 Savage Sword #232. Cover by Doug Beekman It's a small miracle that any comic is good for long. The need to continually be creative within the same sandbox, the demands of editors, the churn of collaborators, the tastes of comic fans completely at the mercy of hype, the challenges of just, you know, life makes any long-running comic a Sisyphean task to complete. I'm not here to sling mud at anyone's creative efforts. I want to examine one of the most interesting periods of one of my favorite comics. I detailed in "How Conan Conquered the Comics Code" how The Savage Sword of Conan came to life in the space left open by a revised Comics Code Authority to become an unlikely Bronze Age hit. Savage Sword would go on to become one of the greatest 1970s creations for Marvel and one of my favorite comic books of all time. And to be honest, there's a ton that's been written about Savage Sword's early issues. Jeffrey Talanian penned a good retrospective on Roy Thomas's Conan comics work for Blackgate just this January. Savage Sword's beginning has been thoroughly celebrated. But Savage Sword of Conan was not always one hit after the last. It went through a few distinct eras that made its publication into an interesting tapestry of good, bad, and weird storytelling. After its initial period of greatness, it slumped into a strange period where it felt adrift on the Vilayet Sea: seldom truly terrible, but there were pieces missing from its enchanting first five-dozen issues. While much has been written about Roy Thomas's glorious first run on Savage Sword, less has been said about the rest. If you read the title's Wikipedia page, the "Publication History" section stops at the end of Roy's tenure and you might think that was the end of the story. There's a lot more to explore! From the Letters Page"I still enjoyed scripting Conan the Barbarian and companion mag Savage Sword of Conan enormously... but enthusiasms, like romances, wax and wane... and then wax and wane again." - Roy Thomas  Roy Thomas at home circa 1979 In spring 1980, Roy Thomas sat in his home in Los Angeles, California, where he had moved from New York with his wife a few years prior. For the last ten years, Roy had been employed by Marvel Comics as the writer and editor on the four-color Conan the Barbarian title, written more than sixty issues of the black-and-white companion mag Savage Sword of Conan, and had even penned years of dailies for the Conan newspaper strip. Always looking to avoid having to fill his schedule with any of Marvel's superhero fare, he had even recently launched a fourth Hyborian Age title, King Conan, which would soon be rebranded as Conan the King. This was all likely about to be behind him as he and Marvel had been unable to agree on a new writer/editor contract. His phone rang. It was a secretary from Marvel's offices in New York, and they had a message for him. He already knew he would be leaving the creative team for those Conan books, and while he hadn't announced his departure ahead of time, he had penned a short, one-paragraph farewell to the readers for the letters page at the back of his final issue, Conan the Barbarian #115. According to Roy, he wanted to go out with class: it was all warm fuzzies and didn't even hint that there might be bad blood between him and Marvel's management. "These fifteen years have been a ball," Roy had written. But the secretary at Marvel had bad news.  Conan the Barbarian #115. Cover art by John Buscema, Ernie Chan, and Irv Watanabe They wouldn't be printing the farewell note in his final issue. Roy clearly had a lot of animosity toward Marvel's editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, but figured that Shooter would at least be professional enough to tell him of a decision like that himself. Roy told the secretary something to the effect that Shooter was a real asshole and hung up the phone. As the connection between the New York office and his LA home severed, Roy had a feeling that his time with Conan was done. He'd spent ten years of his life chronicling the adventures of the bronzed barbarian, but that was over now. He assumed he'd never write Conan again. He was wrong. All-New Sword & Sorcery Thrillers Savage Sword #39. Cover by Earl Norem The first sixty issues of Savage Sword of Conan, which comprise Roy Thomas's first run on the title and were mostly drawn by John Buscema, are a certified tour de force of comic creators at the top of their game- not to mention the concurrent 115 in Conan the Barbarian and other Conan titles. Their run on Savage Sword bounced all over the timeline of Conan's life, adapting classic Robert E. Howard yarns, retrofitting Howard stories to feature Conan, and a sneaking in few originals. They also took advantage of the literary boom of Conan pastiches from that period, treating new works like "Legions of the Dead" by L. Sprague de Camp and "Conan and the Sorcerer" by Andrew J. Offutt with the same care as they did undisputed Howard classics like "The Scarlet Citadel." This was always a testament to Thomas and Buscema's work together: they could elevate just about any story they got their hands on by emphasizing the right elements, and downplaying any that drag.  