roy Thomas's second run on Savage Sword, he crafted, from what I can tell, is the only story credit he ever got on a Conan book. Seeing Buscema's name listed before Roy's feels a little bit like reading "Garfunkel & Simon," "Tails & Sonic," or "Jelly & Peanut Butter." Unfortunately, Marvel didn't seem inclined to push the book. It had a small print run, low sales, and is pretty hard to come by today. I had to buy mine for $115, and even then it's in pretty rough shape. But it was worth it! Conan the Rogue may be Buscema's very best work on the character he's most associated with!

Conan the Rogue, which is plotted, drawn, colored, and inked by John Buscema (it's very rare you see the artist credited for "Art & Color by..." in a comic) and then scripted by his longtime collaborator Roy Thomas, is set almost entirely at Fort Ghori south of the Vilayet Sea. Conan gets thrown out of a tavern and somewhat accidentally ends up in the employ of a local governor named Tarsu Khan. Khan's life has been threatened by his brother and a scheming vizier hoping to foment a war between city-states that will ultimately allow them both to move up the chain of command. Too bad the big guy gets in the way.

Unlike a lot of political intrigue in comics where you see the twists coming from a mile off, it's densely-plotted and well-scripted enough to obfuscate exactly whose plans will come to fruition while Conan's around. The politicking doesn't become the main focus of the book though, and the ending shifts drastically toward a more traditional Conan adventure.

Take a look at the page below. I think the worst thing you could say about Buscema's art- usually- is that his panel layouts are a little less than elegantly-thought-out and he compensates by adding arrows to let you know which panel should come next. That happens pretty frequently in Conan the Barbarian and it always seems like a cop-out to me, poor panel design if we're being honest, but here, he's doing the same thing, this time to his advantage.

Our suspense is held as the door slowly opens to reveal the giant Romm, who we see essentially from his victim's perspective as he ducks his head to slink into the coliseum. Our flow then snakes left on the page to his defiant last words and the reader's eye ends on Romm, towering over him. The long shot from a side perspective makes the size comparison easy. The next thing we get is the weapon snapping our eye back to the right as he cleaves the skull in half, and we get to see all the carnage of it. It's like your eye floats back and forth down the page, like a swinging mace.

In fact, most of Big John's work here is no-holds-barred. Even Savage Sword, despite its freedom from the Comics Code, didn't usually delight in gore and bloodshed. However, check out Lord Nassidren's head here, impaled and caved-in.

Buscema considered Conan the Rogue to be some of his best work, if not the best of his career, and I'm inclined to agree. His poses are perfect and his character designs are immediately striking. As the book moves out of the Fort Ghori outpost's relatively civilized setting into the "Nightmare Swamp" (fuck yeah), we get some disgusting moss zombie creatures and the book finishes really strong.

Throughout the title, his line work is rough in a way that makes the book feel ragged at the edges and lived-in, while his colors (watercolors? I'm not exactly an art expert) look much better than the traditionally-colored Conan the Barbarian title. They're more natural and muted than the gaudy pinks and yellows of the monthly book.

I think my favorite panel is Conan diving across a parade, pulling Tarsu Khan out of the way of oncoming arrows. The motion feels so fluid that it momentarily feels like it transcends static images. I could stare at the muted teals, browns, and tans all day.

If you approach Conan the Rogue wanting the best, most unique plot of all Conan stories, I don't think you'll find it here. But if you approach the graphic novel with an appreciation for John Buscema and you want to see what he can do outside of the confines of the usual system, this is a book you need to read. He had a few issues of Savage Sword left to do, but I'd say it's fair to consider the Rogue John's Conan swan song. An aging master who hasn't lost a step, finally being given a chance to really throw his weight around? This is a wonderful example of what comic art can be.

I like Roy Thomas and his Conan work. I would bet that you like Roy Thomas and his Conan work. 

But you know who really likes Roy Thomas's Conan work? 

Roy Thomas.

Actually, that sounds mean. Let me rephrase it. There is a Roy Thomas version of the life of Conan of Cimmeria built through issues of Conan the Barbarian, Savage Sword, and King Conan. As far as I can tell, this timeline consists of the original Robert E. Howard stories, the L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter pastiches (he adapted most of the REH and de Camp stories anyway), as well as the original issues that Roy wrote throughout the 70s. And this timeline is the only one Roy uses. Not only that, but he usually goes out of his way to signal to you that a story is set in the Roy Thomas / Marvel Comics / whatever you want to call it timeline.

This timeline largely follows the one de Camp laid out with the Lancer and Ace novels, but features some notable additions that Roy usually mentions. His version frequently makes use of the original characters Red Sonja, Zula, Turgohl, and Fafnir. It expands the role of Juma and Gonar from other stories. He always makes note of his War of the Tarim era and he expanded the "Queen of the Black Coast" era to a years-old epic that included Bêlit regaining the throne of Asgalun.

He'll signal that he's using this timeline in a few ways. When he returned to Savage Sword of Conan after ten years away, his whole first issue is essentially a recap of the Roy Thomas version of Conan's life up to that point. It leaves out anything not covered in his original tenure, and Roy claims a profound disinterest in other peoples' versions of Conan, meaning he claims to have never read the other stuff anyway. Check out the panel below that artist John Buscema drew from Savage Sword #190 as a nod to Conan #93. 

In that same issue, there's a bit of continuity between when he left the book and when he returned. The last adaptation of a de Camp story he did (in issue #60) was "The Ivory Goddess," and SSOC picks up at #190 soon after, with the Barachan pirate era. 

Roy did the same thing other times when he returned to the title, like when he wrote a prequel to Conan the Barbarian #1 in King Size Conan #1, fifty years after the original. In 2024, for Titan's Savage Sword #7 (it's not even a Marvel book anymore and he's still referencing his own Marvel timeline) the opening line of his issue lets you know that it takes place shortly after Conan #28, featuring Helgi and the War of the Tarim.

I could go on and on. 

I tell you all this to set up Roy's Marvel Graphic Novel output from 1992: The Ravagers Out of Time. The final Marvel Graphic Novel that Roy collaborated on, and actually the final MGN featuring Conan, Roy lets you know pretty quickly that we're playing in his sandbox here. Most of the MGN Conan stories aren't tied too directly to any existing Cimmerian stuff. You can assume they take place in the same universe as all the other late-20th-century Marvel comics, but they're largely their own stories. Not The Ravagers Out of Time.

Ravagers is a sequel to Conan the Barbarian #37, drawn by Neal Adams for an April 1974 release. In the issue, Conan and Juma are captured by Rotath of Lemuria, a King Kull villain revived in the Hyborian Age. Enslaved, the two heroes are put to work in a mine. This is the reason why the issue is notable: Neal Adams drew a giant, man-eating slug that looked like a vulva (many people say on purpose) and Roy was seriously apprehensive that it would get censored by the Comics Code Authority. It didn't, apparently. Evil Rotath gets absorbed by the slug.

This is where Ravagers Out of Time picks up. Chronolgically speaking, this comic takes place during Conan's kozak / Free Companion days some time around "The Devil in Iron" or "Iron Shadows in the Moon." He's clearly pretty eastward, harrying the outskirts of the empire of Turan. Looking for treasure, Conan and co. come across that giant slug again, but it's evident that Rotath's mind has taken over the giant slug. Oh yeah, and it's gold now because of Rotath's golden bones. It flings them back into the Thurian Age to attack King Kull so that Rotath can take Kull's body as his own instead of being stuck in the slug.

It's a real Roy Thomas Special! It's got Red Sonja! It's got Gonar! It adapts a Kull story into a Conan story! It's explicitly tied to an original Conan the Barbarian issue! The only way it could get any more Roy'd-up (Roy'ded? I feel like there's a good pun in there somewhere) is if it used the word "selfsame."

Look, I'm afraid I'm being too mean again. The Ravagers Out of Time is good! And it's certainly much better than some of the other Marvel Graphic Novels. Mike Docherty's art never had a chance against the great Neal Adams, but the art in this book is also noticeably better than some of its peers.

In a sense, while this story is as Roy Thomas as they come, it also feels a bit like it's doing the same thing that Jim Zub does from time to time on Conan today. It weaves together Howard characters from both Conan's epoch and Kull's, and it gives each of them a Gonar the Pict who act as mysterious forces uniting different periods in time. Truth be told, it's a pretty similar idea to what Jim is doing with the Scourge of the Serpent mini-series right now (which will release its final issue literally today, 7 January 2026).

Do you like Jim Zub's Conan work? Do you like Roy Thomas's Conan work? Then you'll probably like The Ravagers Out of Time. Certainly not a showstopper, but a fun adventure that deepens a little bit when you try to trace all of its roots. It's become almost a running joke when I talk about the MGNs for me to complain that I didn't get my money's worth. Well, of course it happens that one of the good ones was one I didn't buy for myself, but my wife got it for me for Christmas. Gonar the Pict knows how cruel the fates can be.
​
★★★☆☆

The table was probably set by Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" comics in 1971. The New Gods, Mister Miracle, and The Forever People established that DC was ready to do comics outside of the superhero genre. Marvel had recently had success with Conan the Barbarian, The Savage Sword of Conan, and the other characters in Savage Tales like Man-Thing and Ka-Zar the Savage through a loosening of the Comics Code Authority. DC was about to play catch-up.

The 1970s, making up the first two-thirds of the Bronze Age of Comics, was a time of great change for the entire comic book industry, but in retrospect, Marvel Comics certainly was weathering those changes better than DC. In fact, Marvel was surging while DC laggged.

Key talent moved between companies in unexpected ways like Kirby jumping ship from Marvel to DC. Marvel's higher page rates were enticing writers and artists to try their hand there even with Jim Shooter's management style that some staffers considered suffocating.

Royalties agreements and labor disputes changed the entirety of how the backstage world of comic creation worked.

