FANTASY 207
Barbarian , and a 1973 one-shot from Windy City Publications, a more fully realized
Elric emerged in 1982 when Marvel issued the graphic novel Elric: Th e Dreaming City
by Roy Th omas and P. Craig Russell. Th e following year Th omas and Russell began
a short run of an Elric comic for Pacifi c Comics. From 1985 to 1988 Th omas worked
with Russell and other artists in adapting Elric novels in four miniseries published
by First Comics. In the later half of the 1980s, First Comics also published adapta-
tions of the adventures of Corum and Hawkmoon, other aspect of Moorcock’s eternal
champion. In 1997, Russell both wrote and drew a miniseries adapting the fi nal Elric
novel for Dark Horse. Moorcock himself wrote a 1997 eternal champion series and a
2007 Elric graphic novel for DC.
It did not take long for the conventions of heroic fantasy to become so well established
in comics fandom that they could be parodied. When Dave Sim’s Cerebus the Aardvark
began in 1977 the title was clearly a play on Conan the Barbarian. A more straightfor-
ward but still hilarious parody of Conan and his ilk can be found in the numerous Groo
the Wanderer titles by Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier. Groo was fi rst published
by Pacifi c in 1982, and since then there have been one-shots, graphic novels, and series
from Eclipse, Marvel, Image, and Dark Horse.
Th e sword-and-sorcery craze began to calm some after the 1970s, but interesting
material continued to appear. Gil Kane revisited heroic fantasy in 1987 with the DC
one-shot Talos of the Wilderness Sea. Around the same time Arrow Comics began Th e
Realm , about four teenagers transported to a Dungeons and Dragons style world. Th e
Realm series and the spin-off Legend Lore: Tales of the Realm were taken over by Caliber
Comics. An interesting entry in the genre was Ironwood (1991–95) from Fantagraphics
porn imprint Eros. Ironwood is one of the few Eros comics more concerned with story
than with sex, although the setting does allow for some intriguing fantasy creature
couplings.
Th e “Freebooters” strip in Barry Windsor-Smith’s beautiful Storyteller anthology of
the late 1990s features settings reminiscent of his Conan artwork and a main character
who could well be an aging Conan who has indulged in too much carousing over the
years. Th e most popular heroic fantasy of the late 1990s was probably the erratically
published and never fi nished Battle Chasers by fan favorite Joe Madureira. Th ere was a
dearth of fantasy material in 2001 when CrossGen launched Sojourn. Th e relationship
between housewife-turned-warrior Arwyn and rogue Gareth develops on a long quest
to gather the pieces of a mystic arrow that can defeat Mordath and his army of orcs.
In the late 1990s, the short-lived Cross Plains Comics mined some of Howard’s
non-Conan material, including the Pictish king Bran Mac Morn. In 1990 Dark Horse
published miniseries featuring Mac Morn and Howard’s Cormac Mac Art. More
recently they have become the comic book home of Howard’s fantasy characters.
Th eir Conan title began in 2004 and has been accompanied by half a dozen limited
series featuring the mighty barbarian. Conan was re-launched in 2008 as Conan the
Cimmerian. Also in 2008, Dark Horse began a Kull miniseries and a Solomon Kane
miniseries. Robert E. Howard’s Savage Tales anthology featuring a variety of Howard’s