Savage Sword #21. Cover by Earl Norem Roy treated all Conan work as equals: he didn't only choose to adapt the major works like "Black Colossus" and "Red Nails," though those were certainly present, but he tackled less-celebrated works like "Drums of Tombalku" and "The Servants of Bit-Yakin" within the first 25 books. The really easy thing for him was that, as editor and writer of the book, he could make all the editorial decisions, assign himself whatever he felt best to write, then turn it over to John Buscema to pencil (as was the Marvel method) before he would complete scripting the book. Since Savage Sword was free of the constraints of the Comics Code Authority, it could tell full-length stories with all the impalements in battle, the horrifying god-creatures, and nubile Nemedians in-tact. That fact is important when translating Robert E. Howard's work, which was frequently dark and salacious. While I try to never make the mistake of thinking that creators aren't thinking about money and are purely in it for the storytelling, those sixty issues come pretty close. They're just about the only thing that, in my adulthood, has brought me back to the same feelings I had when I was ten years old, reading black-and-white Amazing Spider-Man reprints from the sixties. Roy and John had a remarkable way of capturing pure adventure. It was not to last. The well was poisoned by at least October 1979 when Roy Thomas said to the New York Times, "There is a feeling among most of the people I know that Marvel has become more callous and inhuman."  Jim Shooter When Roy's contract as a writer/editor came up for renewal in 1980, he was pretty sure he wasn't going to be extending his employment at the House of Ideas. He had seen that his friend and fellow Marvel legend Marv Wolfman had been told they would only renew his contract as a writer, not a writer/editor, and a assumed the same thing would happen to him. Roy figured he could skip the whole charade and just quit if he was going to be offered the same deal; he had zero interest in writing books he wasn't also the editor on. Cryptically, someone representing Marvel told him, "The way we treated Marv is not necessarily the way we'd treat you." Roy didn't really know what that meant. In a letter from editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, he was told, "I can't and won't" guarantee a writer-editor position, and though Roy would probably be allowed to be the editor on his own books, Shooter wanted it to go through the Marvel office at all stages of production. He was told to have his own lawyer draw up a new contract. When Roy tells it, he usually leaves the exact conditions of his exit from Marvel vague; he will mostly leave out details about their contract dispute and just say that he was lied to, without ever really specifying what he was lied to about, other than maybe saying that there would, in fact, be an editor over him. He's often said that his contract at Marvel was just allowed to "run out." By the end of 1980, that's exactly what happened. "I would hardly deny that I bore considerable ill will toward editor-in-chief Jim Shooter for the way he had negotiated with me in recent months over a revised contract. I won’t go into details, because Jim has his own side of the story and I’m not interested in trying to convert anybody to “my side” in this particular setting. I decided that I’d simply go quietly into that good night, still writing Savage Sword stories to fill out my contract until it ran out, a very few months away.”  Roy Thomas A word about Roy Thomas: he was probably a good fit to write Conan not only for his narration skills and vivid imagination, but because he's like the Cimmerian in one important way. He does not like to give second chances. Barry Windsor-Smith once lied to him about what the word "wanker" meant when he used it in an early Conan story and Roy says he never trusted Barry again. Jack Kirby changed his mind about something he told Roy he would do on a Fantastic Four story, and, Roy said he'd never trust Kirby either. Writing even years after his exit from Marvel, Roy's distaste for editor-in-chief Jim Shooter is still palpable. Roy paints Shooter as conniving and manipulative, but to his credit, Shooter had whipped Marvel into shape