The "DC Explosion" was the name given to the publishing initiative that arrived in the mid-1970s (some people say it really began as early as 1975, but the more agreed-upon date is in 1978). DC began publishing way, way more comics. Between '75 and '78, a whopping thirty new titles would hit shelves, many of which would be published after just a handful of issues, some of which would be cancelled after just a single issue, and even more would be cancelled before they ever even went to print. Many of those were printed in DC's two-issue ashcan book, Cancelled Comic Cavalcade, to maintain the rights. Quickly, as most titles were cancelled (even fucking Detective Comics of all books was on the chopping block), DC laid off almost half of its staff. It went down in history as the "DC Implosion." They kind of walked into that one.

And out of this time, we got a couple of pretty-good sword & sorcery comics that always seemed to be a step or five behind Marvel's.

One of DC's first attempts at an answer to Conan was a series entitled Sword of Sorcery, adapting Fritz Leiber heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It had an absolute murderer's row of talent behind it: Denny O'Neil, Howard Chaykin, Walt Simonson, and Jim Starlin, but only lasted for five issues before it was canned. Around that time, editor Carmine Infantino demanded, "I need two more sword & sorcery books. One's coming out in Jauary, you're two months late on it and one's out in February. You're only one month late on it." Paul Levitz and Spidey co-creator Steve Ditko ended up with the assignment, turning it into Stalker, a Michael Moorcock pastiche which lasted only four issues.

DC's first moderate success came in 1973 when Mike Grell marched into DC's office with the plan to pitch a sword & sorcery adventure strip called Savage Empire. He'd been working on it for years, and he envisioned it as his answer to Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs. DC editorial told him he was about 15 years too late, but had him pitch it to Carmine Infantino anyway. As he was about to open his mouth to make his presentation, he couldn't help but think that DC would own every aspect of Savage Empire if they decided to buy it, so he pivoted.

He, on the spot, completely made up a new series. It had echoes of Savage Empire in it, along with Burroughs's Pellucidar series and even M*A*S*H, and importantly, wasn't signing his long-gestating Savage Empire away. He called it The Warlord.

In The Warlord, Air Force pilot Travis Morgan accidentally discovers the Hollow Earth when returning home from a spying mission, dropping him in Skartaris: the land of eternal sunlight. It distinguishes itself from other sword & sorcery by making heavy use of science fiction themes as wells as S&S; there are ancient Atlantean computers and Morgan wields not only a sword but a pistol usually as well. The Warlord is pretty fucking awesome, and does quite a bit to make sure that it's not mistaken for a Conan clone. DC could now directly compete with Marvel's fantasy books.

Two issues in, Warlord was cancelled and Mike Grell was pissed. "[Infantino] can't do that!" he protested, "He promised me a one-year run!" But shortly thereafter, Jenette Kahn took the role of publisher and asked where Warlord was, for it was one of the books she had liked. When she was told Infantino had cancelled it, she said, "Well, Carmine's not here anymore. Put it back," and The Warlord returned to publication with an eight-month gap between issues #2 and #3. Warlord is mostly fantastic, and it's unique in the world of American comics as being largely a product of just one author and artist, more along the lines of how mangaka draw in Japan.

As an insert in Warlord #48, DC tried their hand at another new sword & sorcery character, this time using Mr. Conan the Barbarian himself, Roy Thomas. Roy had left Marvel in 1980 and now in 1981 was working for DC, so they set him to work trying to recreate some of the magic he made for the competition. The creation was Arak, Son of Thunder, featuring a Native American hero who ends up discovering Europe before European colonists arrive in the Americas.

Arak starts out as painfully similar to Conan, but distinguished himself over time. Roy Thomas claims today that it was hard not to base the adventures in the framework created by Robert E. Howard since he was the godfather of the genre. But ultimately Arak started to sport a mohawk rather than long hair and became less of a rip. It's fun to see Arak meet historical figures like Charlemagne, and people often bring up that he was noticeably well-depicted, at least in comparison to other Native American heroes of his day. His self-titled book ran for fifty issues before getting the axe.

In the same Warlord issue insert that spawned Arak, DC tried their hand at another sword & sorcery hero, this time in a self-titled book called Claw the Unconquered. Claw can be fun, but was certainly less successful than Arak.

Created by eventual Marvel great David Michelinie (have you read his whole Amazing Spider-Man run, not just the Venom stuff? It's fantastic!) and frequent Conan artist/inker Ernie Chan, Claw is almost indistinguishable from the Cimmerian. Yes, he has a demon hand ("The Hand of Nergal," anyone?) that's covered up by a metal gauntlet, but that's about it. Clad in a white loincloth instead of a brown one, Claw spends a few issues wondering about his true origins while having some barbarian adventures in a land nearly identical to the Hyborian Age. Had someone recolored his loincloth and changed a few proper nouns, you wouldn't realize you weren't reading a Marvel book. That's not to say it's a terrible time, on the contrary, it's halfway-decent, but it does almost nothing to allow Claw to make a distinct impression.

At least he doesn't overstay his welcome; DC axed Claw the Unconquered after issue #12.

DC had a few other S&S randos over the years: Starfire (no, not that Starfire) spun off of Claw for eight issues. The adapted the English myth Beowulf for six issues.

Some of these characters have popped up here and there in other versions over the years, but most of them have remained as forgotten as they were short. DC ended up weathering the bronze age and then ushering in the Copper Age of Comics in 1986 where they dominated. Their fantasy characters today don't really have any sword & sorcery traces in them, but they're no longer trying to compete with Conan.

Okay, I'm kind of cheating a little bit with this one. This issue isn't some diamond in the rough that nobody's read or discussed, but it's got a great story (behind it as well as between the pages).

L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter published "The Thing in the Crypt" in the paperback collection Conan in 1967. Outside of the speculation that it probably originated as a draft of a future Thongor story, it was a wholly original little jaunt published alongside some other excellent early-life Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, and a few acceptable de Camp / Carter pastiches.

"The Thing in the Crypt," is, for my money at least, a seriously top-of-the-pile Conan pastiche. It's brisk, creepy, thematically consistent with Howard, and a whole lot of fun to read.

Six years after it came out, Roy Thomas was writing Conan the Barbarian for Marvel Comics and had convinced Glenn Lord of the Howard estate to let him adapt a couple of REH tales into the comic series. He was working on obtaining the rights of some others- Lin Carter had allowed it for "The Hand of Nergal" a few issues prior, but de Camp wasn't so sure. Thomas wanted to depict "Thing in the Crypt" as a flashback episode to take place between Conan #2 and #3, which is a little odd seeing as he considered the story to be a "lesser" de Camp story. When writing about the story, he didn't even seem that interested in it. As de Camp dragged his feet, Roy said, "Fuck it."

He decided to create his own crypt story that would replace "The Thing in the Crypt" for the Marvel continuity. When wondering what he should have Conan fight in the ancient tomb to differentiate his new version from the de Camp story, his wife Jean suggested, "Why don't you have him fight his own shadow?" Roy ran with that idea and ended up creating "The Shadow on the Tomb!" for Conan the Barbarian #31.

"The Shadow on the Tomb!" is fun, but a little sillier than the original. I think Roy's choice to connect the story to his current continuity via the frame narrative was a great choice- it feels less random and it's more unique than just having Conan fuck up by activating a curse and then run his ass out of there. It helps make it less of an adaptation and more of an original yarn.

And then just five years later, Marvel Comics had a new contract with L. Sprague de Camp that allowed them to adapt any of the Conan pastiches they wanted. For some reason, Roy decided to revisit "The Thing in the Crypt" instead of any of the other pastiches in the library. It worked out from the perspective of the Marvel office- John Buscema was out on vacation, so they needed a "filler" episode as they did from time to time. But instead of reprinting an old story, Roy enlisted Big John's little brother, Sal Buscema, to go back to the crypt. Sal is, at times, indistinguishable from his his brother anyway.

​Within the continuity of the book, it made no sense for them to adapt this story here- the end of Conan and Bêlit's adventures were heating up and they were about to attempt a coup in the city of Asgalun, but instead, we looked backward 7 years and returned to some of Conan's earliest adventures.

Roy and Sal had an entirely self-inflicted problem on their hands now: what to do with the fact that they now had two nearly identical stories in which a young Conan, fleeing enemies in the frozen north, disturbs a cursed tomb by moving a magical sword and then has to do battle with a sentry? They decided to go with the simplest, and probably least-elegant solution. Both stories would be canonical to the Marvel continuity. They added some caption boxes at the beginning noting that issue #92 would take place between Conan #2 and #3, and then added a caption at the end saying that Conan probably lost this magical sword, leaving him open to needing another just a few days later.

​Whatever, man.

Like the prose story it's based on, Conan the Barbarian #92 opens with the young Cimmerian running at full speed from a pack of ravenous wolves. While it's a great opening, I think the most interesting thing about page one is that the credits read that the issue is by "Roy Thomas & Ernie Chan," with a special guest penciller, Sal Buscema. I don't think I've ever seen the inker elevated to the spot next to the writer where the penciller usually is.

Conan quickly dives into the titular crypt where the wolves apparently dare not to tread... instead, they just whimper outside of it. And here's the moment that originally made me think, "Maybe I need to blog about this issue:" the following pages are completely monochrome, with only black outlines and blue coloring, to simulate darkness. Roy, and perhaps the Marvel staff in general, called these "knockout panels." When I first read that, I thought it meant that they were meant to knock the socks off the reader since they're such a departure from usual coloring. But I think it's far more likely that they got that name because they're so quick and easy for the colorist to "knock out." Anyway, colorist George Roussos deserves his flowers.

As Conan's campfire rages, the backgrounds have shifted from blue to magenta, and as Conan flips the sentry into the fire, the panels are filled with a red-orange glow that engulfs the page and I'm hoping that George Roussos got a raise or something. He worked as an inker in addition to a colorist and worked with all the greats like Jack Kirby, so I'm sure he wouldn't even remember this issue if I could ask him about it today (he died in 2000).

In the final panels, Conan is bathed in a red and yellow that looks incredible, like a sunset, as he steps away from the crypt. It's a gorgeous ending to a gorgeous comic.

​Clumsily, Roy's final caption box stutters out, "Yeah, um, I know it's weird, but Conan was soon captured by a second group of Hyperborean slavers and had a very similar experience, but this time with a shadow! Please do not invent trade paperbacks so that these stories are never republished and easily compared." At least, that's how I think it went. I didn't go back and check.

