The Savage Sword of Conan #31 - Marvel

July 1978 - I saw this at the NY Con. For the $2.00 price tag, I simply could not turn down a Howard Chaykin Conan cover.

There's something so reassuring about Conan comics. Maybe if you read them month after month, it gets boring, but digging through these old issues like this, every so often, it almost a relief when you open the book and the story starts like this:

...you just know you're in for a good time, courtesy Roy Thomas and John Buscema.

After taking care of this guy (in just two panels), Conan shows up at the door of a friend, who is told by Conan that he (Conan) got into an argument with the local king, refusing to do the king's bidding.

The king wasn't too cool with being refused by a "low-born barbarian", and sent his men (of which our splash page guy was one) after him.

Then, a comely lass named Nanaia arrives, who tells Conan the king has put out a hit on Conan with Hakhamani the Informer, but to keep it a secret, since Conan has many admirers in this town, and it would cause a revolt.

Conan decides to head north, and take Nanaia with him, which will enrage the king even more! But since when has Conan worried about that?

Meanwhile, the king survives an assassination attempt, and is spooked when he sees his attempted assassin holding The Flame Knife, the mark of a mysterious cult called The Hidden Ones.

At this point, there's not a lot of point explaining more of the plot, because A)it would take forever (a lot happens in this issue!) and B)I don't want to ruin the issue for anyone who might go out and read it.

As solid as the issue is, there are a few surprised here and there. "Big" John Buscema's art being top-notch is no surprise, but in this issue he added a few more graphic/abstract touches, like these panels:

...I like the flat blacks of the running legs (reminds me a bit of Frank Miller's work from Dark Knight on), and the blankness of Conan's shoulder. Usually Buscema didn't go in for that kind of stuff, but I liked his attempts at it.

Another surprise the level of gore--most of the SSOC issues I've read have lots of violence, of course, but usually its drawn in a way that partly hides the contact of weapon to flesh, but not here:

There's lots of shots like that in this issue. Usually you only see monsters get it this explicitly.

There's also a dictionary of Conan terms, called "A Gazetteer of the Hyborian World of Conan" featuring some spot illustrations by Buscema and Marie Severin, and a surprising number of ads for adults only "art portfolios", one by Vaughn Bode, and one by Bruce Jones called Other Women, Other Worlds which seems to be all about lesbians. Face front, True Believer!