in Roy's last years there and was extending very good page rates and rights (relative to the rest of the industry) to its creators. Shooter had been the stabilizing factor in a revolving door of 5 editors-in-chief at Marvel which included Archie Goodwin, Marv Wolfman, and, yes, Roy Thomas. Whereas Roy had been a very hands-off editor-in-chief, allowing his writers and artists to do almost anything they desired, Shooter was very much in people's business and frequently re-wrote dialogue and directed stories. Yes, Shooter killed Gwen Stacy, but he also helped mastermind Giant-Size X-Men #1. He oversaw the ill-advised and much-maligned Avengers #200, but also helped turn Daredevil into a superstar as opposed to "weak-tea Spider-Man" as Marvel historian Sean Howe put it. I mean, the month Shooter took over Marvel, they published 45 comic books, only 26 of which shipped on time. They even received a phone call from the printer asking, "Are you guys still in business?" That situation didn't last long under Jim "Trouble" Shooter. While Shooter was very controversial, it would be really hard to argue that he was not also vital to Marvel's success for much of his tenure. Both Thomas and Shooter as editors probably deserve some slack. According to Len Wein, "It was an impossible job. And as long as we kept doing that impossible job, they wouldn't believe it was impossible."  Stan Lee and Jim Shooter Roy noticed that in his final King Conan issues at Marvel, there were a few details he perceived as slights directed at him. Instead of the letters pages reading "Dear Roy" as they had for a decade, they more generically opened, "Dear Editor." In King Conan, he was being listed only as the writer, despite having done most of the editorial as well. It's clear that nobody on the outside anticipated his departure. In the letters page for Conan #115, also the book's 10th anniversary issue, one letter says, "Here's hoping for ten more years, and ten beyond that!" I wonder how disappointed that reader was to pick up issue 116. By the time Roy received that phone call from the assistant at Marvel HQ, he was content to let Marvel, and Conan the Barbarian take a long ride down the River Styx into Stygia. He flew to New York as a personal favor to Marvel president Jim Galton and held a meeting with Galton, Stan Lee, and Jim Shooter. Roy was told he could sign the contract or not, to which he responded, "It's been a nice 15 years," and walked out of the office. He went downstairs to meet his girlfriend and said, "I feel very dirty. Let's get the fuck out of here." Roy's time with Savage Sword of Conan was not done forever, though, and strangely enough, it wasn't even done in the short term. Seas of No Return Cover art for Savage Sword #64 by Joe Jusko With its chief creative officer having left Savage Sword of Conan, not to mention how people talk about the next hundred-some-odd issues today, one might expect it to become an immediate dumpster fire. But interestingly enough, Savage Sword was about to enter one of its most interesting periods. After Roy left Marvel about the time issue 60 came out, there were still about a half-dozen issues of Savage Sword that he had ready to go. That would keep the title chugging for a while seeing as it was only published semi-monthly except for the high summer season. But Roy's final issues didn't get published immediately- instead, new writer Michael Fleisher's first few issues made the page, followed by one by Bruce Jones, before Roy's name was listed as the author again. This confused some loyal readers when Roy's last few stories came out. Was he back? Unfortunately no, he told fans at conventions and through the mail.  The children of Rhan. Art by John Buscema The Fleisher-scripted issues 61-63 are pretty good, jumping around some of Conan's middle life. Issue 61, "The Wizard-Fiend of Zingara," features some scheming royals, some magical trickery, and some dungeon crawling for an issue that picks up nicely where Roy left off. #62's "The Temple of the Tiger" is a Red Brotherhood pirate story with an island of Amazons. "Moat of Blood" in issue 63 is a little dorkier, featuring a sentient kelp monster thing in an evil king's moat. Weirdly enough, Conan fights some kind of sea monster in all three of Fleisher's first issues. The real surprise is issue 64, penned by Bruce Jones. "Children of Rhan," featuring Conan helping a young girl (who, as you probably guessed, is not just a regular young girl) return to her people, stacks up favorably against almost anything Roy Thomas ever wrote. Jones would plot and script 10 issues altogether, mostly up to #82 (he also wrote issue 8, way back in 1975), but his issue #64 is his finest. In fact, issue 64 is probably better