Roy Thomas didn't love "The Thing in the Crypt," but ended up adapting it twice. In terms of pop culture representation, it may be the most-often depicted non-REH Conan story. It also inspired a scene in the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger film. It appeared again in the live action Conan the Adventurer TV show. And just about every sword and sorcery fan noticed the parallels between this and the "mound dweller" scene in Robert Eggers's The Northman.

Because of all of those, I think it's fair to say that there's something about the story that really resonates with readers.

When Conan the Barbarian returned to its regularly-scheduled programming in issue #93, it would be careening toward the end of the Conan & Bêlit saga that he had been writing for 40 issues. It was its last grasp at greatness before Roy left.

In May of 1975, the double-length comic book Giant-Size X-Men #1 landed with a clang on newsstands. True to its title, Giant-Size was thicker than your average comic, but it was also trying to sell something big: a new era of the X-Men, a team nobody cared about at the time. The X-Men title had been a shambling corpse for years, simply publishing reprints of old stories for 28 issues in a row. Giant-Size was meant to revive the mutants.

Truth be told, a lot of it had to do with diversifying the cast to sell more comics to different markets. Members of this new "Second Genesis" X-Men team would be from all over the world: Canada, Russia, Germany, Kenya, Ireland, and Japan. It was a lot different than the five upper-crusty, blond, white kids from New York that comprised the old team.

Among the creative team was Len Wein, who got the writing credit on the issue, as well as twenty-four year-old newcomer from Long Island Chris Claremont, who had contributed a couple of ideas to the plotting. Pulling the X-Men out of reprints was part of Giant-Size's goal, so it would need a writer on the regular Uncanny X-Men book. Len Wein realized as soon as Giant-Size was done that he was too busy to take on that responsibility as well.

Len decided to offer the gig to Chris. Claremont had done well in his limited time at Marvel, but was untested, and Len Wein figured that none of the more experienced writers at Marvel would have their feathers ruffled by the offer since X-Men was a low-tier title. Len didn't feel like he was missing out by dropping it, but Chris was excited. He remembers accepting Len's offer by proclaiming, "Shit-yes!"

Chris and Len worked out that Chris would write the new X-Men book for six issues. He figured that would be all. 

In fact, Chris was happy to have that. The comics industry was dying, he thought. "Nobody bought comics. It was a dying industry, and we knew it. Nobody cared. We were just there to have fun. We all figured by 1980 we'd all be out looking for a real job," he said. What Chris couldn't have known was that he was about to revitalize not only Marvel Comics, but the comics industry as a whole, and become one of its all-time greatest creators.

For the next several years, Chris entered what pop music critics call an "imperial period." Everything he did was insanely well-reviewed and sold insanely well. It would be an understatement to say that he revolutionized what people thought of when they thought of the X-Men. He fucking obliterated what had come before. He turned the X-Men's 1960s into a footnote so much so that it acquired a new epithet: "Classic X-Men," to differentiate it from the real, modern "X-Men." When you think of the X-Men, if you're not thinking of Cyclops, Jean Gray, Beast, or the word "mutant," you're probably thinking of one of Claremont's creations. He invented the heroes Shadowcat, the Phoenix, Gambit, Rogue, Emma Frost, Jubilee, Psylocke, Cable, Northstar, Captain Britain, Sunspot, Warpath, Cannonball, and Moira MacTaggart as well as the villains Sabretooth, Pyro, Mr. Sinister, Mystique, Madelyne Pryor, Lady Deathstrike, and the Hellfire Club. Being responsible for just one or two of those would be enough to enshrine you in X-Men history.

​The X-Men films, which themselves helped transform the film industry in regards to comic book movies, are almost all based on his works in some way.

In just a few short years, Chris, along with artist John Byrne, had produced many of what are still some of the most iconic storylines in not only X-Men history, but Marvel history in general. They produced "The Dark Phoenix Saga," "Days of Future Past," and "God Loves, Man Kills," not to mention developing Wolverine into the single most popular mutant of all time and probably the second-most famous Marvel character of all, right behind Spider-Man.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, Chris Claremont found the time to write one, single issue of The Savage Sword of Conan.

Issue #74, with its A-story feature written by Claremont and a backup by Roy Thomas, was published in January of 1982, about a year and a half after Roy Thomas had quit Marvel and Savage Sword had entered a tumultuous period (which I have written extensively about). 

Savage Sword #74 came right at the end of that tumult, when the Michael Fleisher era was dawning on the title. But out of the blue, here comes Chris Claremont, who, as far as I can tell, had never touched Conan with a ten-foot pole before. I wonder if it was Louise Simonson, editor on both the Conan titles and the X-books, who brought Claremont over to Savage Sword. There's a quote that made its way around social media last year that is attributed to Claremont. It says, “In terms of characterization, [Wolverine]'s a lineal descendant of Conan... Wolverine is a Cimmerian. Lock, stock, and barrel. If Conan and Wolverine met on the street they would be relating to each other like looking into a funhouse mirror at distorted images of themselves Wolverine is out of place and out of time. He's a classic Howard character.” Now, I can't find any verifiable source that Claremont said that, so it's probably fake. But it's right.

Perhaps that's why this issue is so excellent- Claremont already had experience turning the savage Wolverine into a beloved character, so he knew what he was doing. The two would have an incredible meeting in Gerry Duggan's Savage Avengers 40 years later.

As Savage Sword #74 opens, Conan is on his way through the northern reaches of a mountain range: perhaps Brythunia, Nemedia, or the Border Kingdom that lay close to Cimmeria. He checks in at a remote inn and pays for his stay in fine furs he's hunted. 

He is struck during his revels by unhappy memories of childhood. A former friend named Shard who betrayed him and made off with his loot. You can pinpoint the exact time frame in which this issue was published because Shard is a 1:1 mirror image of guitarist John Oates.

That night, Conan is torn from his bed by a one-handed man named Kendrick, an evidently clairvoyant character who has foreseen Conan's coming through a crystal ball. Conan is rough and violent, but without the taint of evil, Kendrick notes.

Kendrick asks, in exchange for a king's ransom in gold, to ferry a passenger away from the inn. That passenger is a woman named Astriel whose hair apparently matches her ice-blue eyes. Even in black and white, Val Mayerik's art shimmers like dawn running on the snows. His Astriel is icy and beautiful, while Conan is hot-blooded and carved out of rock. He occasionally surrounds Astriel with a sort of aura that makes her feel reflective like ice.

As it turns out, Astriel is being pursued by Conan's old friend Shard, along with two Stygian sorcerers, twin brothers in the employ of Thoth-Amon. They give chase to Conan and Astriel, who flee through the snows. Their horses are vaporized, a horde of devil-bats attacks them, and the pair ultimately do battle with Shard and his twin wizards. Astriel ultimately saves herself by having come close enough to use the magic of her homeland. She reveals herself as the "Snow Queen, Lady of the Silver Silence" promised in the title, and expels those who wish her harm with the help of some wildlife loyal to her. 

The story ends with Conan convalescing in her lair, laid up until the snows thaw in the spring. It's a lot of time to spend together, and they'll make the best of it.

Parts of this story are so unmistakably Claremont. A term often trotted out to describe Claremont's work is "soap opera." John Byrne once joked that Chris Claremont's ideal issue of X-Men would've been just 22 pages of his characters walking around and talking about their problems. To quote Chris himself, "To me, the fights are bullshit." His focus on relationships that made Uncanny X-Men an indelible teen drama is here in spades; a few short character moments really pack punch. Conan's betrayal at the hands of Shard in his younger days which fades back to Conan's lonely eyes. The fear that a sex worker will give up Conan and Astriel's position either willingly or through coercion gives weight to what otherwise might be a forgettable brothel character, inserted just for some T 'n' A. It's particularly melancholy that Kendrick, now appearing decades older than Astriel, is actually her longtime lover, cursed to watch her beauty perpetuate while he ages at a normal human rate, and he ultimately gives everything for her. Even the moment when Astriel impales one of the twin sorcerers is more emotional than you would think it would be. He utters, "Brother..." as he crumples next to his twin, a look of utter helplessness on his face.

Claremont entwines the paths of Conan and Astriel, two people not easily disposed to opening up, and crafts a powerful tale about trust and about those who you let get close.

Val Mayerik's low winter suns and heavy shadows over the white wastes of the north all feel appropriately mythic, ornate, and totally in service of this chiastic fantasy story. As Astriel and Conan grow closer, Astriel literally lets her hair down. It begins in a tight braid like Princess Leia's on Hoth before gradually loosening as she opens up to her companion. Mayerik's Conan, on the other hand, is not the action figure superhero of John Buscema's or Gil Kane's versions of the character, but a ferocious, and at-times frightening, slab of meat.

I have a hypothesis about this story, and I'm not sure if I'm right about it, but I think I can make a good argument. 

Chris Claremont's duties at Marvel in the late 70s and early 80s hadn't only been with X-Men. One of his pet projects had been developing the character of Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers's offshoot of the Captain Marvel hero. Like the diversification of the X-Men team, part of Ms. Marvel had been about appealing to women to sell more comics, but Chris had poured a lot of himself into the character.

He'd worked to try to keep Carol from being just an object of sex appeal on the page, trying to very finely sketch who she was as a person. Though Claremont didn't create Ms. Marvel, Marvel historian Sean Howe argues that nobody had ever invested as much in a female superhero as Chris did with her. For twenty issues he tried his best to create a living, modern character, but the title was cancelled and he had to move on. He'd sometimes put Carol as a guest character in his X-Men stories. 

But just a year later in 1980, he saw Ms. Marvel forcibly impregnated in Avengers #200, an event that everyone involved seems ashamed of now. It's gone down in comic history as "The Rape of Ms. Marvel." Claremont, apparently, was aghast.

It makes a lot of sense to me, then, to see him create a woman character of unspeakable power in the pages of Savage Sword of Conan. Astriel had previously been taken from her home and underestimated by the evil Thoth-Amon. Should Conan and Astriel be overtaken, Astriel asks Conan that he kill her. 

