The SUPERHERO COMIC PACK that I got for Christmas in 1978 included a copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #185, but I’d already purchased that issue during a previous trip to Heroes World, so it wasn’t of any great use to me.
Also of limited interest to me was this issue of CONAN THE BARBARIAN #77. As I’ve said before, I really wasn’t at all interested in barbarian comics. They always seemed to be about thuggish, physically powerful man-brutes laying waste to the world that reminded me of the guys who picked on me for reading comics. So I just never connected with the material. And even today, my interest is somewhat marginal. I can appreciate the craft involved with these books, but I just don’t relate to them in any meaningful manner. That said, CONAN was a top-three title for Marvel throughout most of the 1970s, so somebody liked it.
CONAN had become something of a passion project for writer/editor Roy Thomas, who had arranged to publish the series in the first place, negotiating the rights with the estate of Robert E. Howard. Roy had always been a literary-oriented writer–a casual look at the kinds of projects he often started up during his tenure as EIC or Marvel proves this, as he’d draw from both classics of literature and pulp fiction just about equally. Roy had fallen in love with the prose of Howard, and threw himself into adapting it faithfully in the comic book medium. While I couldn’t connect with the material all that much, Roy was clearly the opposite. One gets the sense that he enjoyed working on CONAN more than many of his other Marvel assignments.
The other creator who was really into working on CONAN was artist John Buscema. John was a master draftsman and illustrator in the classical sense, but he hated having to draw buildings and cars and modern environments. It bored him. But give him a strip like Conan that was set away from contemporary vistas and where he could make up absolutely everything from his own imagination so long as it vaguely fit the time period, and he was as happy as can be. His Conan was built like a tree, with a face as distinctive and unique as Joe Kubert’s Sgt. Rock. It had been Barry Windsor-Smith who had put the series on the map, in particular with the hardcore fan audience, but it was John Buscema who made the character iconic. In a way, Buscema’s Conan is analogous to John Romita’s Spider-Man, in they theirs became the go-to image of the characters despite the popular work of other earlier creators.
The inker on this issue was Ernie Chan, and like he had done on the INCREDIBLE HULK issue that was in this same pack, he added a ton of texture and detail to the pages. This worked well for Conan, especially in his black and white magazine incarnation, as it made the world feel more lived in and real. I expect that John Buscema hated it, as he tended to dislike most of the people who inked over him, especially those who’d do so much wholesale additional drawing. But I thought the combination was a good one, providing the world of the Cimmerian with a flavor that made it seem greater than the sum of its parts.
Story-wise, we’re picking things up in the middle of a two-part tale, in which Conan and his lover Belit, the Queen of the Black Coast, have fallen into the hands of a pair of would-be deities, the Priest-King Mer-Ath and the Warrior-King Hor-Neb. Desiring Belit as a consort, Hor-Neb had Conan thrown into a dungeon pit, in which he comes face-to-face with a giant of a man ten feet tall. This is Gol-Thir, a fellow prisoner. But that doesn’t stop him from first attempting to kill Conan so as to protect the Star-Stone, a bit of asteroid that fell from the night sky and that has magical properties. It’s the rays from the Star-Stone that turned Gol-Thir into a giant, but once he and Conan have gotten the fight out of their systems, the two parlay, filling the Barbarian (and the reader) in on what the situation is.
Gol-Thir breaks Conan’s chains and the Barbarian starts climbing up out of the pit into which he’s been thrown. But this lands him in greater jeopardy, as he emerges in an arena, faced by both Kings and a classic choice: there are two doors in front of him. One leads to Belit, the other to death in the form of a raging leopard. But Conan has an ace–the slave-girl Neftha is sympathetic to his plight, and gets her master, the Priest-King Mer-Ath to tell her which door is which. But this turns out to be a trap within a trap because, suspecting her duplicity, the Warrior King Hor-Neb told his brother the wrong information. So now Conan is forced to fight the Leopard for his life.
