FANTASY 205
Th e 1930s pulp magazine stories of Robert E. Howard are the wellspring of heroic
fantasy in comic books. Gardner Fox and John Giunta borrowed liberally from How-
ard’s Conan material when they created Crom the Barbarian for Out of Th is World
in 1950. In classic sword-and-sorcery fashion, Crom rescues beautiful, scantily clad
women and battles giant serpents and spiders. Like Conan, Crom conquers a kingdom
with his sword, but is uncomfortable within the confi nes of civilized life. After Crom’s
three adventures, there was no signifi cant sword and sorcery activity in comic books
until 1970, when Wally Wood crafted four short sword and sorcery tales for Marvel’s
horror anthology Tower of Shadows. Each story featured a diff erent protagonist and the
third, featuring a barbarian named Vandal battling a sorcerer, was titled “Of Swords and
Sorcery!” Earlier in the year, in another Marvel horror anthology, Chamber of Darkness ,
a Roy Th omas and Barry Smith story titled “Th e Sword and the Sorcerers!” had fea-
tured Starr the Slayer, who looked almost exactly like the Smith-drawn Conan would
look when he debuted later in the year.
The sword and sorcery genre in comic books is virtually synonymous with Conan
the Barbarian, adapted to comics by Marvel beginning in 1970. Created by How-
ard, Conan first appeared in We i r d Ta l e s magazine in 1932. A mighty barbarian
from the harsh northern land of Cimmeria, Conan leaves his homeland and cuts
a bloody swath through the civilized world, eventually seizing the throne of the
most powerful nation of the time. With adventures full of drinking, wenching, and
disemboweling, Conan was an improbable hero for a mainstream publisher that
still carried the Comics Code seal of approval on all of its comics. However, 1970
was an uncertain time in the comic book industry and in an attempt to adapt to
changing tastes publishers were flooding the market with new, experimental mate-
rial. After a slow start, it was not long before Conan was outselling many of the
superhero titles.
For the fi rst 10 years of the run, Roy Th omas, the writer of Marvel’s Conan the
Barbarian had a good grasp of the character, and his encyclopedic knowledge of How-
ard’s body of work allowed him to adapt many of the tales of Howard’s other heroes
into Conan stories. Barry Smith provided the artwork on most of the fi rst 24 issues;
John Buscema took over as penciler with issue #24 and created the defi nitive version of
the Cimmerian. Th e Conan the Barbarian title ran for 275 issues, from 1970 to 1993.
After a brief run in Savage Tales , Conan became the star of his own black and white
magazine, Savage Sword of Conan the Barbarian , which ran for 235 issues, from 1974
to 1995. Th ere was also a King Conan , later renamed Conan the King , title that ran for
55 issues, from 1980 to 1989. Seven of Marvel’s graphic novels issued between 1985
and 1992 were Conan novels.
However, by the mid-1990s the Conan franchise seemed to be losing steam. From
1994 to 1995 the only on-going, regular format Conan comic book was Conan the
Adventurer , a title taken from the animated cartoon that was running at the time. In
1995, Marvel restarted the Conan title and tried to recapture the success of Savage Sword
of Conan with Conan the Savage. Both titles were cancelled the following year. Marvel