"I have been dishonored. I prefer death," she tells the Cimmerian.

Later in the story, Shard's band of brigands bears down on Conan and Astriel, vastly outnumbering our heroes. It is Astriel's power, not Conan's, that protects them. She is fully in control of her domain and drives out the trespassers. No one can touch her unless she chooses. It's easy to draw a through-line from Ms. Marvel to Astriel, with Claremont finally able to give a more fitting coda to his woman hero.

Chris Claremont and his X-Men titles changed the comic landscape drastically. Through the 80s and into 90s, Claremont and his mutant teams dominating, changing the face of who and what comics could tell stories about. In some ways, they may have caused the downturn of Conan books as readers wanted more personal stories and fewer tales of steel-clanging adventure.

Claremont returned to Conan just one more time, with King-Size Conan #1, which is pretty fucking awesome itself. I may have to dedicate a future Unsung Sword column to that issue alone. In this 2020 one-shot, billed as a celebration of 50 years of Conan comics, a half-dozen stories are told by some of the best writers in modern comics, along with ol' Roy Thomas returning to his very first Conan the Barbarian issue. Unsurprisingly, in Claremont's story, he mostly forgoes the battles. He opens on the end of a conflict, but spends the rest of his pages dedicated to a conversation between Conan and a dying girl. It's really moving, and feels like something no other Conan writer would do.

​Two years later, Marvel would lose the rights to Conan and that era would be over. Titan would take over, bringing us into the modern day.

Savage Sword of Conan #74 may be the last time the book was truly great. I'm sad we only ever got two stories from Chris Claremont, but they're some of the best Conan stories of their respective decades. 

Read my other posts about Conan comics here.

I kind of bristle at the use of the word "graphic novel" these days, through no fault of graphic novels themselves. I work in education, and there's a huge number of teachers who seem to use the term because they're embarrassed about the label "comic book." Everything with pictures becomes a "graphic novel" to these people. The emphasis on graphic novels as a gateway to more literacy has become kind of iffy anyway- I've started to notice students who never want to move on from Dogman and Captain Underpants and Amulet. I've got some 7th graders who still use the phrase "chapter books." That makes me chafe far more than a weird use of "graphic novel."

The term itself doesn't really have anything wrong with it, though it does carry with it a bit of a promise. Something billing itself as a graphic novel brings some associations along with it- that it will likely be larger in scope than this month's issue of Uncanny X-Men, or that it will maybe be slightly more challenging or literary than a random issue of Detective Comics.

The "Marvel Graphic Novel" line especially seems to be making these promises.

Jim Shooter pitched Marvel Graphic Novels in 1979 as physically and narratively different than your average Marvel comic. They would be in a larger format with a few dozen more pages, a cardboard cover and slick paper printing with some big story consequences. They started with a bang with The Death of Captain Marvel, which is still the definitive original Captain Marvel story, and have included undisputed classics like X-Men's God Loves, Man Kills. They had an insane bullpen of talent on these: Chris Claremot, John Byrne, Geof Isherwood, David Michelinie, Frank Miller, Dennis O'Neil. But some of this shit is still just... not good.

The three previous MGNs I've written about this blog have been a mixed bag at best. Horn of Azoth was disappointing and hampered by bad art, The Witch Queen of Acheron had a few moments but was hampered by bad art, and Conan the Reaver was decent: definitely the best of the three, no complaints about the art. Conan the Barbarian: The Skull of Set, the fifty-third graphic novel in the line, written by Doug Moench and drawn by Paul Gulacy, is definitely my favorite of these four so far.

Conan is captured in Messantia and made to buy his freedom by escorting a wagon full of weapons to a little Argossean port city which is at serious risk of invasion. The Cimmerian realizes quickly that the wagon is not exactly what he was told it was and is soon after saddled with the care of four people fleeing Argos: a wealthy merchant, his wife, a foppish aristocrat, and a priestess of Mitra. Word from Messantia is that one of them is a spy, selling out Argos to Stygia and Koth... but which one?

Chased by a bandit gang into a mountain range, Conan tries to buy the group some time by stranding their wagon on a plateau that seems out of reach for the pursuing hillmen. They're ultimately trapped: Argossean soldiers on one side, bandits on the other, a spy in their midst, and the group of five is holed up in the mystical Ruins of Eidoran. Before long it turns out that more than one of the wagon's occupants is not who they seem.

I love Conan stories with setups like this. A mysterious place, people you can't trust, and a coin-flip of which hostile force will arrive first.

I'd argue that The Skull of Set is a pretty darn good Conan graphic novel and its plot would fit right in with the upper-middle tier of Savage Sword issues. Its art by Paul Gulacy is very good but also sets it apart slightly from Marvel's 70s Conan heyday- it certainly looks more modern. Conan's sporting more of a mullet than a "square-cut" black mane, and one or two characters look like they were ripped from Motley Crue videos, but that's not a slight.

In action scenes, Gulacy sometimes unmoors his panels from the grid and places them in order or on top of one another, adding to the cacophony of battle. I read one review in which the author thought Doug Moench got too wordy with the exposition, and he certainly isn't light with his pen, but he's not edging out Roy Thomas for verbosity or anything. Honestly, I think this thing's a pretty excellent pick-up.

In terms of its chronology, I would put The Skull of Set right after the Karl Edward Wagner novel The Road of Kings, which is also set on the western coast of the world. In both of these narratives, Conan still seems young, but is very shrewd and it ultimately saves his life.

Of course, the only real difference between these MGNs and an issue of Savage Sword of Conan is color, so they probably aren't the most essential adds to a Conan collection.

While I have no burning desire to pick up the Conan of the Isles graphic novel, I'm definitely trying to get my hands on Conan the Rogue, which is the only Conan story John Buscema ever got a story credit on, so I'm really curious. Unfortunately, they're all going for $100-500 on the net, so we'll see.

To find my other posts about the Marvel Graphic Novels, go here.

It starts with a bit of a Roshomon: after rescuing a woman from a gang of would-be killers, their target Shahela spins a yarn about the recent history of her nation Ophir. Conan listens intently to Shahela as she paints herself and her all-female guard squad, the Iron Maidens, as the underdogs in a war against tyranny. The Black Cloaks, a veritable death squad that operated with impunity, cast a shadow over Ophir. They imprisoned the country's rightful leader, Queen Varia, and Shahela seeks to free the besieged queen.

But just a few pages later, Conan is told the same story with slightly different embellishments by another character, the administrator named Balthis. To hear Balthis tell it, the Black Cloaks were actually serving at the pleasure of Varia, and it was Shahela poisoned the throne against the Cloaks. It was the Iron Maidens, he says, who helped Shahela imprison the queen.

We're left wondering who- if anyone- we are to believe. 

It probably doesn't come as a surprise to the engaged reader that both Shahela and Balthis are vying for power and hoping that a certain steely-thewed Cimmerian joins their cause. Conan is a newcomer in Ophir and hears these two tales fairly soon after arriving in the country, apparently fresh from his Barachan pirate days, and probably a little prior to "Red Nails."

This Conan is one of my favorite incarnations of the character: he is now not only worldly but very strategically smart. He knows the ways of civilization and war so that he's not just a physical force to be reckoned with, but a cunning adversary with his sword sheathed, too.

It turns out that a little bit of what Balthus and Shehela both said was true. Varia was a good queen and did try to disband the Black Cloaks, but not through the influence of Shahela. Both the Cloaks' and the Maidens' leaders are vying for power in their own ways- Shahela needs to kill Varia and Balthis needs to marry her.

Sure, Conan has never really cared for politics, but he does have a streak of caring about justice and standing up to tyrants, so he enmeshes himself in the power struggle. Seeing the scheming, Conan chooses Door #3 and decides to play them against each other and act as a spy. He soon learns that there's another party here, Toiro, Varia's cousin with an equal claim to the throne as Shahela if Varia were to die.

​"Wheels within wheels," Conan thinks to himself.

When Toiro eventually gets captured, Conan gets into the castle to free both him and Varia, but is interrupted by Balthis and the Cloaks, and is ultimately dropped into a skeleton-laden dungeon with a twelve-foot-tall, man-eating ghoul inside. Conan manages to stun it long enough to get away, but doesn't kill it.

When we next see the Cimmerian, he's donned the armor of the nigh-mythical founder of the nation, King Thanus, and stirs up the people of Ophir against both Shahela and Balthis. There are some fun, though vague, "power to the people" themes here. 

Freeing Toiro and then setting his sights of Varia, Conan crosses paths with Shahela one last time. He has repeatedly said throughout the issue that he doesn't care to do combat with women when avoidable (thinking fondly of Bêlit and Red Sonja each time). He is spared that decision in the final moments by the return of the twelve-foot zombie creature. There's a surprising amount of pathos in Shahela's cries for Conan to help her, to not be devoured by this thing, and as Conan slays it, Shahela drops dead too. The panels don't make it clear whether he snapped her spine or broke her neck or if Conan's sword went just a little too far through the monster's gut. Either way, Ophir is saved.

This was to be Roy Thomas's second-to-last issue on Savage Sword for over a decade, and word was out that there would be someone new in the driver's seat. Issue #60, Roy's last continuous issue of his all-time 60-issue run on the title, didn't betray anything about his departure, but #61 sure did. In the letters section "Swords and Scrolls," new writer Michael Fleisher writes "A Special Note of Appreciation" to Roy's contributions on Conan through the years. It's probably the best send-off any writer could hope for.

Fan reaction was mixed- one letter published in issue #62 bemoaned that he felt Roy had been stuck in a rut for a few years. Fleisher and the editorial team took the classy route and said they disagreed- that all Roy's work had been excellent.

In the back of #63, a letter-writer really tore into Fleisher:

Dave Clark of Haddon Heights, NJ goes on for like six more paragraphs, ending with "Thank you for listening." Marvel just responded, "You're welcome."

​One more steamed letter-writer wrote in, "Can't you guys think up anything original?" Readers of any of my writing about Savage Sword will know that I'm inclined to agree with these writers-in.