than some of the Roy Thomas issues that follow it, as though Roy is writing on autopilot for a few, knowing his tenure is coming to an end. Roy does choose to go out with a bang, though. Issue 68, "Black Cloaks of Ophir," is a fun politically-intriguing tale which shows off some of Roy's best abilities to write engaging prose and showcases Conan as more than just a beefcake who can swing a sword. Issue 69, "Eye of the Sorcerer," his truly final issue on Savage Sword for over a decade, is a ridiculously epic, beautifully-drawn adventure story that could be adapted into a D&D campaign that would make Matthew Mercer blush. It's quite the feat that he was able to squeeze the whole thing into only one issue. And with that, Roy was gone.  A page from Savage Sword #69. Art by Ernie Chan Michael Fleisher picks up for real in issue 70 with some serviceable body horror and monster masses in his first few issues as Savage Sword's permanent chronicler. Fleisher's a noticeably different writer than Roy: he has a different feel for things and favors other aspects of Conan's mythology. Roy has a deft hand for mirroring Howard's florid prose in a way that feels serious and he always adds weight though his narration in fight scenes that otherwise might just be filled with sound effects of clanging steel and bellows of pain. Fleisher's writing is a little more tropey and lighter, a touch more Saturday-morning-cartoon than 1930s pulp. Both authors make frequent use of the word "selfsame," so there's that. While Roy preferred Conan's piratical periods and his kozaki raider stint, Fleisher sets many of his stories in the period of Conan's life when he is acting as a mercenary for city-states in Corinthia, a time only alluded to before him. He makes use of original, recurring villains far more that Roy does and explores fewer lost cities with magic MacGuffins. And while Roy adapted many pastiche writers, both decades-old and contemporary, Fleisher stuck to originals.  A page from Savage Sword #74. Art by Val Mayerik I would be remiss to not mention one single issue during this period written by X-Men revelator Chris Claremont, who I would bet sits on most readers' Mount Rushmores of Bronze Age creators. Issue 74, "Lady of the Silver Snows" is a dramatic, rich, romantic one-off story drawn by Val Mayerik that surpasses almost anything else on the title. I've never really seen anyone mention this story, but it's a hidden gem that deserves to be in the conversation of greatest Savage Sword stories of all time. And with this last, gloriously high peak of adventure storytelling, Savage Sword of Conan's peak was over. "Confounding all belief, HE LIVES!" Writer Harlan Ellison Late in the evening some time in 1979, The Comics Journal writer Gary Groth strode into the Manhattan apartment of Harlan Ellison for an interview that would last until 3 in the morning. Groth was looking for Ellison to sling some shit- he admits it was his M.O. at the time. He wanted a polemic. Ellison was all too happy to oblige and opened fire on people who are now considered the stuff of legend: Don Heck ("Five thousand Don Hecks are not worth one Neal Adams."), H.R. Giger ("Giger's clearly deranged. Show [his work] to any psychiatrist."), and H.P. Lovecraft ("[Other writers] have not got the lunatic mentality of Lovecraft."). Oddly enough, Ellison doesn't mean it all exactly negatively. In a perverse way, I think he thought he was sort of giving a compliment as he goes on a tangent about Conan creator Robert E. Howard. "Howard was crazy as a bed bug. He was insane. This was a man who was a huge bear of a man, who had these great dream fantasies of barbarians and mightily thewed warriors and Celts and Vikings and riding in the Arabian desert and Almuric, Conan, Kull, and all these weird ooky-booky words. He lived in Cross Plains, Texas in the middle of the Depression, and he never went more than 20 or 30 miles from his home. He lived with his mother until his mother died and then he went down and sat in the car and blew his brains out. Now, that's a sick person. This is not a happy, adjusted person. That shows up in Howard's work. You can read a Conan story as opposed to... take all the lesser writers, all the guys who do the Conan rip-offs and imitations, which are such garbage, because they are all manqué. They can't imitate Howard because they're not crazy. They're just writers writing stories because they admired Howard, but they don't understand you have to be bugfuck to write that way."  