As I indicated a bunch of entries back, at around this time my younger brother Ken had become passingly interested in CONAN THE BARBARIAN. So he’d bought issue #97 at our local 7-11 and seemed to like it well enough. At some point, on one or another shopping expedition, our family must have ended up at either some other 7-11 or an equivalent card or candy store–I was typically pretty unrelenting about wanting to look in any such outlet in the hope that they’d have some comics that weren’t available at my home shop. In any event, we somewhere came across this earlier issue, #96–and once again, my brother purchased it. In the passing of time, as with the rest of his books, it eventually wound up with me.
It’s honestly a little bit daunting to write up the preceding chapter to a story that I already covered in detail earlier, in particular a story that I wasn’t ever all that invested in. But that’s what’s required here, so that’s what we’re going to do. As usual, the issue was written by writer/editor Roy Thomas, the man most responsible for Marvel licensing Conan in the first place and who took the series–and vice versa–to fan acclaim. As was typical for Roy, he adapted as much as possible from the original pulp stories of Conan creator Robert E. Howard. In many instances, apparently, Roy would send a copy of one of the many Conan paperbacks that were available at the time to his artist, with a particular section of a story indicated as the plot for the current issue.
But for many readers, the real star of CONAN was the artwork by John Buscema. John was a masterful artist, but one that wasn’t enamored about drawing the trappings of modern day civilization–buildings, cars, etc. And he certainly had no particular love of super heroes. So Conan was a perfect strip for him to excel on, as it was set in a somewhat-nebulous “long, long ago” and dealt with a somewhat amoral character battling the elements, monsters and wizards with his own individual strength and will. This was very much Buscema’s meat, and he drew the series for decades. Buscema had been a fan of the work of Hal Foster growing up, and so CONAN allowed him to use similar muscles.
Buscema pretty much didn’t like any of the inkers who worked on him–he preferred his own finishes to anybody else’s, but he was too valuable as a penciler/layout artist for Marvel to have him inking his own pencils consistently. (John was also a fast penciler, so he always made more money when he was just penciling. Also, he ultimately found inking to be unrewarding work. He liked the finish, but the labor to get to it tended to turn into a grind. So he’d ask to ink his own pencils on a strip, then relent an issue or two into the run when the combination of the damage to his wallet and his joy became intolerable.) Here, he’s finished by Ernie Chan, who brought some of the textures that were more apparent in the black and white magazine SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN to the finished product. I don’t know that Buscema especially liked Chan’s work over him, but to my eye it’s a good combination.
This issue opens with Conan and his lion companion Sholo walking through the forest. He’s in search of his abducted paramour Belit, the Queen of the Black Coast, who was abducted by the beast-controlling sorcerer Ajaga earlier. On the way, as they head into a cavern, they fall through a trapdoor into a raging river, and Conan is forced to do battle with a seriously large undersea snake, eventually bashing its brains out against an outcropping with a large bounder that he hefts. But he’s too oxygen-deprived by this point to get back to the surface, and so his unconscious form is found by Ajaga’s men.
Coming to as a prisoner of Ajaga and his men, Conan leaps at the beast-king, demanding the return of Belit to him. In response, Ajaga’s leopard leaps at the barbarain–and Conan flattens the beast cold with a punch to its head. This doesn’t prevent him from being struck down from behind by one of Ajaga’s guards, though. Ajaga intends to use Conan as a sacrifice in a ceremony designed to give him domination over the entire animal kingdom. Elsewhere, a defiant Belit makes an escape from the cell she’s been imprisoned in, with some assistance from Sholo. Seeing that the great lion is here, Belit deduces that Conan must be as well, and she goes in search of her lover.
But it may be too late, as when the issue closes, Conan wakens again to find himself strapped to an altar and about to be sacrificed. Given how often he’s been the rescuer in such a scenario, this does feel like an apt reversal of fortune for the character. Anyway, To Be Continued…in an issue that we’ve already gone over previously:
CONAN wasn’t really a good fit for me. I wasn’t all that interested in these sorts of adventures–they always felt a bit like history homework to me. Additionally, the average Conan story tended to have a ton of narrative captions, pages of them. This was intentional, to preserve the flavor of Robert E. Howard’s prose. But I generally didn’t have any patience for captions in my younger days, and even avoided reading them at certain times. So a lot of this effort was wasted on me. To this day, I’ve never entirely become a Conan fan, despite having read some pretty good stories about him along the way.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
Yeah, barbarians, Conan even, were nothing I was intrigued at all by but I may have bought this. A report about Belit’s fate from the one book she was in and that Thomas would fill in gaps in that book’s narrative to keep her around longer did intrigue. Not enough to do more than read it very occasionally though.
And while I didn’t much like Chan’s art or inking, he was a better fit for Buscema than any other artist. Like him or not, he did tend to overpower artists he inked but not Big John.
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Great Cover. On of my favorites from the title.
Conan never resonated with me either. I had subscription from Spring 1979 to Spring 1980 solely based on the Covers.
