Of course, that's not really true; Marvel had tried their hand at the magazine format a couple of times before this, to varying degrees of success; but it was this first issue of Savage Sword of Conan that launched the House of Idea's longest-lasting, best-selling black and white comic magazine. And what a first issue it was!
Behind a beautiful cover by Boris Vallejo, this inaugural effort is chock-full of Barbarian goodness. First up is this pin-up by Estaban Maroto:
While the color Conan comic had lots of scantily-dressed maidens getting groped by icky monsters, they never were quite as salacious as what you see here: I mean, clearly, this multi-tentacled baddie is headed for third base, only to soon be felled by a sword.
The main feature is about as classic Conan as it gets: it's "Curse of the Undead-Man" by Roy Thomas and John Buscema, and within the first few pages we get all the classic trappings of a Conan story:
...sex, violence, action, even Red Sonja!
This story runs about twenty pages, and is a total blast--as is the rest of the book. Following another pin-up is a Red Sonja solo story by Maroto and Neal Adams:
I see a lot of Adams in this story, I have to wonder how much of Maroto was really here--perhaps just breakdowns. In any case, it--and Sonja--looks gorgeous. A great second feature.
After another pin-up and a text feature ("Conan's Women Warriors"), comes the first installment of "Blackmark" by Gil Kane:
This is another instance of the reader getting something they'd normally never see in a color Marvel comic: Blackmark was not a Marvel character, but licensed from Bantam Books, for whom Kane did the original material.
After two(!) more text features, comes a Conan reprint, from Savage Tales #1, by Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith:
This is is astonishing amount of top-flight material for only a buck. Sure, that was about three-to-four times what a regular comic book cost at the time, but where else were you going to get Vallejo, Buscema, Adams, Maroto, Kane, Smith, and others all in the same book?
Savage Sword of Conan would, in the end, last longer than any other black and white mag that Marvel produced, longer than every other magazine combined. Of course, not every issue was as good as this one (as we've seen, and will see), but by Crom! did they get off to a good start!
The main feature is about as classic Conan as it gets: it's "Curse of the Undead-Man" by Roy Thomas and John Buscema, and within the first few pages we get all the classic trappings of a Conan story:
This story runs about twenty pages, and is a total blast--as is the rest of the book. Following another pin-up is a Red Sonja solo story by Maroto and Neal Adams:
After another pin-up and a text feature ("Conan's Women Warriors"), comes the first installment of "Blackmark" by Gil Kane:
After two(!) more text features, comes a Conan reprint, from Savage Tales #1, by Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith:
Savage Sword of Conan would, in the end, last longer than any other black and white mag that Marvel produced, longer than every other magazine combined. Of course, not every issue was as good as this one (as we've seen, and will see), but by Crom! did they get off to a good start!
No comments:
Post a Comment