Michael Fleisher Ellison also takes on young comic writer Michael Fleisher for his work on an apparently pretty fucked up novel and the titles The Spectre and Jonah Hex. He calls Fleisher "certifiable" and "so fuckin' twisted," so Fleisher tried to sue the pants off of him and lost, years later. The interview devastated Fleisher's career, who honestly seems like a good guy that didn't deserve it. He eventually packed up his comics work and essentially changed careers entirely, travelling, getting his PhD and becoming an academic. It wouldn't be the first time Fleisher left behind comics- he once said he sold his collection of over 2000 comic books for a penny each to a "junk lady" on NYC's Third Avenue and didn't pick up another for almost fifteen years. Compared to his work on other comics, Michael Fleisher's time chronicling Conan the Cimmerian is almost no more than a footnote. While I really disagree with the broad strokes (in 2025, I think we're really over the "You gotta, like, suffer to make good art, man" attitude) but I kind of wish Harlan Ellison had been more right about the connection between Howard and Fleisher. Being of the same mindset as Robert E. Howard might have yielded some comics that hewed closer to Howard's original. The World Beyond the Mists Savage Sword #75. Cover by Earl Norem It's not great after issue #74. Unfortunately, Michael Fleisher's tenure on Savage Sword really sags, both in terms of ideas and storytelling. It starts almost right away, from his first story as the series' permanent lead writer. Issue 75, "The Temple of the Twelve-Eyed Thing" is, for most of its aspects, a fine issue of Savage Sword. It might be a little boilerplate, but this thing ran for 235 issues; it would be a little unrealistic for me to demand that they all knock my socks off. However, issue 75 has one thing working against it: it introduces the villain Bor'aqh Sharaq, who kind of sets the tone for what's to come. Challenging Captain Bor'aqh Sharaq for command of a pirate ship, Conan cuts of Sharaq's hand and sends him tumbling overboard. The character Nahrela looks at Conan and remarks, "Mark my words, Cimmerian! Captain Sharaq is out there somewhere-- and alive! And someday he'll come back to split your black-maned head in twain. And when he does, twil be something of a pity, really--." I couldn't agree with Nahrela more.  Sharaq begins working his way back toward Conan, gradually losing body parts and then eventually acquiring a spiked helmet and some sci-fi weapons like a spring-loaded knife launcher where his hand used to be. Bor'aqh Sharaq feels like he's intended to be the Prometheus to Conan's Batman: an anachronistically teched-up villain with a pointy helmet, mechanical augmentations, and eventually a laser gun (*sigh*). But whereas Prometheus is an exciting villain that makes you wonder how Batman will defeat his mirror-image villain without becoming as bad as him, Bor'aqh Sharaq just makes you wonder what Robert E. Howard would have thought of the whole situation. The helmet doesn't look menacing, it just looks dumb. The weapons feel like accessories for an action figure. And all that would be somewhat forgiven if Sharaq's characterization was cool, but he's not even a particularly formidable foe- he's just kind of an asshole that's more tenacious than the usual Hyborian bad guy. Sharaq would become a recurring adversary. The issues following "The Temple of the Twelve-Eyed Thing" fare a little better: "Dominion of the Bat" and "The Cave Dwellers" are more classic Conan adventures. Still, I started to find myself pleasantly surprised when I would close an issue and think, "Hey, that was actually pretty decent." For most of his run, Fleisher introduces his readers to a lot of original villains, most of which have a pretty silly, superhero quality to them like Sharaq. Wrarrl the Soul Eater commands an army of hideous clay people to do his bidding and oscillates between being a pretty cool threat and a pretty dweeby General Grievous type. He feels like much more of a worthy opponent, and certainly doesn't wear out his welcome like Sharaq (even though, if I'm being honest, his costume is probably even more ridiculous).  Bor'aqh Sharaq, Wraarl the Soul Eater, and the Brotherhood of the Falcon The Brotherhood of the Falcon would be another set of baddies that Conan would fight a total of seven times. Each one nameless, faceless, and mostly brainless, these ninja-like hordes wouldn't feel out of place in an issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or an episode of Power Rangers, always dead-set on getting revenge on their nemesis Conan while never seeming to get anywhere close to winning. It wouldn't have surprised me if Conan ever looked over to them and asked, "Sorry, who are you again?" Fleisher put these guys at the periphery of stories over the course of his run that ended up nearly as long as Roy's.  