Conan the Barbarian #1 (Oct 1970)



The Coming of Conan
Script : Roy Thomas
Art : Barry Smith and Dan Adkins

The original cover art was retouched, to make the tip of Conan’s sword visible. Personally I think the original looked more natural.




Issue #1 does find Conan in the north, with a band of Aesir fighting the Vanir. (In the Marvel comics, the country of Asgard has been renamed Aesgaard, doubtless to avoid confusion with the Mighty Thor’s home). What’s more, Conan *will* be shown as captive of Hyperboreans in issue #3. Lets add to that the fact that issue #3 adapts a Howard non-Conan story, that issue #4 will present the first adaptation of a published Conan tale, and that the antagonist from issue #5 takes his name from one of Howard’s poem… Roy was definitely knowledgeable about the material he was dealing with!

So Conan is supposed to be around 16 years old here, and Barry Smith does give him a certain youthful appearance. Maybe not 16, but still pretty young. Conan wears the outfit that will be his for a number of issues: a yak horn helmet (with both horns facing front), wrist bands with big round knobs, an armlet around his right forearm, a three-piece medallion, a fur speedo and… sandals. Yes, I’m aware that Conan is supposed to eventually crush the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet. but when one lives in a snowy country, they’re not the footwear I’d recommend! Nevertheless, I love this look. The helmet in particular was unique.



The splash page, it is said, was redrawn to be more symbolic; likewise, two half-pages were also removed from the original treatment. You can see the latter two in the back pages of Conan Classics #1 (1994). Their loss does not affect the flow of the story.

(The image above would also be the first corner logo for the book).

The story :

We begin as a battle is being waged in Aesgaard, where Conan, a newcomer to the Aesir band of Olav, saves the man from the numerous Vanir facing him. Olav thanks the lad, and learning that he’s Cimmerian, concludes that wanderlust drew him north. When asked why he chose an Aesir band rather than fight for the Vanir, Conan answers that the Aesir pay more. This may be his reason, but in later issues we will learn that Conan would probably side with the Aesir anyway, since his people and the Vanir often came to blows as well. In fact, the battlefield on which Conan was born was a clash between Cimmerians and Vanir.

We shift our point of view to the leader of the Vanir band, Volff, who realizes that their situation is dire. He and his friend Horthar pretend to go off to pray for victory, but they’re actually deserting their men, hoping that these will slow down the Aesir when the fighting resumes. As fate would have it, the two chance upon a cavern where live a shaman, Sharkosh, and his female assistant, Tara. The shaman, thanks to a big magical jewel called the Star Stone, offers the Vanirmen his help in exchange for a young and strong captive he might use in his magic. A deal is struck, as Volff and Hrothar think that the black-haired Cimmerian fighting on Olav’s side is a prefect choice.

The shaman summons a flight of demonic winged men who make short work of the Aesir and capture Conan.

Waking up in a cage, the Cimmerian is cared for by Tara, who reveals that the demons (and in fact all the shaman’s powers) come from the Star Stone. Using said stone, the shaman then shows off by having it reveal to Volff and Horthar parts of the history of the world; how there was once a kingdom called Valusia (allowing King Kull to make a cameo in this first Conan issue). The stone then reveals Conan’s birth on a battlefield (always LOVED that image), and his eventual life of adventure culminating in his crowing himself king of a Hyborian nation!



The shaman then realizes that he’s now looking at the future, quite confused by the fact Conan HAS a future at all! Unable to resist, he keeps gazing at things to come, witnessing a future cataclysm that puts an end to the Hyborian Age, mankind’s return to a primitive state, then the rise of ancient Egypt, all the way to Man reaching the Space Age!

The shaman goes nuts, and Conan takes advantage of the ensuing confusion to burst out of his cage, which (being made of rather thin wood) was not conceived to resist a Cimmerian’s brawn. Acting upon Tara’s earlier words, Conan seizes the Star Stone, source of the shaman’s power, and shatters in on a nearby wall. All hell then breaks loose, as the winged demons attending the shaman vanish to their other dimensional world, Volff and Horthar die in the fire and Tara is revealed to be one of their kind. Before disappearing too, she explains that the shaman captured her from her world and gave her the shape of a human maiden, but that she could not remain on Earth unless a human body was sent to replace her -and the stronger, the better. She then vanishes for good, telling Conan that she found him fair.