Marvel didn't print any reactions to "Black Cloaks of Ophir" until issue #71, which were universally positive. Readers praised the suspense in the plot and Ernie Chan's art. Some proposed that Ernie take over John Buscema's mantle as the regular SSOC artist, which I wouldn't have minded, but only because Ernie is entirely a Buscema clone (I'm not joking, I got halfway through reading the issue before I realized they weren't Big John's pencils).

The title page of the issue says that "Black Cloaks of Ophir" was adapted from a plot by Andrew J. Offutt, whose work on Conan and the Sorcerer Roy had recently adapted in the mag, so I'd be interested in knowing how much interplay there was between the two of them. Roy had one more story ready to go, but had long-since moved on to DC Comics.

​It would be one of his best originals.

I've never seen anyone talk about "Black Cloaks of Ophir." It seems to be one of the issues that hasn't risen to the same level as most of the REH adaptations, and since it exists outside the first 60 issues of the title, I bet most readers haven't given it a go. They should!

1970's Conan the Barbarian title starts out a little weird. As young Conan putzes around just outside of Cimmeria in the first three issues, it's near-universally considered to be a slow start to one of the (eventual) best comics of the 70s. There are flashes of what is to come in #3, "The Twilight of the Grim Grey God," but most of it is rather tonally inconsistent, like author Roy Thomas isn't exactly sure what he wants to do on the book.

Even as the thief stories start with issue #4's adaptation of "The Tower of the Elephant," it doesn't automatically get that much better even though we're entering one of Conan's most fun life periods. Conan certainly improves quite a bit from issue #7-on, which would see free adaptation of "The God in the Bowl," "Rogues in the House," "The Garden of Fear" and a psychedelic crossover with Elric of Melnibone. Like its title barbarian, the book tends to wander for a while, and even though there are some great issues, it doesn't really have a clear narrative thrust.

Where it all really comes together about a dozen and a half issues in when Roy Thomas begins his "War of the Tarim" storyline.

The whole War of the Tarim is a Roy Thomas original... in a way. It's set in Conan's first mercenary period, which in the generally-accepted timeline comes in his early-to-mid twenties, right after his thieving. He goes east for the first time an enlists in the army of Turan, learning how to ride a horse, use a bow and arrow, and strategize militarily. As far as the Robert E. Howard original canon goes, there's not much there. There's also the unfinished fragment "The Hand of Nergal" is all REH really included, though the period is fleshed out some more if you consider the L. Sprague de Camp stuff from the 60s. As far as the Tarim himself, in "The People of the Black Circle," Howard writes about how the Black Seers of Yimsha have acolytes who are the priests behind the priests of the Tarim. 

Roy says that from the start he was looking for a way to reenact the Trojan War in CtB, and this is where he finally got his chance. Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith were planning an epic.

The War of the Tarim story arc, which more or less spans issues #19 to #26, is soft-launched by the creative team in issues #17 and 18 as they adapt Howard's "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth." These issues are a lot of fun and I honestly liked them better than the prose original (I found having Conan and Fafnir as the main characters a little more engaging) though Gil Kane's art can be hit-or-miss and sometimes his faces look oddly off-model. These two issues dumped Conan into the waters of the Vilayet Sea as he wanders substantially east for the first time. He crosses paths with an old bit-part character named Fafnir who appeared briefly in Conan #6. He begins as a rival, and eventually becomes a friend. Conan and Fafnir (who call each other "Redbeard" and "Little Man," respectively) are perfect analogues to that shot from Predator where Arnie and Carl are locking hands and flexing their biceps like oversized baseballs, only this time it's one dude with black hair and one dude with red.

Conan and Fafnir become part of a military coup before plunging back into the inland sea to escape.

The end of issue #18 lands the Cimmerian on the ship of Prince Yezdigerd, a royal up until then had never really been in the spotlight of stories. Rather, he had always been a more unseen force that worked behind the scenes to periodically throw a wrench into Conan's plans. As it's better than being thrown overboard, Conan takes up with the Turanian army.

Conan #19 kicks off the Tarim War for real. It's explained to our young northerner that spies from the city of Makkalet a few short weeks ago stole into the city of Aghrapur and kidnapped the "living Tarim," the current incarnation of an ancient god who freed the Hyrkanian people long ago and has been worshipped ever since in whatever form into which he is reborn. 

Conan just scowls and scoffs at the wooden carving of the Tarim lashed to the boat, and this is where the real dramatic rub comes in for the story. Not only is Conan not a true believer in either side of this holy war, but he feels bald contempt for both sides. He will fight, but his first question is what it pays. They land in Makkalet and Conan does what he does best.

Barry Windsor-Smith's art in this issue, "Hawks from the Sea," is a serious trade-up from the two previous Gil Kane-penciled books. His beautifully-hatched, rococo style works so much better for the Hyborian Age than Kane's action figure poses. He does great covers, but I always felt his interiors looked better for superhero titles. Because of comic creation's breakneck schedule, the team didn't even have time to ink the second half of the book and it leaves it with an interesting Prince Valiant feel. It certainly looks different than the inked work, lacking the strong outlines and deep blacks comics usually have, but it doesn't look worse.

Perhaps it's because Conan is not fighting for gods or glory, but the story is surprisingly not enamored with this war. We're never led to believe that this is a worthwhile cause or anything other than a petty fight between despots. It takes the time to show us the meaninglessness of the violence as Conan looks down into a skirmish from atop a wall, aiding an injured Fafnir. It's a short moment of genuine human connection between equals before Conan is forced to leave Fafnir and we see him tumble off the wall. Even with a reader sobered by that scene, the skeletal soldiers summoned by the mysterious wizard, Kharam-Akkad, are sick as fuck.

The war continues in issue #20, "The Black Hound of Vengeance," in which Conan comes closer to Kharam-Akkad. Fafnir loses an arm, which Roy refers to as one of the "dark undersides of the glories of the Trojan War." They wanted to humanize our Cimmerian hero a bit.

​The real achievement worth talking about in this issue actually comes when the story of the book is almost entirely over: for a two-page epilogue, Barry chose to simply draw about a dozen illustrations and Roy wrote in prose, placing the text in and around the drawings as needed. The resulting vibe is like reading the bloodiest picture book you can imagine, while Conan puts a permanent scar on Yezdigerd's cheek before diving off the edge of the ship. The epilogue paces the end of the book well and calls back to the pulp era that works so well for Conan.

"The Monster of the Monoliths," which follows in issue #21, features an all-time great Barry Windsor-Smith cover to go along with a story that Roy Thomas feels only treads water. It says it's based on REH's "The Black Stone," but I don't feel like the issue evokes "The Black Stone" much- It feels far more like the L. Sprague de Camp pastiche "The Curse of the Monolith." Conan swaps sides in the war, but the city of Makkalet is not without its own problems. We see a betrayal and, as Conan is strapped to a monolith with an eldritch frog, he barely escapes with his life. Though he wants to ride west and away from the war, he keeps a vow he has made and returns to Makkalet to enlist friends for the conflict.

Fans in the 1970s had to wait a bit to see the story continue, as that aforementioned comic crunch claimed issue #22 in its churn. Without a story finished, but with a stellar Barry Windsor-Smith cover already sent to the printer, Roy sheepishly reprinted Conan #1, with the promise that the saga would be back in the following issue. It was, but with a noticeably less impressive Gil Kane cover. Though both issues #22 and 23 were intended to introduce Red Sonja to the Conan mythos, neither cover actually depicts her in the cover illustration, which seems odd today considering that she's clearly the breakout character of 70s Conan.

Roy says that it was nice to have Conan's life all mapped out before he even began writing. He knew that he would eventually introduce Conan's raven-haired Shemite love, Bêlit, in "Queen of the Black Coast" and his blond companion, Valeria in "Red Nails." So he decided to introduce a red-haired character as an occasional ally and occasional adversary to the big guy. In order to do this, he looked to the REH story "The Shadow of the Vulture" to adapt the WWI character Red Sonya of Rogatino into Red Sonja of Hyrkania. Much has been written about this already; you likely already know this bit.

Sonja's debut issue is actually probably one of least-exciting of the War of the Tarim, at least until Sonja and Conan exact some espionage-style revenge at the end of the book. The story just seems to go by a little too quickly: it introduces the character Mikhal Oglu, "the Vulture," and establishes him as a terrifying, shadowy menace for a few panels, but doesn't really do a whole lot with him. Roy wishes he'd stretched the story out to become a two-parter, and I think he's right. It would've hit a little harder.

Sonja feels a little off in this story. Not only is this prior to her acquiring her signature chainmail bikini, but she's also got more realistic orangeish-red hair rather than literal crimson, and she looks slightly older than she usually does today.

Issue #24, "The Song of Red Sonja," fares a lot better than #23. It's just a more fun time than its predecessor as Conan and Sonja sneak into a palace tower of Makkalet under the pretense that they're simply thieving. But Sonja has a hidden mission there as well. She introduces Conan to the magical phrase "Ka Nama Kaa Lajerama" which Conan will use periodically to ward off evil serpent-people of the god Set (he's even using it today in 2025 comics).

I am left wondering if the secret to why this issue is so good lies with Barry Windsor-Smith. He had decided to leave the Conan the Barbarian title and wanted this issue to be his ultimate statement. Roy gave Barry the green light to play around a bit. That full-page dance at the beginning? All Barry. The tower and treasure and snake monsters? Barry again.

Roy and Barry seem to have liked what they did for the epilogue of issue #20, because the combination of unbordered illustrations and straight prose returns twice in this issue for brief asides. They kind of tie the War of the Tarim era together under one style, so it's cool to see it return. I wish more comics would break up their formula in ways like this more often.

Sonja gets the best of Conan (this time, anyway!) and disappears. 

The intricate piles of treasure in the tower and the bejeweled snakeskins were among the final Conan the Barbarian images Barry Windsor-Smith would ever draw. Barry did a few Savage Sword books, some Conan Saga covers, and a Conan Vs. Rune one-shot decades later, but "The Song of Red Sonja" would be his last time penciling the regular Conan title. Comparing his work in the first few issues to what he was doing just three years later is astounding. He'd grown from the friendly, square-jawed Jack Kirby figures to an unmistakably unique skillset in just a few years.

