ASTONISHING TALES 2
cover by John Buscema & John Verpoorten
DR. DOOM-- "REVOLUTION"
CONAN THE BARBARIAN 1
cover by Barry Smith & John Verpoorten
This opens in a time "between the sinking of Atlantis and the dawn of recorded time", in Vanaheim, when a group of locals are fighting off an Aesir raiding party, among whom is "Conan the Cimmerian", a young, powerful, black-haired mercenary, who tells his commander Olav he decided to work for the Aesir only because they pay better. When the Vanir leader Volff & his right-hand Hothar leave their men behind to face the Aesir's wrath, they run across a cave with a temple inside, inhabited by Sharkosh the Shaman, Tara, his handmaiden, and a large, gleaming "star-stone". As the Aesir catch up with the Vanir, BOTH are suddenly attacked by winged demons, who kill everyone except Conan, who wakes up a prisoner inside the cave. With Tara, he witnesses the Shaman call up visions of the past, including King Kull, Conan's birth, and future visions including Conan being crowned king of a country, and the far future with man reaching into space! The Shaman is disturbed by this, as he plans to use Conan in a ritual of "transference". Conan breaks loose, kills or destroys everything in the cave, and escapes with Tara, who only then reveals that she is really one of the demon-horde, from another dimension reached via the star-stone, and the only way she could remain in this world, in human form, was to find someone else to take her place there. She reverts to her true form, then vanishes, leaving the mercenary to wander off, pondering all that's happened, all he's seen, without food or weapons.
Man, was THIS not your normal Marvel Comic of the time! In THE CHRONICLES OF CONAN Volume 1 (2003), Roy Thomas talks about how readers had been writing in begging for "sword and sorcery" characters to be adapted by Marvel, and he & "ye editor" began looking into it. They were both initially more interested in Lin Carter's Thongor Of Lemuria, but Martin Goodman insisted on a firm $150 per comic deal for the rights, and Carter's agent kept trying to hit him up for a better deal (and rightly so, I suppose). Although Roy & "ye editor" felt the by-then more popular Conan would be out of their league, Roy happened upon Glenn Lord's address-- he was the agent of the Robert E. Howard estate-- got in touch and made an offer for $200 per book, and they were in business! Only then he did he realize he's somehow inadvertently made a bigger offer than he'd be authorized to do. Surprisingly, Goodman didn't bat an eye-- but when they began putting the book's creative team together, he insisted they get someone "cheaper" than John Buscema (their #1 pick) or Gil Kane (who REALLY wanted to do it!), to make up for the higher license fee they agreed on. Barry Smith, who Roy had already worked on several comics (and had already done an "s&s" story about "Starr The Slayer") got the job. Roy decided it might be a good idea under the circumstances if he wrote at least the first issue or two himself, in case Goodman wanted to take part of the money out of the writer's pay. But the way it worked out, Roy, who had never intended to write the book in the first place, wound up doing over 200 issues!!! Whoa!
Somehow, despite having been a fan of "s&s" movies like THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD, I never quite got into CONAN-- until I happened to pick up RED SONJA #1 by Roy & Frank Thorne. I actually got into CONAN as a result of RS, and began reading his book regular around 1977. Most of the earlier stories I have still never read, even to this day! I finally got started on these when they did the CONAN CLASSIC reprint series in 1994, which I noted at the time had much sharper, clearer reproduction than on 90% of Marvel's reprints up to that point. I can recall writing Roy a fan letter which he printed (a letter column in a reprint mag! --imagine!) in which he said he was surprised it took me this long to read these things. CONAN CLASSIC only lasted 11 issues... so I had to wait until Dark Horse got the rights and began their reprint series in 2003. I have 10 volumes of that sitting around-- which brings me up to the point where I started buying the book-- all unread-- waiting until I got thru my earlier re-reading periods. Having re-read all my Marvels (reprints or new) from the 1930s-1960's, this seems the best time to FINALLY get into these things!
Barry Smith's art was really coming along at this point, though readers could not have imagine how MUCH-- and how FAST-- his style would grow and evolve into something never seen before in regular comics. Dan Adkins supplied the inks on the 1st issue, but somehow he didn't stick around. The coloring in CONAN CLASSIC was a wonder to behold-- it managed to capture-- I imagine-- the look of the original 1970 comics, only on slightly better paper. THE CHRONICLES OF CONAN, on the other hand, are printed on heavy "glossy" paper, and the colors, supplied by "Digital Chameleon", are what Dick Ayers once described as "overdone". I mean, it looks MAGNIFICENT-- no getting around it-- but the colors in these are so OVER-POWERING, it's almost hard to focus on the drawing or the linework! Still, some of these have been reprinted multiple times, including in B&W ESSENTIAL CONAN books, so I guess fans can pick & choose how they'd like to have these.
Wally Wood may have gotten the ball rolling with his stories in TOWER OF SHADOWS, but this is where the whole "S&S" fad REALLY began to build momentum.
(7-23-2008)
WESTERN GUNFIGHTERS 2
cover by HERB TRIMPE
(insets by Al Williamson, Joe Maneely, Werner Roth)
Oh, did I mention this came out JUST as Jack Kirby had jumped ship? I've had a feeling for a long time that when that happened, that the "editor" had at least a mild nervous breakdown, because right after, an AWFUL lot of really BAD decisions were made, regarding who worked on which books, and what reprints appeared where... all sorts of chaotic things.
In the case of the brand-new "WESTERN GUNFIGHTERS" anthology, while the 1st issue had 4 NEW stories (clocking in at 40 pages) and 2 reprints (10 pages), the 2nd issue had ONE new story (10 pages) and no less than 7 REPRINTS (totalling at 39 pages). That's the complete reverse of the 1st issue. I mean-- WTF??? Publisher Martin Goodman was known for flooding the market with "product", and this is a perfect example of his cynical attitude toward the business.
The one NEW story in this issue features Carter Slade, school-teacher turned masked western hero...
"TARANTULA NO MORE!", by Dick Ayers, Gary Friedrich & Tom Sutton (what? no Vince Colletta??) is the 2nd half of this 2-parter, which, clearly should have appeared in its entirety in a single issue of its own series.
This is not only an insult to the readers, and an insult to the already-lame Carter Slade character, but a real insult to the MEMORY of the character of U.S. Marshal Rex Fury-- the REAL Ghost Rider!!
(3-24-2014)
(Continued in October 1970, Pt. 3)
All Text (C) Henry R. Kujawa
Artwork (C) Marvel Comics
Restorations by Henry R. Kujawa
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