“Night-winged thoughts flit across Conan’s brain… memories of the dread deeds of the day just done… The slaying of a valiant friend… The marvels of an invisible world revealed…Images of many-towered cities and dying continents and… and… and kings! Ay, wasn’t there something about a kingdom? A vision of Conan as a monarch of some unguessed-at land?”

Commentary :

Excellent start for this new series! We had sword fights, warfare, wizards, pretty ladies, demons, ancient civilizations, the unstoppable flow of history, and a cool new hero! What else could we hope for?

Conan looks appropriately young, as Smith draws much leaner people than would, say John Buscema. His attire is more fanciful than practical, and I must admit that it is one of the aspects I loved about Cary Nord’s art in the later Dark Horse series; Conan dressed for cold weather. But this is a 1970s comic-book, and I don’t really mind Conan dressing like a northern Tarzan.

Conan displays a certain rough chivalry towards Tara, as he carries her to safety when everything blows up in the cavern. This is a character trait we will see very often. Conan is not meant to be a goody-two-shoes hero, but he has to be a decent bloke otherwise we wouldn’t root for him!

This being the first issue, things haven’t quite gelled yet art-wise. We notably see a few fantasy weapons of the kind I hate (with weird-looking blades and stuff). There’s notably a very strange double-bladed sword … how could such a thing offer any advantage? it must be very hard to handle, is twice as heavy and doesn’t even increase the number of edges!

Notes :

- While Howard says Conan spent about a year in Cimmeria after the siege of Venarium, there is a story in Marvel’s second Conan run (in King-sized Conan #1, 2020) that says the story we just described happened immediately after the siege. Since that story was written by Roy Thomas, I guess he just forgot about Howard’s letter to Miller. Or he decided not to take it into account, which is a writer’s privilege. After all, this comic is inspired by Howard’s work; it doesn’t pretend to be a direct transposition.

- The same story will be told again in Savage Sword of Conan #222, this time drawn by John Buscema.

- Aesir and Vanir are not only Norse gods; in Snorri Sturlusson’s History of the Kings of Norway, they are described as ancient peoples whose kings were eventually deified. Therefore, their inclusion here refers to historical people rather than mythical ones. Cimmerians were also a historical people, the best known being the ones featured in Herodotus’ Histories. They might be the same as the Gomer of the Bible, and because Cimmerian and Cymru sound alike, Howard made them forebears of certain British people.

- Conan ends up weaponless at the conclusion of this issue.

Many years ago, now, I read an interview with Gil Kane (in The Comics Journal, I think) where he took issue with Roy's accounts of deciding to go after the Conan license. He claimed he had pitched the idea to Marvel, first and Roy took credit for it. I have no idea of what the truth is; but, given recent events with Roy and credits, I don't immediately dismiss the claim as jealousy. At the same time, Gil spent a lot of his later years venting about editors and writers in comics; so, I don't immediately accept it, either.

Thanks for this thread RR. Conan is why I collected comics. Let's go back to 1969, when a teen kirby101 was reading comics borrowed from his brother's best friend, a certified MMMS fan. Now I did read comics in the 60s, but it was occasional and not focused on any particular books. But now I was reading more and getting a better feel for the MU. I saw the ad for Conan in one of the books and thought "That comic I will buy!" I did, and read it and had my mind blown, between the art and story I was like an addict getting my first snort of coke. I continued to buy every issue and started buying other titles. Within a year, I was buying every Marvel title and a few from DC and others. But Conan stayed my favorite, at least for the Barry Smith run.


As for the Thomas / Kane conflict. There is no doubt that Roy did a tremendous amount of work to get Conan into print. And he shepherded it for over a decade. So he deserves a mountain of credit. But he also does tend to grab credit where it might not be warranted. As RR points out, a Conan or REH comic wasn't a novel concept, so Kane first suggesting it doesn't diminish what Roy and Marvel did.