But this is just a day at the office for Conan, and he staves off the Leopard and rescued Belit. Seeing the situation going south, Hor-Neb has Gol-Thir brought in to finish off Conan. But instead, his haterd for the Warrior-King is so great that he hoists the Barbarian up so that he can get at his enemy directly. Conan knocks Hor-Neb into the arena while he’s skirmishing with the king’s guards, and the leopard that he’d unleashed finished off the job. So Mer-Ath gets to be the singular unified King of both Priesthood and Warriors, and Conan and Belit earn their freedom. And that’s about it. The story was certainly adventurous, with a ton of action, so I can see why readers of the time would have enjoyed it. And it’s all told well. But I just didn’t care all that much one way or the other.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
I was definitely a fan of that era of Conan, certainly more than any other comics writer’s take (even though many were good). But yeah, not for everyone (just as I’ve never cottoned to Westerns or war comics)
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I agree on Westerns and war comics (except Creature Commandos)! Some barbarian comics were okay, Thongor and Kull and the sci fi version in Killraven, but I never cottoned to Conan. I’d pick up a few issues every once in a while then totally forget the series existed if I didn’t see it on the rack.
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Conan was the only one I read, though that was as much money as anything else.
For me the war comics exception was Enemy Ace, though Creature Commandos was fun.
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I still shudder when you say “Heroes World!”
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My best friend in 9th grade was a big Conan fan and collected the Marvel comic. Also just found out recently that one of my colleagues at work is a Conan fan and is buying back issues of Conan from the 70s and 80s. I did buy a couple of issues when I was 8 or 9, but then stopped as it was not for me.
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I started to get more into fantasy books in my junior-senior year of high school, partly as a result of starting to play the Dungeons & Dragons game. I read and enjoyed the CONAN novels, but somehow I never got much into the comics. Thomas and Buscema always did good work, but whenever I’d sample an issue, they seemed to be in a bit of a rut…all those evil wizards, lost civilizations, sexy damsels-in-distress, and giant monsters were more or less interchangeable. Goodness knows, the superhero comics I was reading had plenty of repetition and recycling in them, but it felt different, somehow. And (as you point out), Conan was a big hit for a long time, so I just have to chalk it up to a matter of taste. Years later, I stumbled across back issues of Frank Thorne’s RED SONJA, which was wild and stylish and more appealing to me than Buscema’s “bread and butter” approach to the genre.
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Roy Thomas definitely had a bent to barbarian-style comics. In a brief conversation with him at a Chicago Comicon, shortly after he’d left Marvel and was starting at DC, I asked him about his two issue run on Charlton’s ‘Son of Vulcan’, the only two issues of the title. He said that it was some of his very first comic book work. When I asked whether he’d be doing a comic similar to ‘Conan’ at DC, he smiled and indicated something was in the works. That turned out to be “Arak/Son of Thunder.’
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I basically missed Conan too, but hope to read it someday. Since it wasn’t superheroes, I doubt I would have enjoyed it at all. I remember seeing one of the Marvel Star Wars books, and even though I loved Star Wars,
I found the comic wasn’t for me either. Pretty much superheroes or get out of town!
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The only Conan I own is the Official Handbook Marvel did. I do have a Red Sonja, but I think it came with a 3 pack with Marvel Double Feature#21 ( March 1977 — Tales of Suspense#98 ( February 1968 ) Cap’s first encounter with the Black Panther ) & Son of Satan#8 ( February 1977 ). When it comes to “barbarians”, I’m more an Arkon than Conan kind of guy.
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The handbook was great. Kaluta cover. So much stuff in that issue. I loved the backstories on all the different countries.
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I’ve read very few Sgt. Rock comics, but enjoyed the characterizations, and the morality plays. And Joe Kubert’s art is as compelling as it is iconic. I enjoyed his later collaboration w/ Brian Azzarello, “Between Hell & a Hard Place”. And Joe’s own writing on a follow up story (“The Prophet”?). I’ve enjoyed Garthe Ennis’s various, sporadic war stories, from various publishers. “Condors” from DC/Vertigo is my favorite. And I really liked his “Valley Forge, Valley Forge” arc of his fantastic MAX Punisher series. That final story was more or less a war story.
I read Conan for John Buscema’s art. He was also my favorite inker for his own drawing. Though I bought anything I found that had Klaus Janson (“King Kull”, Wolverine in “MCP”) or Al Williamson (“Wolverine”) inking John Buscema. I did like Roy Thomas’s Conan. But I liked James Owsley’s a little bit more. Less clumsy language, and a tight continuity running throughout.
I didn’t enjoy the majority of Marvel’s most recent Conan, w/ the exception of Ron Garney’s arc on Jason Aaron’s run. I hated his inclusion in “Savage Avengers”. Ugh. I was really into Kurt and Cary Nord’s revival from Dark Horse, 20-some years ago. Thomas Giorella drew a good Conan too.