I would mourn his exit from Conan, but finally made room on the roster for John Buscema to finally step in as the regular Conan penciller. Buscema draws Conan the way John Romita drew Spider-Man: crystallized and perfectly. Not only was Buscema destined to be Conan's long-term artist, but his interiors and covers took a title that was already climbing in sales and then kicked it into high gear, eventually becoming one of Marvel's bestselling series.

Big John's first issue as artist sends the War of the Tarim careening toward its conclusion. Issue #25 finally allows the sorcerer Kharam-Akkad and the Cimmerian barbarian to face off in a riff on the Howard classic, "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune." As Conan does battle with the wizard, the crazed faces of the Turanians march on Makkalet yelling, "For the Tarim!" 

With Kharam-Akkad dispatched in spectacular, prophesized fashion (foreshadowing Conan's future tenure as Amra the Lion), all that is left is to see who will claim the living Tarim once and for all.

"The Hour of the Griffin" in issue #26 serves as the war's epic conclusion. Issue #25 had brought the Roy Thomas / John Buscema team together, but issue #26 would bring about the final piece of the puzzle: longtime Buscema inker Ernie Chan would inks Big John's pencils for the first time.

​Finally bringing that whole Trojan War thing back around, the Turanians invade Makkalet by sneaking through tunnels into a horse statue in the city. With the gates open, pandemonium fills the streets. Conan reluctantly rescues some royals before retreating to the chamber which happens to house the Tarim himself.

Conan scoffs at the robed figure and commands that he reveal himself to an unbeliever. He knocks over a brazier which fills the room with light and throws the Tarim's image on countless mirrors, which was apparently Kharam-Akkad's preferred home décor choice. What Conan sees is not a god, but a drooling, inbred old man.

Once he processes what he sees, Conan involuntarily throws his head back and laughs. He is vindicated as men fight and die in a holy war which he's seen right through from the start. The Tarim is struck by a stray arrow from the invading forces, causing him to fall into the uncovered brazier and burn to death. Prince Yezdigerd and the Turanians find the body, re-cloak him, and prop him up for the coming procession. "The city that houses the living Tarim lays claim to homage from all Hyrkanian peoples. My faithful troops expect a procession, come the dawn... and by dark Erlik, they shall have it!" spake Yezdigerd, revealing that this was a political power grab, never a sincere attempt at a rescue.

Roy intended to use Conan #26 to set the Cimmerian on a new path, which he does, sending our hero riding out of Makkalet, westbound and away from all this holy war bullshit.

His time in Turan was not over, but Conan the Barbarian the character, and Conan the Barbarian the comic book series would go back to wandering. However, the next 91 issues would be an adventure worth reading. And eventually, Roy would find a special spark again, greatly expanding on REH's stories to once again put his own stamp on things, this time by pairing Conan with his greatest love for an astounding 40+ issues of pirate marauding.

Ever been to NYC or San Diego Comic Con? I certainly haven't. Those two cons are holy grail conventions for me- something that I think I'd have to plan over a year in advance to get to, but have never had the pleasure of attending yet.

My friend Angel was at NYCC this past weekend with the Colorado Ghostbusters, though, and while she was there, she was able to visit Jim Zub to pick up a signed NYCC-exclusive variant of Conan the Barbarian #25. Jim Zub was even nice enough to pose with a picture for it! What a mensch!

This brings me up to a ridiculous four different covers of Conan #25, so I'm realizing I have a problem. The New York convention variant is by artist Alfredo Cardona and depicts Conan with Belit and what are presumably the bat-like creatures that eventually kill her at the end of "Queen of the Black Coast."

Thanks, Jim!

I used to do YouTube video essays with my brother back when I was bored during the pandemic. I feel like there are people who might not be super keen to read a long essay, but they might listen to a video while they cook or mow the lawn or something, so I adapted one of my blog posts into a video here. 

I might do this from time to time, who knows. Video editing sure takes a lot longer than writing, though!

​Anyway, give it a look-see if you like. I hope you enjoy!

I don't really do a lot of what I think of as "reviews" on this blog. I know a lot of times my writing about Conan stuff verges into review territory, but I usually think of them as essays. I try to come up with an interesting take, something to actually say about the story and engage with its themes. I try to place them in chronology. And yeah, I usually include how good I felt the story is, but my goal isn't really to review.

Especially not contemporary stuff- I feel like I would lose interest profoundly fast if I had to come up with a unique angle on everything, especially just a 24-page comic each month. Sounds like a grind. And if I ever fall into the pattern of just summarizing a plot and then telling you what I liked and disliked? Take me out back behind the barn and shoot me.

But Jim Zub and Alex Horley's Conan the Barbarian #25, which came out today? Brother, I had to rush to my keyboard so I could tell you about this thing.

Most discussions of this book are starting with its unique art, understandably so. Each panel is a hand-done oil painting by longtime Titan Conan artist Alex Horley. They are universally gorgeous. Oil paints present such a different feeling than traditional comic book art. For one, it's a single artist working all the way through rather than a collaboration of a penciller, inker, colorist, and letterer. They lack the traditional outlines and blacks of de rigeuer comic book creation. They feel so tactile; in the two-page spread with the title, you can literally see the texture of the canvas under Horley's work. His deep blues, unearthly greens, and vivid reds seem to glow on the page, like the creepy, yellow eyes of the the comic's title character, "the Nomad."

I don't mean to imply that comics are a "low" art or anything (I adore them!), but there's something incredible about seeing comic art rendered as a painting. I had this Alex Ross painting of Plastic Man framed as a poster on my wall when I was like 13, and I think it was because of this hard-to-name feeling that painted comic books instill in me. It elevates everything.

I'm not usually a variant cover guy (you ever feel like comic companies are trying to scam you out of another four dollars with them?), but I had to pick up a few here. I grabbed the standard A cover, the Roberto De La Torre "Frost-Giant's Daughter" cover, and the black-and-white De La Torre sketch version too.

As much as Horley's art is going to be the hook that draws a lot of people to this issue, I don't want the spotlight to avoid Jim Zub's writing here. He's been fantastic for the last two years on both Conan and Savage Sword, but this story feels like a victory lap. 

Surprisingly, it's Zub's first King Conan story for Titan, which surprised me. Folks like Jason Aaron wrote the great "Ensorcelled" two-parter for SSOC, and I know that Jim tends to write younger Conan a little more often, but I guess I never realized he had never actually penned a King Conan yarn. With as many times as I've heard Jim in interviews and podcasts refer to the very first moment of Conan's literary existence- filling in lost corners of maps in a library in the towers of his Aquilonian castle, I guess I'd just assumed that of course he'd written an elder Conan tale.

As the gorgeous wraparound cover implies, Conan revisits many portions of his life in this issue, sprinting us through a greatest hits (and greatest stabbings and greatest crucifixions) of Conan's life. In the end, it becomes not only a celebration of what the current Conan creative team have done for the last two years, but a celebration of what keeps bringing us back to this Depression-era barbarian for a hundred years, and even of storytelling itself. Jim has some great, poignant lines in here like calling Conan the "philosopher barbarian." I have no such banger lines. Suffice it to say: this shit rocks.

Jeff Shanks's essay in the back goes down as a fitting desert to this celebration of Conan, stories, and the way they're told. I love the way Jeff is able to communicate his passion for the world of the Hyborian Age.

If this were the last Conan issue from Jim Zub and Titan, it would be a fitting way to go out. But I'm so glad it's not. Pick it up now!

There's a weird little pleasure that hits whenever someone mashes up sci-fi, horror, and fantasy elements. Vampires? Cool. But Planet of the Vampires? Sign me up. I like both Red Sonja and Vampirella, but Red Sonja and Vampirella Meet Betty and Veronica? Yes, please.

​Eerie magazine was a fun genre playground like that for nearly 20 years in the second half of the twentieth century. From 1996 to 1983, it pumped out extremely brief stories in body horror, the macabre, dystopian futures, Gothic romance, sword & sorcery, and planetary adventure. In contrast to its sister magazine Creepy, which told one-and-done stories throughout, Eerie told serialized sagas in which characters returned from time to time for more installments.

Some of these characters have become cult classics among fans of Silver and Bronze Age comic fans: Hunter, Darklon the Mystic, the Rook. Thankfully, the Warren Publishing comics- Eerie, Creepy, and Vampirella- have been collected into accessible "Archive" editions in recent decades, so they're not that hard to read. But there is not a fiendish fandom for Eerie the way that there is for many Big Two comic characters.  As such, every little, unexpected horror nugget you discover in Eerie feels like you've stumbled onto something great, like finding your new favorite album in a dusty crate at the back of the record shop.

I was in Loveland, Colorado a few weekends ago visiting Grand Slam Sports Cards and Comics (despite their name privileging the cards, they've actually got a pretty good comic selection), and I was digging through the mags to find any back issues of Savage Sword of Conan. They had a few, but what really caught my eye was a damaged copy of Eerie #80 from 1977. That Ken Kelly cover was unmistakable. A greenish-yellow vampire with bat wings, a Voltar helmet, a Conan loincloth, a Frank-Frazetta-nearly-nude victim, and a dramatic background of vivid red? You know I bought it.

There are few taglines that absurd, and I mean that as the highest compliment.

What I discovered in the issue's cover story was "Tombspawn: Pieces of Hate," which was actually part of an ongoing story. I hopped on Comic Vine to see if I could figure out in which issue the first part appeared, and it was a few issues prior, in #73 (Side note: I feel like it would be kind of frustrating to read Eerie at the time. If you dug the first "Tombspawn" story in issue #73, it would have been like ten months before you saw the next mere eight-page entry. These things are short!). I couldn't believe it for a second- I've had Eerie #73 hanging in a frame on my wall for a decade now. Back in 2015, I was playing in a punk band called the Ghoulies, and as a send-up to my all-time favorite band The Mummies and their Runnin' on Empty Vol. 2 comp, I bought a horror comic for us to mug at, and it became the back cover to an album we were putting out. I'm sure I read the comic like ten years ago, but hadn't opened it since. It's been displayed along with an issue of Creepy and Vampirella in my office ever since. 

