Comic Books: And the Rest! Conan, Ad Infinitum!

When did it happen? The only time co-ordinates I can give are that it was after Mike had passed away, I was living on Nolte Street, and all the kids were still at home. It was at the used bookstore run by the lady who had taken over from old Cap’n Armstrong’s store, moved into a store on Court Street, well within walking distance. Kelsey was with me and somehow I had money (maybe a birthday? Or did Susan help me out?). We were browsing around the store when I found them. A stack of Savage Sword of Conans at the end of a shelf.

I had hardly thought about it for years. And here were copies that could not only replace damaged or missing issues that I had lost but also copies of things I had never before seen! I pounced on them and bought them at once. Being able to examine them at home, I took out duplicates to ones I had and gave them to Kameron, and noticed issues from a similar mag, The Conan Saga. All these ‘new’ copies were not of course in any sequence. And I have no emotional investment in them. But it was fascinating.

And that is the end of my Conan catalog. I can finally put the bin back out of my way. No-one probably needs to think about them again until I am past caring about things. And whenever I do think about them, it will be much easier for me to run my eye over them here on the Niche.

Notes

The original run of Savage Sword of Conan, published by Marvel Comics, spanned 21 years, from August 1974 to July 1995. It ran for a total of 235 issues. – Google AI

The Conan Saga was an American sword and sorcery comic book title featuring the character Conan the Barbarian, published by Marvel Comics from 1987 to 1995, for a total of 97 issues. It included all reprints from Savage Sword of Conan and Conan the Barbarian in large, black and white Savage Sword of Conan magazine format. - Wikipedia

Comic Books: The Savage Sword of Conan (#70 - #79)

This run was from November 1981 to August 1982 (with the Conan movie coming out in May). As a consequence, there was much discussion about it in the magazine and many movie stills. For some reason I gave up buying Savage Sword off the stands after this, although that is not the end of the story. Why did I stop? Maybe financial reasons, maybe because I was experiencing diminishing returns. I mean, a giant ant-man? This would have been in my third semester of college (second year).

I am missing #78. Thinking about stuff, I’m pretty sure it was destroyed, and looking back at things I wonder if that was what happened to #46 as well, which I said I never owned, but now it seems I may have had it, because I remember at least a couple of issues had to be thrown away.

Only one more batch to go, and that concerns the most off-the-path story about my Savage Swords of all. 

Comic Books: The Savage Sword of Conan (#60 - #69)

This run covers from January 1981 to October 1981, so it took me out of high school, through the summer, and into my first semester of college. There were beginning to be excited rumblings (including a proposed storyboard) about the coming Conan film.

Robert E. Howard, although now firmly established in the broader Fantasy genre, was more of an all-purpose pulp writer. In fact, when he passed away, he was publishing a series of boxing stories. Whatever genre he wrote in, his heroes tended to be tough two-fisted loners, cowboys, sailors, or warriors who could fight their way out of almost any situation.  

But he is most closely associated with Weird Tales (‘The Unique Magazine’), where his Conan stories had their debut. He carried on a correspondence with fellow contributor H. P. Lovecraft, the cosmic horror writer. The stories in Weird Tales were … niche, to say the least, and though nerdy were seen to be lowbrow. If you wanted ‘real’ literature, you went to The Atlantic Monthly or Harper’s Magazine for your high-falutin’, prestigious fix. But Howard had something, something that persisted and grew in the popular culture, until now even academics have to sit up and take notice.

Howard’s tales appeal to ‘adolescents of all ages’, but especially to early teen boys, a situation parodied in National Lampoon’s ‘Cohen the Boybarian’. It was not so much his style as his substance that appealed, his set-up and his ‘philosophy’. Even when I was collecting the Del Rey volumes of his work (since sold), I found it a chore reading his prose and seldom read anything all the way through. But I HAD to be the Fantasy Guy. And they were deeply discounted in the Bargain Books catalog.

The Savage Sword (and later the Conan movie) was just about the right mediation level of Howard for me, that is, when they did actually adapt his work. They had plenty of other writers, writing plenty of new tales, all to formula. But even now I am tempted by the hardback omnibus volume of all the old authentic Robert E. Howard Conan tales. There is a part of me, too, that is always enduring (if only in memory) permanent adolescence.

Comic Books: The Savage Sword of Conan (#50 - #59)

The Savage Sword of Conan was Sword-and-Sorcery, not High Fantasy like Tolkien. I don’t think Tolkien or his works were ever mentioned in the ancillary materials. Not the exact genre, maybe even rivals for your time and attention. But there were wizards and sorcery, half-clad babes and monsters of the week, power fantasies of conquest and triumph, and civilizations lost even to the legendary Hyborian Age in which the Conan tales take place. There were stories featuring Robert E. Howard’s other creations, Kull and Solomon Kane.

Included in those ancillary materials were essays about Howard, about the milieu of Conan’s world, about the fandom, about sword and sorcery in general, about artists and their work. There were adverts hawking fantasy art portfolios, back issues, other fantastic magazines, ads for movies, paperback books, posters, even items in the lost medium of the LP record. Frank Frazetta and rock’n’roll posters!  

In the mailbag (called ‘Swords and Scrolls’) you could observe what was in effect a slow-motion chatroom, where nerds and basement dwellers could give their opinions and corrections and express the stunted yearnings of their souls. It made you feel you were part of a mostly mute underground movement, that you weren’t so unusual or alone, that ‘your people’, your fellow strugglers and fantasy fans, were out there.

Years later I got omnibus volumes of reprints which had all the stories I had missed or lost. I could have gotten rid of the mags if I wanted to. But the experience was not the same, not to mention the lack of personal and historical associations. I sold those omnibuses (omnibii?) when I needed cash, but I feel I would never part with these old memories. At least not willingly.

This run (#50 to #59) stretched from March 1980 to December 1980, straddling my Junior to my Senior year in high school.

Comic Books: The Savage Sword of Conan (#40 - #49)

I think I mentioned before the tragedy of the Great Termite Devastation, where heart-breaking damage was wrought on various boxes that were stored and otherwise undisturbed in the ‘Guest Room’ back bedroom closet. Well, the box where I kept The Savage Sword of Conan magazines was at ground zero of that disaster. I lost some issues entirely, and some copies that I have still bear marks of their trials.

I remember they were in one of the medium-sized boxes that garlic bread came in at Mr. Gatti’s, sturdy containers of an easy size to handle. We would always bring plenty of boxes home for storage. I remember I always thought of two such boxes and a larger one for, I think, paper towels, as ‘a matching set of suitcases and a trunk.’ The Nineties were an unusually lethargic time for me, when depression, sloth, and boredom kept me from tending to the Archives as I should.  

This stretch of The Savage Sword of Conan, #40 to #49, ran from May 1979 to February 1980. I’m missing #46, but that’s just because I never had it, not because it was eaten by termites.

#46