A page from Savage Sword #94. Art by Val Mayerik These issues played more with science fiction and less with the Weird Tales element of off-putting sorcery and forbidden magic. Like a James Bond film, many of the one-off villains are denoted as the bad guy because they're ugly or have an obvious deformity. Countless piggish kings get the wool pull over their eyes by a devious sorcerer. It's rarely truly terrible (issue 89's "Gamesmen of Asgalun" or issue 94's "Death Dwarves Stygia" which is seemingly missing an apostraphe or the word "of" in its title) but at that selfsame moment, something just feels different about the title under Fleisher's stewardship. Some of the magic of the original is gone. Savage Sword has less of an identity. "Death Dwarves Stygia" is probably my vote for the worst issue of the entire series. Its plot is dumb and meanspirited, the characters are uninspired, and even Val Mayerik's usually-beautiful art is brought back down to Earth by notorious corner-cutter Vince Colletta. There are still a few excellent stories here and there, many of which are backup stories penned by Marvel all-star Christopher Priest, then still writing under the name Jim Owsley. Issues 92 through 109 mostly feature B stories from him, and they frequently outshine the A story. Priest manages to be clever, exciting, and surprising in very few pages. Like Roy Thomas was prone to, he sometimes fills in areas of Conan's backstory that had never been explored, like showing us exactly how Conan ends up in King Yildiz's service for Turan. One of the best backups is titled simply "The Crypt," by Jim Neal, William Johnson, and Geof Isherwood (who has actually commented on this blog before). It's an illustrated verse of Conan marching into a haunted castle to rescue Octavia from "The Devil in Iron." Simple, short, and effective.  Chuck Dixon After issue 112, the final continuous Fleisher-written story, Larry Yakata, Gary Kwapisz, and Don Kraar step in to contribute a few issues each before a third full-time Savage Sword writer would be picked. This time it was Charles Dixon, better known to comic readers as Chuck. During my first read of Savage Sword, I was very excited for this point: Chuck Dixon's one of my favorite writers of the late 80s and early 90s! His Robin and Nightwing writing is fantastic, helping establish the Boy Wonder as his own hero outside of Batman's shadow. I was a little disappointed. Dixon's Savage Sword continues many of the trends from Fleisher's run: rarely falling to the level of an outright stinker but also very seldom reaching any sort of adventurous heights. His first issue puts Conan up north, which is always a bit of a plus for me. We have so many legions of stories that take place in tropical or desert environs that it's always a nice change of pace to get Conan up in the snows. He defends a village from a werewolf horde, and it's... fine. His second issue is pretty darn weird and features a subterranean race of monkey-like beings becoming friends with a long-lost father, who's back from the grave (but not really). It kind of beggars description. It's not the last time that one of Dixon's stories would leave me a little baffled. Issue 140's "The Girl of the Haunted Wood" is memorable in that it's pretty different from the usual monster-and-magic fare. Chuck does have some highlights, especially with issue 144: "The Waiting Doom." Pairing Conan up with Red Sonja, the two race against a company of men who wish Conan dead, featuring an iron-masked giant named Rhuk and some eldritch god fun.  A page from Savage Sword 144. Art by Gary Kwapisz Unfortunately, the highlights are outweighed by some paint-by-numbers Conan stories. It's kind of hard to actually identify why it gets worse, because Conan is still, in the strictest sense, doing what he's always done. But most issues aren't part of a longer arc, they're just one-and-done adventures, which causes them to feel less sweeping, less epic, and maybe lacking in imagination. The villains all feel one-note and pretty much none of them are memorable. Very few of the locales have interesting stories that make you want to plunge deeper into tombs of spider-haunted mystery. The title stretches on, feeling a little less tied to the original adventuresome spirit of Robert E. Howard's character, and more like its own, generic thing. Every now and then, you'll get a story set adjacent to "Beyond the Black River," or featuring a Howard character, but most often, you could swap Conan out for a more generic fantasy hero and not much would change. As I worked my way through the mid-100s for the first time, I found myself less invested in the title and less engaged by the stories.  