Just a quick note about precursors. Before that s&s story in Chamber of Darkness #4, Roy started using sword & sorcery elements in Marvel stories. First, in late 1968 in the Serpent Crown saga in Sub-Mariner. The letters pages there are where I first saw the names "Howard" and "Conan". It was pretty clever - a letter writer wrote (paraphrasing from memory here), "This story is starting to remind me of a certain barbarian... 'Howard' you spell that anyway?" and the editorial reply was, "Yes, we're familiar with that barbarian hero - or 'Conan' you tell?"

Then about five months before Conan #1, the Avengers encountered Arkon, an even more obvious s&s character.

And of course Roy's Missouri compatriot Denny O'Neil brought sword & sorcery to DC a full year before Conan #1 in Showcase #82-84, "Nightmaster", with art first by Jerry Grandenetti and Dick Giordano (#82), then Bernie Wrightson assisted by Jeff Jones and Mike Kaluta (#83-84).

Yes, but 15 years was a whole different world in comics back then.

That DC Special issue was on sale in March 1971, undoubtedly because of the success of Conan.

Gold Key jumped on the bandwagon in summer 1972 with Dagar the Invincible.

Edit: I forgot about Warren! Archie Goodwin and Steve Ditko produced what might be the first clearly s&s story of the 60s in Creepy #14, on sale in January 1967. The following issue they introduced the hero Thane, who had two more stories in 1967-9, with art by Jeff Jones and Tom Sutton respectively.

Charlton's Hercules, with its s&s backup Thane of Bagarth (in this one, Thane is a title rather than a name) debuted in summer 1967. I guess 1967 was the year of the Thane.

Conan the Barbarian #2 (Dec 1971)



Script by Roy Thomas
Art by Barry Smith and new inker Sal Buscema

Note that the mag is bi-monthly at this time.

Roy has a few anecdotes about this book, as related in Conan classics #2 (1994). Apparently, Barry Smith’s work on issue #1, while acceptable (and, in hindsight, very promising) was not judged to be up to par with his previous work on, say Daredevil. Young Barry was even on the verge of being replaced by another inexpensive B-lister when the artwork for issue #2 came in, and Roy felt elated: his backing Barry had been a good move after all. That being said, a few modifications had to be made. The splash page showed Conan crouching over a bear the young Cimmerian had just killed for its pelt (I *told* you, Conan, that sandals and a fur speedo were not suited to a snow-covered country!) but apparently, a Martin Goodman who was paying much closer attention than I would have given him credit for insisted on the bear to be turned into a giant ape, because people didn’t pay money to see ordinary bears in comics. (The giant ape was not a random choice of creature; the story does feature apes later on). Roy tried to argue that it was anticlimactic to start by immediately showing the enemy (and a dead representative thereof, to boot) but nothing gave. Barry dutifully redrew the bear into an ape, and since later pages showed Conan wearing the pelt he was to have supposedly taken from a now-nonexistent plantigrade, Roy adjusted the script by having Conan reflect that he had recently waylaid a traveler and stolen his cloak and his sword. This was actually killing two birds with one stone, as Conan had found himself weaponless at the end of the previous issue; his now having a sword made more sense with the correction. (One could even wonder how he was supposed to have killed a bear bare-handed!)



For the geographically0inclined, we are still Aesgaard, a northern country located in today’s Scandinavia. As far as continuity goes, the story was inspired by this excerpt from Howard’s “The Hyborian Age” :

(See? I told you that Roy was doing his homework!)

This excerpt will actually be referred to in the tale itself.

The movie Planet of the Apes going back just a few years at the time (1968, so two-three years earlier), perhaps the choice of ape-like creatures for issue #2 was influenced by its popularity; however, large apes are a frequent staple of Conan stories. Plus, it makes Martin Goodman happy; Roy had promised him and Stan a lot of monsters in this new series.