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Even after I started to get into the Robert E. Howard stories, I still only picked up the Conan comics intermittently. There wasn’t anything really “wrong” with them, they were solid enough entertainment. But there was a certain “sameness” to them — all those evil wizards, giant monsters, and damsels in distress started to blur together after a while. Of course, the superhero comics had plenty of repetitious elements too, but for some reason it bothered me less.
The black-and-white Savage Sword magazine held my attention a bit better, since they could go harder with no Comics Code looking over their shoulder. And the black-and-white aesthetic just seemed to fit better — Conan was definitely not a “four-color” kind of guy.
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I loved them both, but had you a preference for the lean but powerful Barry Smith version of Conan, or Big John Buscema’s blockier powerhouse?
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The only Conan books I recall having were the pocket book that collected the first 6 issues and the 1st issue of King Conan…. which I thought I’d try since it began a new story… but I never went back.
Buscema’s a great artist, but he doesn’t bring the weird energy that BWS did on the first few issues.
I can see how the character was a breath of fresh air in the early and mid-70’s for folks that didn’t want to read about another square wasp flying around New York.
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Some great panels of Ernie’s inks over J.Buscema’s drawings in this issue. But also weaker examples on the very same pages. My favorite issue was # 71, I think. Conan, Belit, & crew had been captured in an island city by a corrupt high-priest. They find a young woman imprisoned in a tower who tells them she’s the “goddess” Ashtoreth, I think. Ernie’s inks had great effect on the stone block floors & walls in the story. Also some of cleanest inks on the characters in that story. Some of the best imagery of Buscema’s “Conan” illustration to me was his backgrounds and ancient (“pre-historical”) structures and buildings. And Ernie usually gave them an appropriate, authentic looking textured finish.
I agree with J.Buscema that he was his own best inker throughout his “Conan” run. The final figures in those too-rare, full art issues were often draw dropping to me. There were a few issues in the late 1980’s inked by artist Bob Camp (an eventual “Ren & Stimpy” animator or designer, I believe) that were really satisfying, too. A little more stylized than John’s inks, but the naturalism wasn’t disturbed. I don’t think Al Williamson inked any of John Buscema’s Conan, but I liked his inks over John’s drawings on other titles. Rudy Nebres also gave a lush look to John’s “Conan” drawing. But Rudy also slightly altered Conan’s appearance.
I’m still a huge fan of John’s “Conan”. I’ve picked up the most of the current ongoing monthly (the initial arcs) just because of artist Robert De la Torre’s drawing his issues in an homage style to John Buscema’s. De la Torre’s a very strong artist in his own right. But I have to say it’s a rare treat to see this version of the character in new comics again. He uses more darkness in his composition, but it absolutely fits the tone.
Just like with Tom’s view on Batman, I disagree with Tom’s take on Conan. I don’t see Conan as “amoral”. He has his own morals, and a high standard of honor and justice that he sticks to. It often leads him into tougher situations, but adds to a richer experience. It kind of surprises me that Tom seems to miss this.
Roy had some fine issues as the “Conan” writer. Michael Fleischer had some decent issues. For me, though James Owsley (now Christopher Priest) might have been the most enjoyable. He built of his own cast, and followed a long, over-arching story of his own. I go back and forth between Roy and Priest being my favorite on “Conan”.
But John Buscema’s Conan IS Conan for me. BWS’s was cool, and quirky. But it lacked that link to breathtaking historical illustration that John brought. It’s Hal Foster, but also echoes of older heroic myths, bound by John’s mastery of conveying facial expressions, figure action, and fantastic settings, that hold up. Just great, fundamentally solid and dynamic drawing.
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Re: Conan’s morality– I’d say that it was somewhat variable on certain subjects. There were things that the barbarian wouldn’t do but take his career as a pirate with Belit. The character would have lost reader sympathy if he’d been seen doing what real pirates did– attacking ships and sending prisoners to a watery grave. So we just didn’t see that. Years ago, I remember being amused by a sequence of Conan in some desert, where he’s immediately attacked by a gang of brigands looking for plunder. He curses them out while fleeing, and I thought, “Hmm, isn’t this the same sort of thing you did at sea. using superior weapons or numbers to take law-abiding ships?” I suppose sometimes the ships were seen as the spawn of decadent civilizations, though– and Howard was big on that trope– so plundering them was just part of the dog eat dog ethic of barbarian life.
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“history homework” — good one.
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John ( Buscema ) was also a fast penciler which one of the things I miss about earlier comic book artists, getting to see some of my favourite artists in more than one book ( John & Sal Buscema, John Byrne, Jack Kirby ). I remember thinking about the artist that came after them and the ones after them and the ones after them that I liked, that were doing other books too ( Sure it might rob some other artist of work, but if I like this or that artist and not some other ones then my favourites doing more than one book especial character or characters( team book ) then it is win-win for me — or they could always put them ( fast pencilers ) on annuals & mini-series to give others work ).
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I first encountered Conan in the 12-book Lancer series of the late 1960s. Due to mixing REH stories with filler by others, it convinced me Conan was “meh.” Roy and John got me hooked on the Cimmerian.
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https://frasersherman.com/2016/01/04/the-lancer-conan-why-i-thought-robert-e-howard-was-bland-sfwapro/
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