But let's get back to "Tombspawn." Gerry Boudreau wrote the series, while artist Gonzalo Mayo did the pencils and inks.

​The world of "Tombspawn" is an interesting mash-up, like its genres. Set in 1992, it is the distant future of our recent past, taking place around fifteen years on from when it released. The world has bombed itself into oblivion, returning its technology and lifestyle back to something comparable to the stone age. A post-apocalyptic wasteland of irradiated monsters is left where the United States used to be. Craggy rock faces and rotting stone ruins dot the landscape. High above, unbeknownst to any characters, a space war cartel watches the remnants of humanity, responsible for keeping the world dependent on war.

Maybe it's just me, but Gonzalo Mayo's landscape design conjured sickly greens and unnatural purples in my mind to fill in his grayscale landscape. In this world, humanity is limping by.

Stevie, of course, decides to chance it with the vampire girl of his dreams and chooses to press the button labeled "REVIVE," placed right next to the better option of "DESTRUCT." I'm not kidding.

The vampire woman is immediately revived, and as vampire stories often go, Stevie is thrown into a spiritual and physical ecstasy while his body is drained of blood by the vamp in question. She, in turn, flies all the way up into space where she is spotted by the alien space cartel. The space cartel nukes her out of existence in an instant. This short ten-pager ends with Stevie, now a vampire, completely overtaken by the idea of vampire superiority, deciding to turn Biff as well. We conclude on a freeze-frame as he leaps forward with one more reference to horror movies and stale popcorn. 

The Howardesque sword & sorcery themes are apparent from the first few pages. Society is destined to destroy itself while staying focused on superficial comforts like beer and circuses. We have destroyed all our progress and don't even seem to be capable of processing it- we just grab bows and arrows and feel nostalgic for easier times. Americans have been reduced to a state of barbarism, which they're adjusting to with varying degrees of success.

Readers liked the story, with the letters column "Dear Cousin Eerie" in the following issue featuring several positive reactions of "Vampire 1992." One mixed review was mostly whinging at the Eerie editorial staff because he felt like they didn't know whether they wanted to be a horror mag or an adventure mag. He felt "Tombspawn" and another story leaned too hard into adventure.

The second chapter, contained in issue #80, was the "Pieces of Hate" story with the Ken Kelly cover I was initially drawn to. After six panels of recap, we pick up with Stevie and Biff on a campaign of vampire supremacy, convinced that they need to turn as many remaining humans into blood-suckers as they can. These vampires grow not only fangs and an uncontrollable vampire-chauvinist mindset, but a set of heavy metal bat wings bursting out of their shoulder blades. I find it spine-chilling on an existential level when genre fiction has characters retain their fundamental personality while horrifyingly changing one key aspect (in this case, they're pretty much the same characters, just ravenous for their vampire cause now) without comment.

Issue #80 is very much a middle chapter, and two pages shorter than its predecessor for a slim 8-page run, but ends by setting up a conflict between the space cartel and the vampires. Initially mistaking the cartel UFO occupants for a mystical enemy called "Russians," the two groups decide on a "Most Dangerous Game" type of contest to see who gets the US. It's the classic mashup like Yankees v. Red Sox, Taylor Swift v. Katy Perry, and vampires v. space aliens.

What the second issue lacks in plot it makes up for in philosophical discussion. Author Gerry Boudreau goes in deeper on the themes of the first issue, mostly unchanged since the 30s but somewhat updated​ for 1977. Stevie narrates, likening the wave of vampire infections to a rekindling of the pioneer spirit, but realizing immediately the self-destructive path its set them on. 

Letter-writers in "Dear Cousin Eerie" were now raving about "Tombspawn." They loved its lack of clearly moral characters, the Gonzalo Mayo art, and painted Ken Kelly cover. "This is going to be an excellent series!" wrote Jack Marriot of Toledo, Ohio. 

For those following "Tombspawn," the wait was significantly shorter for the third issue than it was for the second. Chapter three, titled "The Game is Afoot," appeared in issue #82 just two months later and Gonzalo Mayo is joined this time by legendary artist Carmine Infantino.

The recap is contained to one page, spiraling in on itself while you turn the magazine to view it from all sides. At the page's center, our vampires Stevie and Biff shake hands with the Space CIA agents against whom they've decided to compete. The vampire everymen then fight an atomic pterodactyl, and I need to pause for a moment because I'm afraid I may never get to write a sentence like that ever again.

The aliens try to contend with the barbarian vampires' physical superiority by using holographic tricks and mind-control guns. Between bouts, Stevie once again waxes philosophical while turning a sort of Cro-Magnon man into a monstrous neanderthal bloodsucker ("cavampireman?" "australopithenosferatu?").

Humanity is still quite literally sifting through the fallout of its own bad choices, and it can't help but plot its next downfall. Stevie and Biff, our two himbo Joe Schmo vampires, are able to ask the question of what their wanton consumption might bring, but are never focused long enough to think it through. They can't investigate, can't plan. Instead, they're once again consumed by bloodlust and you turn the page.

In the final pages of the third issue, Biff is bitten in half, seemingly in one devastating chomp, while the friends navigate what they think is another illusion from the space aliens. Stevie vows to avenge his fallen friend and that space cartel will not win. 

But that was the last we saw of the barbarian vampires in space.

In "Dear Cousin Eerie," one reader proposed an "all-Tombspawn" issue for the future of the mag. After one letter-writer expressed a desire to see "Tombspawn" continue in the very next issue, Eerie editorial responded that the series would return, but it would be a while since Gonzalo Mayo was working on a "book-length VAMPIRELLA epic" in the meantime. Since the Eerie team frequently responded to concerns about the return of well-liked series (around this time they spend a column inch or two assuring readers that their time-travel trilogy will indeed conclude, it just got delayed a bit) that they could have communicated a cancellation of "Tombspawn," but it was quietly dropped. I searched through the next two-dozen issues' worth of letters pages and couldn't find another mention of it.​

​We never got a fourth chapter of "Tombspawn," so we'll never know who won the game or what happened to Stevie. Gerry Boudreau teamed with Gonzalo Mayo for more horror adventures in Eerie #90, but this time told an 8-page story called "Carrion" rather than returning to their previous creation (reader reaction to "Carrion" was not pleasant). I'm sad to see that it never concluded; I could've gone for ten more chapters of "Tombspawn" just to see what other misadventures a couple of former couch potato vampires could've gotten into. To see the logical conclusion of the vampire epidemic would've been fun, too. I can't help but speculate whether it would've ended all life on Earth, like Marvel Zombies, or if the aliens would have launched even more nukes. I guess I'll never know.

I really enjoyed Gerry Boudreau's world-building and characterization in this series. It's not often you get to see a barbarian with gigantic bat wings and a death's head emblem on his loincloth make Elton John references. The themes evoke Howard, Lovecraft, and Burroughs while also transplanting the darkness of Depression-era fantasy into the consumerist 70s. But I think my favorite thing here is Gonzalo Mayo's art. He conjures Frank Frazetta using just black and white. But he also mixes it with what feels like a recreation of Marlon Brando's Jor-El in Superman, and old (even then!) science fiction TV like The Twilight Zone. He uses stark contrast between black and white to create a dark, salacious, damned planet that I want to spend more time on. Character designs just don't look like that anymore.

For the rest of the late 70s, Eerie was dominated by The Rook, its time-travelling Bill Dubay character who pretty much became the magazine's flagship series for a while. The popular "Hunter" series returned for "Hunter III." Eventually, creative teams found the grind too hard to keep up with and Eerie began publishing issues with fewer stories in each issue. There was always a lot of talent behind the mag, and always a wild variation in quality between the stories. 

I'm really glad I happened to crate-dig my way to Eerie #80. Who knows what other incredible nuggets are in the archives of Warren Publishing? I know there are a few send-ups to 70s anthology horror out there like Vampiress Carmilla, but Eerie will always feel special. Is there more sword & sorcery goodness out there to find? Let me know if you've got a good one you want to share.

Don Kraar is something of a mystery when it comes to the history of Conan comics. He's not a well-loved mover-shaker type like Roy Thomas or Kurt Busiek. He's not exactly one of the architects of Savage Sword's flop era like the Saturday morning cartoon weirdness of Michael Fleisher or the paint-by-numbers adventures by Chuck Dixon. In total, he wrote 21 stories for Savage Sword, which is actually quite a few compared to how many issues of Savage Sword you and I have written. But none of them are remembered particularly well, though he had some good installments in there (SSOC #112 "The Blossoms of the Black Lotus," anyone else...?). He contributed some issues to Conan the King and a few DC titles.

There seems to be one picture of Don that exists in total on the entire internet. I couldn't find any interviews.

So I wasn't exactly sure what I'd get when the Marvel Graphic Novel Conan the Reaver arrived at my door, complete with a noticeable coffee stain on the back cover. The previous two that I read- The Horn of Azoth and The Witch Queen of Acheron- weren't great. And Don write the latter.

Conan has enmeshed himself with the thieves guild in the Turanian capital and is helping them get information out of the city guards in a spectacular fashion. Forcing the captain of the guard to walk a tightrope above a pit of flames, Conan strikes up a deal to get the keys to the great treasure room under King Yildiz's castle. Posing as a new member of the castle guard, he quickly proves his sword to be a valuable addition to Turan's militias and is shown the treasure room. His general decency, in fact, pretty quickly endears Conan to everyone as he gets to know Aghrapur, but the secret assassins of the Red Mist are threatening not only the king's plans, but his as well. Everyone in the civilized city has their own machinations, but our barbarian hero just wants some loot, and he's okay with killing a few corrupt guards or nobles to get there.

Kraar does an excellent job of weaving together solid suspense into a thieving sword and sorcery story. Though you might not be completely surprised at a twist or two, the plotting is really fun.

