Conan #1

Conan The Barbarian!

For years Marvel Comics held the rights to the comic book adaptation of Conan The Barbarian.

When the rights lapsed Dark Horse Comics stepped in and began a new Conan series.

As much as I loved the Marvel Conan series, Dark Horse did an excellent job adapting Conan to comic books.

Joseph Michael Linsner provided the beautiful cover and Kurt Busiek wrote the story and Carry Nord and Thomas Yeates drew the interior pages.

After so many years being published by Marvel Comics Conan had become a bit stale.

Artist John Buscema art in his later years work looked like he was just phoning it in to get a paycheck.  Much of the flair, excitement and energy his early work showed were missing in his later Conan work.

It was good, but not great.

Several artists filled in but none could match the energy of the earlier Conan issues and after over 20 years Marvel ceased publishing Conan.

Along comes Dark Horse and like with so many of its tie-ins and licensed properties Dark Horse artists and writers kept loyal to the subject matter and added to the canon.

Such was the case with Conan.

The first issues reminded me of Frank Frazetta’s artwork-not as polished mind you-but the ‘feel’ and energy was there.

I won’t go into of specifics but if you are a Conan fan you’re sure to spot some ‘Frazettaisms’ in the first issue and even a few Barry Windsor Smithisms.

The series started out with a bang and kept the quality up but like so many projects after the novelty wears out the art and writing start to lack and Dark Horse stopped producing Conan.

Ironically recently Marvel Comics re-obtained the Conan license and the cycle begins again.

"Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.'” — Hebrews 13:5