I am really enjoying Roberta De La Torre’s homage to John Buscema’s Conan from Titan Comics. Holy smokes. Beautiful stuff. Yes, it’s pretty much what Buscema was doing way back then. But it’s very satisfying. And the coloring & printing is icing on the already sweet cake. The writing is nothing new, maybe even less than Roy’s, Owsley’s, and Kurt’s/ I’d like to see Christopher Priest (the former James Owsley) return to the character at some point.
Conan’s got his own code. But I like how, for the most part, he fights against those that profit off the suffering of others (excluding his thieving, which he aims at the wealthy & powerful). And he defends, sometimes roughly or impolitely), those that are weaker than their oppressors. So he doesn’t come off as a bully to me. And he’s defiant in the face or corrupt, abusive authority. Cross swords with him at your own peril, and at an even greater risk if you wrong him, or those he cares enough about to seek revenge for.
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A problem with Conan is that he’s sort of like Wolverine. Overall, relatively, he’s one of the “good guys”. But he has some very rough edges, and isn’t an especially polished person or relatable character. And similarly, his moral code is not anti-killing, far from it. On the other hand, his world is pretty big and interesting – all those cults, wizards, monsters, etc, make for good adventure and can have a lot of nice visual aspects to them. It’s not to my particular taste either, but I can see the appeal.
It’s a shame that Conan’s got a reputation for being dumb as rocks, since the Howard stories often have him displaying some reasonable combat thinking. One bit which has stuck with me is him leading a battle where he runs into some fireball-throwing wizards. He treats it as basically another day at the “office”. If you see a fireball coming at you, move, take cover. They’re just throwing mystic Molotov cocktails, we can deal with it (obviously, that’s my paraphrase). It was an excellent world-building aspect.
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sorry, I missed the part where you explain a problem. 😉. Except where he’s seen a stupid. That’s not how I see him. Maybe that’s the fault of the recent Marvel material!
Everything else is fine with me. One difference with Wolverine is no super powers. Conan is more at rusk to injury and death. So what get does is even more daring.
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Mybe the post-Thomas stuff had Conan in jeopardy but the classic stuff gave no sense that Conan was in any more danger than Ben Grimm or Superman would have been in his place.
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Even if Conan were in “similar situations” (excluding cosmic rays, the other dangers of outer space, being inside volcanoes flying through hurricane), Conan isn’t as tough or durable as Superman or the Thing.
Conan is inherently more at risk than they are. He sword fights. He scales tall buildings (can’t leap them). He could drown. Gave his neck broken. Get back enough poison to kill him. Even be beaten by too many assailants at once
Maybe I misunderstood your answer. But if we both don’t see Conan as more vulnerable than Wolverine (healing factor, unbreakable bones), Superman, or the Thing, then I must excuse myself and wish you a great day. 😉🙏
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What I read gave lip service to hypothetical frailties and limitations but what harm ever came to him? Maybe he’d get knocked out but that’s a plot device they used rather than damage. Conan had the same plot armor any other lead comic book character has ever had.
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Perhaps “problem” was too negative a word, and it should have been something like “crucial aspect”. The idea is there’s a big divide between characters of the “no killing” kind (e.g. Captain America, Daredevil), who tend to be nice people too, and the “killing’s necessary” type (e.g. Wolverine, Punisher), who are much less of, let’s say, role models. Conan is definitely one of the latter, not the former. I’d suggest fans of characters tend to fall on one side or the other of that divide (which is not to say nobody can like both types, or it’s absolute, but there’s definitely two camps overall).
The Howard stories dealt better with the plot armor, by selling that Conan actually had fight planning which took into account his situation. And sometimes that was letting someone else who was less savvy, take the damage!
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I have seen less fortunate characters around Conan get killed. “Plot armor” doesn’t bug me. It’s his friggin book. 😂. I WANT to keep seeing him have more stories. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t get hurt. And I empathize with him when he does. And admire his taking risks on behalf of others.
Don’t forget, Steve Rogers HAS killed. Or at least had fights end in his opponents ‘ deaths, either by his doing, or even by accident. He doesn’t and shouldn’t take it lightly.
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I liked the first fifty-sixty issues of the color title but felt that it became very predictable from then on, with and without Thomas.
While Conan’s not technically invulnerable, I’ll bet in the first hundred issues there aren’t ten times that he’s seriously hurt in any of his many sorties. I still remember how shocking it was in an early Smith issue when during a bar-brawl, some guy busts Conan in the nose and he visibly bleeds. But in later issues he’s practically untouchable. Of course I must admit that I don’t remember Howard allowing his barbarian to get seriously wounded very often, apart from the famous crucifixion scene.
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