Conan: Newspaper Strips Volume 1

Conan: Tiras de prensa (Panini) #1

by Roy Thomas, Doug Moench, John Buscema

From September 4, 1978, until April 12, 1981, thousands of readers across the country thrilled to the daily adventures of everyone's favorite barbarian, Conan Now Dark Horse Comics is proud to present the Conan newspaper strips collected for the first time in a handsome hardcover volume. Readers will once again enjoy the talents of Roy Thomas, Doug Moench, John Buscema, Ernie Chan, Alfredo Alcala, Rudy Nebres, Pablo Marcos, Alan Kupperberg, and Tom Yeates as they artfully unfold the continuing saga of Conan in these daily comic strips

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

280 pages, Hardcover

First published October 5, 2010

About the author

Roy Thomas was the FIRST Editor-in-Chief at Marvel--After Stan Lee stepped down from the position. Roy is a longtime comic book writer and editor. Thomas has written comics for Archie, Charlton, DC, Heroic Publishing, Marvel, and Topps over the years. Thomas currently edits the fanzine Alter Ego for Twomorrow's Publishing. He was Editor for Marvel comics from 1972-1974. He wrote for several titles at Marvel, such as Avengers, Thor, Invaders, Fantastic Four, X-Men, and notably Conan the Barbarian. Thomas is also known for his championing of Golden Age comic-book heroes — particularly the 1940s superhero team the Justice Society of America — and for lengthy writing stints on Marvel's X-Men and Avengers, and DC Comics' All-Star Squadron, among other titles.

Also a legendary creator. Creations include Wolverine, Carol Danvers, Ghost Rider, Vision, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Valkyrie, Morbius, Doc Samson, and Ultron. Roy has also worked for Archie, Charlton, and DC among others over the years.

Reviews

[Drew Canole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Daily and Sunday from September 4, 1978, to April 12, 1981.

John Buscema and later just Ernie Chan illustrate these daily strips with Roy Thomas scripting. It's basically the same team as the monthly comics. Just a bit more simplified so its easy to follow from day to day. I was a bit disappointed by the artwork - its fine but its clear Marvel is paying these two the same rate they do for the monthly comics.

I wonder how successful these strips were. I think they only went on for 3 years. I only knew about them from some ads in Savage Sword and I finally got the chance to read them.

The team ups with Red Sonja are a lot of fun. They make a fun duo - Red Sonja always seems close to killing Conan.

1978
Introduction - Conan is born on the battlefield! This is all set well past Conan's monthly comic continuity. Conan is basically wondering the desert lands of Zamora and other countries finding adventures at every turn.

Beautiful Woman and the Wizard - Conan saves a woman being hunted by a winged creature. Later returning her to the wizard that has her captured. Turns out he's her father! Right off the bat, these Newspaper strips feel like watered down retreads of scenarios played out in the comics. Conan battles a gorilla and kills the wizard. The lady becomes the wizard and Conan gets the hell out of Dodge.

Red Sonja and the Amphora of Zarfhaana - Instantly Conan stumbles upon another adventure! He fights some brigands and Red Sonja appears! They go off together to steal a magical pot. Eventually getting turned against each other as Red Sonja is hired independently to steal the pot. They join forces in the end of course.

Slavers - Conan and Red Sonja part ways. Conan gets drugged and captured by slavers. Later breaking free, he is chained to one of the slavers and they stumble upon a magical city full of slug creatures. In a twist - it turns out the slug creatures are friendly and intelligent! They beckon the slaver to a land of paradise. But the Cimmerian is not invited. "There is too much fury in your heard. Too much destruction in your soul"

1979
Sorcerer Sharkov's City - Conan wonders the desert on the slaver's camel and instantly stumbles upon another adventure! Conan is living in a Bethesda game. There's a lone wizard wondering the desert. His city has been stolen! Conan is promised a throne if he helps him. They fight some bats and one of the bats the socerer poccesses to fly them to his city. Two sorcerers fight with magic genies. Conan wins back the city for its Queen and leaves disappointed he won't get a kingdom.

The Scholar and the Lost City - Conan rescues a scholar from some slavers. The Scholar is in search of a lost kingdom from the pre-cataclysm times. The time of King Kull! They find it pretty quick. The city is inside of a mountain. They are sacrificed to a lake monster but a princess helps them escape. In a twist, after they escape the princess agrees to marry the scholar and shows no interest in Conan.

The Locked Room Werewolf Mystery - Conan heads into the jungle. He gets attacked by natives and aided by Montaro who Conan knows from Aquilonia. They head to a castle and get introduced to a cast of characters. It's a locked room murder mystery with an attacker at night... but its pretty obvious who the culprit is.

Kordurra's Kidnapped King - Conan heads north and agrees to help the Princess rescue the King. He heads off with a thief and a wizard. They break in to a city in Koth and rescue the King. The wizard betrays them. Later Conan takes a pitiful amount of gold from the rescued King and refuses to head back to Kordurra with him. The dynamic between the King and Conan is great.

Bride of the Black Book - Conan thinks he's rescuing a girl and kills of her would-be abductors but it turns out they're her dad's (the king) hired men and she just doesnt want to get married. She reluctantly agrees but it turns out the King has sold his soul to evil wizards from Vendhya. The wizards use some cool black creatures to attack the newly weds. Conan tries to help them, the King eventually feels enough shame to help to - dying in the process and fulfilling the contract.

Red Sonja - Conan meets Red Sonja in Shadizar and they get in a scrape - continued into 1980

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let's establish upfront that the production on this book is really poor. It appears that the art was scanned in directly from newspaper clippings, and then cleaned up as much as possible. The black and white panels suffer from a combination of enlarging and high contrast, wrecking what must have originally been very good artwork, and the Sunday color panels -- which aren't bad at first -- get rendered way too small as the book wears on, probably because the source didn't have the upper right panel (and there's a fascinating page layout explanation that probably only a page layout nerd like me finds fascinating). Surely the originals must exist in a better, cleaner form, right? Was there some reason they couldn't be obtained?

But putting aside the production problems, it's fun revisiting a newspaper comic I used to read as a kid. Some long-dormant synapses fired up, as I found myself recalling storylines from 35 years ago. It was my introduction to the Conan mythos, and remains the only Conan-related material I've ever bothered to read. Though at times the dialogue borders on the ridiculous (and there are also the pacing issues of a daily strip to contend with) this is great, high-adventure stuff.

[Matthew J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are fun enough, I suppose. The art is often pretty good. Sometimes it reminds me a bit of Hal Foster's Prince Valiant strips. It reminds me of how much I sometimes miss daily comics like this. I was never much for reading the papers, other than the Funnies, but I did enjoy them quite a bit.

Anyway, like Marvel's Conan comics of the era, these have little in common with Robert E. Howard's writings beyond the name. You could replace Conan with Tarzan, the Phantom, Prince Valiant or any other similar hero and you'd never notice.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting reading. I feel like I learned quite a bit about what is involved in writing something like this, telling little bits and pieces of stories in very short format. The constraints of such work means that the stories weren't subtle but generally very broad. Monster of the day or sorcerer of the day. I could see the character of the comic book Conan developing here, although the character seemed a pretty far cry from what you read about in REH's original work.

[Matt Kelland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic stuff. Lightweight, cheesy fun.