I've read descriptions of John Severin's art describe him with phrases like "a master at work," and I don't know if I agree entirely at this juncture. He has very serviceable panel layouts and paces the action well (something that those other two MGNs completely failed at) but his art, especially his character designs, strike me much more as Prince Valiant than they do as gritty Conan the Barbarian. He renders faces strongly and his close-ups are excellently detailed. However, a lot of his backgrounds are empty, solid colors, and he clothes everyone to look like an ancient Roman.

Chronologically, this graphic novel seems to fall after the rest of Conan's thieving stories and before his service to the Turanian army that pretty much begins with "The Hand of Nergal." I suppose this implies that Conan goes way further south and east from Shadizar than many of us originally pictured, seeing as Aghrapur sits on the coast of the Vilayet Sea, nearly to Hyrkania. But this story also works as a bridge between the thief stories and the first set of mercenary stories.

If you read my other posts about these MGNs, I did some complaining about the cash I had to drop to get them. Conan the Reaver was the cheapest of all three so far, so I'm finally getting my money's worth! I really wish I had a half-star icon to rate it a three-and-a-half out of five.

Now, if only I could find anything else out about Don Kraar...

★★★☆☆

I just spent two weeks in Germany- my first time really out of the US. Whenever I visit anywhere new, I always search for a couple of things on Google Maps: cool punk bars or venues, used book and record stores, and most importantly, comic shops. We went to Berlin, Freiburg im Breisgau near the French border, and Munich, and I got to hit up comic shops in both Berlin and Freiburg.

Comics are published a little differently in Europe than they are here in the States; today, Panini Comics reprints a lot of Marvel and DC stuff (my brother once visited Paris and brought back a Panini book that had a sampler of comics in it, much like old Shonen Jump magazines that had one issue from five or six series at a time). Sometimes the formats and titles are a changed a bit, and I imagine some titles don't make it from the States to Europe at all. That made it a little hard for me to navigate Modern Graphics, the comic shop in the Kreuzberg area of Berlin. Side note: Kreuzberg fucking rules and I would go back any time. They did have a room of English titles there, but nothing too exciting, mostly 2010s-era Marvel Conan stuff.

Freiburg's shop was much cooler as far as I'm concerned. Freiburg's a cute city right next to the Black Forest and made me realize that every mountain town here in Colorado like Vail and Aspen are all trying to be Freiburg and the like. It has a university there, and right next to the school is a comic shop called X Für U. They had some really cool English and German comics, with a great selection of Conan stuff toward the back of the shop. My eye was immediately caught by how many of these 1980s Conan reprints they had called Conan Der Barbar, which you can probably already tell is "Conan the Barbarian" in German. They had a whole slew of them and I wish I wasn't travelling at the time with limited backpack space. They all have six to nine issues of Conan reprinted in their pages.

I bought three of the titles, #8, 15, and 16 for 2 Euros apiece since those were all the lowest numbers they had and my only other thought was to just pick by cover art since I had a train to catch and didn't have time to flip through all of them.

Volume #15 features a list of issues that makes a lot more sense in that it's just issues 131 - 137 straight through and in order. The thing that doesn't make sense, though, is that the cover used for the paperback is Earl Norem's painted cover for Savage Sword #107! Not only is that not representative of the issues found within, it's an entirely different comic series! I'm left wondering if they were chosen by someone not that familiar with Conan. While much of the story arc contained here is "Queen of the Black Coast" and this cover features Conan on a pirate ship and there's a woman pirate there, it's clearly not Belit.

The same thing happens for Volume #16, which prints Conan #138 - 144, following chronologically from the previous volume, but uses Joe Jusko's cover for Savage Sword #65. These make no sense and seem to have been chosen for no reason other than the fact that they're cool covers. Once again, the art's been cropped, and you may notice that some aspect of each piece of art breaks the frame on all the covers.

If we actually move past the covers for a second, that Transformers wiki was right about some of the ugly choices. The text in word balloons and caption boxes is uglier, blockier text than American comics and sometimes leaves weird spaces due to text length differences.

I speak a little German, but not enough to really read a comic all the way through, so these are mostly just fun curiosities for me. I wasn't able to find a ton about Condor's Conan Der Barbar online, so if you know of any databases that say which volumes reprinted which issues or anything like that, I'd love to see it.

I don't think I'm super picky when it comes to comic book art. I know folks for whom small variations in art can completely make or break a book: they'll buy one just for the art or they'll drop it just as quickly if it's not up to their standards. 

I have very few of those instances. It was a tragedy when Jerome Opeña got replaced on Uncanny X-Force after issue #18 and I dropped the book shortly after. I sometimes struggle to enjoy Simone Di Meo's work since it's just so busy. Conversely, I'll consider buying almost any book that Bruno Redondo, Jen Bartel, or Dan Mora works on. But most of the time, I don't mind if comic art just gets the job done.

Conan the Barbarian: The Witch Queen of Acheron makes me want to throw all that out a window.

The Witch Queen of Acheron is part of the Marvel Graphic Novel series which Marvel published from 1982 to 1983 and pulled from the whole stable of characters that Marvel had, including Conan, periodically. I covered the 1990 MGN release The Horn of Azoth a few months ago (It wasn't great!).

I picked up Witch Queen at FanExpo Denver last week at a pretty excellent booth. In pristine shape for $20! They had three different copies of Savage Sword #1, all of which were priced exactly at $100, so I didn't grab any of those (not on my public school teacher salary). Maybe one day! 

L. Sprague de Camp has this line in The Spell of Conan about not wanting to spit in anyone else's soup, and I generally try to abide by that and write positively, but I don't think I can talk about The Witch Queen of Acheron without spitting in some soup. This graphic novel was written by Don Kraar, penciled by Gary Kwapisz, and inked by Art Nichols, and if you read my complete chronology of Savage Sword, you'll know that this isn't exactly the A-team. None of the Don Kraar-plotted issues are classics (though a few are good) and Gary Kwapisz's art never blew me away. I'm sorry to say that this 60-page story is not some of their best work.

In The Witch Queen of Acheron, Conan is at the end of a three-day bender in the Nemedian city Belverus, barely lucid, but still stalwart enough to take on a legion of Nemedian guards while half-crocked. He paid for his inn room and companions with ancient Acheronian gold pieces, which he was given by a dying man in the wilderness in exchange for burying his body. The local magistrates take notice, and Conan is goaded into helping them find where the Acheronian gold pieces came from. There's a pretty cool scene where the Nemedians threaten to dunk Conan in boiling oil, and a good time is had by all except the guy they test the oil temperature on.

The do eventually find the lost mines / sepulchers of Acheron, awaken some ancient evils, and fight some cultish zealots. The ending feels cribbed from Robert E. Howard's "The Dwellers Under the Tombs," but it's not terrible. As far as the story goes, I'm mostly just wondering why Marvel would choose to have MGN releases feature Conan when these super-sized comics are barely longer than a standard issue of Savage Sword. 

No, what really brings this thing down is the art. It's not good. The painted cover is gorgeous and I love that Conan is framed in that ring... great font choices too. But the interiors are rough.

I said up top that I try not to be overly critical, and I mean it. But take a look at the set of panels above. These come from the beginning of the novel right as Conan is being confronted by the Nemedian guards. He makes the first move by smashing a wine bottle in one's face, but what kind of face is that? One my first pass, I thought it was Conan's, cracking open the bottle of wine and happily drinking from it before realizing it was a guard. The dude looks like he's smiling with his head thrown back, not getting clocked across the chin with a cabernet sauvignon. In the bottom panel, I think Conan has punched the other guard, but he also kind of looks like he's thrown him.

In this set, the whole crew is deep in the Acheronian crypt and about to unleash a curse. But what the hell has happened between the second and third panels? It took me a minute to realize that the scribe, Balmus, has been back-handed by Prince Tarascus, but the sequence is constructed so oddly. He looks well out of the prince's reach in the second panel, but by the third panel, he's been seemingly slapped and has fallen over. But he looks like the prince has launched him about eight feet with the force of his slap. The background characters are fully another color than Balmus in the foreground, which was probably just done to save time for the colorist, but makes them look really far away. I also really don't get the geography here. Balmus was opposite the stairs from the prince in the second panel, but is now falling down them? The casket in the second panel seems to be on the wrong side of the other characters as well.

There's just too much temporal space between the second panel and the third to hold them together, let alone make them flow well for a smooth reading experience.

Here's the last shoddily-constructed panel sequence I'll complain about. The woman, Demetzia, has died in Tarascus's arms. Since she was possessed by the titular witch queen of Acheron, this horrifying parasite thing hatches out of her, Alien-style, off-panel. But, like... from where? At first I thought it crawled out of the top of her skull or something based on the trail of blood. Tarascus was holding her face right by his and the explosion of gore up onto him looks like it's right in front of him. But since her head looks fine, I guess the monster had to come from her chest or something. So I don't get why the last panel is framed so far to the right of her body.

Kwapisz's faces are frequently lacking some detail and the motion is pretty stilted throughout, making me wish Marvel had enlisted another artist for this book, maybe pulling a team that didn't normally work on Conan titles already. When you have to stop multiple times during a story to re-read panels a handful of times just to make sure you know what's happening, that really kills the reading experience.

The art is far more egregious here than the story, but I did find it funny that they did the classic "read the evil spell out loud to activate the magic trap" move that they lampoon in the movie The Cabin in the Woods.

In terms of this story's chronology, it's hard to tell where to place it. Conan comes across as young and occasionally foolish, like with his ridiculous bender where he doesn't even realize one of the women he's sleeping with has been swapped out for another. But he is also far wiser than the miserly Prince Tarascus and clearly has experience commanding military units. I'm not exceedingly confident in this placement, but I think it fits in well right before "Xuthal of the Dusk," before Conan heads south on the map for a while. He's not too far from the area after "The Star of Khorala." It seems to work decently well with what Conan's up to in that period of his life.

I'm really hoping that some of the Marvel Graphic Novels are better than the first two I've picked up. I hope they take the opportunity to do something new with the format, style, or scope that is outside the purview of a potboiler issue of Conan, but it's not looking great so far.

★★☆☆​☆