The story :

Conan has just been attacked by a giant man-ape creature (giant as in eight feet tall, not in the King Kong category) but has managed to slay it. The Cimmerian has never seen such a thing, and this is an early testimony to the nature of Conan’s world: not everything goes in this pseudo-historical age. You don’t just happen upon a giant ape-man thing and say “oh, yes, that’s a typical four-armed Monkey; they’re quite frequent around here. And oh, look, a winged ice dragon! Yes, those too are pretty common. Let me now ride my trusted talking eagle and visit a cloud city”. No, Conan’s world is our own, only very old and with the odd wizard or monster sometimes popping up as surprising exceptions, not as a rule. Magic is rare and scary in this world.

Bitchin’ against he cold, the Cimmerian resumes his travels, bound for Cimmeria, when he espies a blond girl who’s even less dressed for the weather than he is. When she darts away upon seeing him, he follows running but is ambushed by more of the ape-men (this time in full armour). This was a trap! He fell for a pretty face and a bit of skirt! The unconscious youth is carried to an underground city where ape-men rule and a population of human thralls have been kept for generations. (Their forebears were the people lost in the quoted text above, with occasional mates procured by the apes raiding northern villages).

According to Roy, Barry drew the city as far more advanced than he would have wished; the writer had envisioned a rather primitive subterranean town, not a Flash Gordon city of minarets and metal streets. But what are you gonna do?

Conan is thrown into the slave pens where he meets the head thrall, Kiord, who explains how the original explorers who met the ape-men’s ancestors were captured and made to teach the beats the ways of civilization, before being turned into generational cheap labour. Conan swears that unlike the thralls he won’t be kept in chains, a typically Conan-like attitude that explains why I reacted so poorly to the first Conan movie; a Cimmerian who meekly accepted to spend a decade chained to a wheel was no Conan I knew. Anyway… Conan causes a public disturbance and is condemned to “the games” by the place’s ape king, Gah-Kree. (Another ape is named Har-Lann. Be careful, Roy… people have been sued for less than that!)



The night before the expected death of the newcomer, Kiord provides Conan with a crude stone shiv, expecting the youth to commit suicide. Conan says no to the idea, but keeps the weapon and intends to put it to better use.

As the games begin, Conan manages to kill a snow lion (another beast he’s never seen, although he had heard rumours) with his artisanal weapon. An irate king sends his soldiers to punish this unsportsmanlike behaviour, and Conan’s refusal to give up trigger something in Kiord (who, along with the other Thralls, was made to watch the show). Breaking free from their pen, the slaves surge to help Conan and use one of the ostentatious siege engines parked nearby to cause the royal balcony to collapse, putting a sudden end to Gak-Kree’s reign. Kiord dies in the final battle, but he dies a free man. A suddenly emotional Conan puts the ape king’s crown on the dead man’s head, and invites the Thralls to remember the one who led them to freedom.

Commentary:

-Another good issue, with art that starts showing many of Barry’s signature traits (including the way he draws hands). Some sequences strike me as a bit odd; for example, a massive wheeled battering ram takes forever to be set in motion by two guys, but once it goes it behaves like a runaway train… and all on apparently flat ground. That is however not a very big deal as we can imagine there was a little slope somewhere that we didn’t see.

-The ape-men were a decent comic-book enemy, but far too fantastic for my taste, at least this early in the series; I wouldn't have wanted them to set the tone.

-As a whole this issue is a nice follow-up to #1. It has the same echo, and the world in which Conan lives is still rather ill-defined. Next issue will however be a major leap foward (one of several in the coming years), with much better art, much more ethnological exposition, and a truly great script. I envy those who got to experience that era first hand!

Notes :

- Conan is still in Aesgaard. In between this issue and the next he will travel to the east rather than to the south, all the way to Hyperborea, after having been captured by those pesky Hyperboreans. Escaping, he will then make his way south to Brythunia.

- The Thralls’ easy victory is explained thus: the ape-men are for the most part quite sheepish; it is only the king’s guard that is dangerous.

- Hyborian Age religions are of great interest to me, so I notice that the only god mentioned to date is Crom, and that only when Conan swears. That will change next issue.

- “Lair of the Beast-Men” would be nominated by the Academy of Comic-Book Arts as one of the five candidates for “best story of the year”.

LOVE this! More Conan analysis from RR... fantastic! I feel privileged we get to see this here, because it really should be in a book!