A panel from Savage Sword 189. Art by Mike Docherty As happened when Roy Thomas and Michael Fleisher had concluded their runs on Savage Sword, as Chuck Dixon's wound down, there was another smattering of authors where writers would pen an issue or two between clear lead writers. Issue 189 by Michael Higgins feels like a microcosm of the title as a whole at that point. Conan acts out of character (laughing at enslaved people for sale on the auction block, killing a man just to take his hooded robe) and the plot feels random. It calls all the way back to the "Zukala's Daughter" story from Conan the Barbarian issues 5, 14, and 15, which were twenty year-old issues by that point, but it doesn't really do so in any interesting way. It doesn't exactly feel like time wasted to read it, but there's a stack of unread, compelling comics on my coffee table calling my name, and Savage Sword of Conan just feels like it's going through the motions as it eases into the 90s. Let Bygones be Bygones"Working for DC is a little bit like quitting comics." - Roy Thomas  All-Star Squadron #1. Cover by Rich Buckler In 1986, Roy Thomas had been working at Marvel's rival, DC Comics, for about six years. He had actually been doing work for DC much longer than that- scripting episodes of the Plastic Man TV show before he quit Marvel in 1980 (their refusal to allow space for him to do DC work was one of the many things that drove him to quit). In those years, Roy had some success reviving some Golden Age heroes, looking backward in books like Justice Society of America and All-Star Squadron. I actually reached out to 84 year-old Roy Thomas about this time in his life and he said that writing All-Star Squadron during the 80s was the only book he enjoyed writing more than Conan, but DC's method of publishing was mostly not to his liking. He also had the chance to write the story for the movie Conan the Destroyer, but the final film was very unlike what he and Gerry Conway had put together. Despite the vitriol he felt when he'd left Marvel, the feelings had subsided. He wrote a letter to Jim Shooter: "Dear Jim, I don't know if I agree with Roy here: he certainly was a grudge-carrier. He took things very personally. Shooter opined in a now-deleted 2011 blog post: "I have no doubt that Roy and I will always have a number of points of disagreement, but I agree with his sentiment that we’re really not all that far apart. I think we are both men of good will who wanted the same thing, the best for the task at hand—making comics... With the personal conflicts between them mostly taken care of, Roy returned to Marvel in 1986 to work on some of their "New Universe" line, just barely catching the last bit of Jim Shooter's tenure as editor-in-chief. Shooter was fired on April 15th, 1987. Roy had written him a letter just a month prior. "I’ve long regretted that our different (and both quite reasonable in their varying ways) objectives in 1980 led-- perhaps inevitably-- to a break ‘twixt Marvel and myself, and I regret some of my own more extreme actions at the time. I’ve been impressed by your professional ability to let bygones be bygones, including letting Stan’s Soapbox “plugging” me to be printed, and I’d like to think I’d have done the same, were our positions reversed."  Conan the Adventurer #1. Cover by Rafael Kayanan It's not clear whether the two have ever spoken since. Roy told me another thing when I emailed him. He said since he was back at Marvel, it was no longer as an editor: he was a writer solely. That meant that he was always looking for more books to fill up his schedule. A "young Conan" series called Conan the Adventurer had just been canned- Roy wrote the final issue of it under a pen name. He never really thought that book measured up to the 70s stuff, and the editors at Marvel agreed, so they cancelled it. The sales for Conan the Barbarian had been dropping, especially since Conan the Destroyer had been kind of a flop, so Roy was offered the chance to return to Conan the Barbarian in hopes that his return would help the sales rebound. Shortly after that, he was asked to return to writing Savage Sword. After over a decade away, the middling black-and-white mag was about to experience an unlikely resurgence. It Seems Hard to Believe Savage Sword #190. Cover by Earl Norem In October of 1991, Roy Thomas's name graced the byline for Savage Sword of Conan for the first time in over a decade, for issue #190. There had been 120 Savage Sword issues published since he'd left the book, about double the number that he'd written during his first tenure. As if to say, "I know I've been away a while, maybe you have too," issue 190 features a recap of sorts. On a long sea voyage from the Barachan Isles to Khitai, Conan recounts much of his history to his Khitan employer and the skull of Thulsa Doom, hitting many of the major beats of his life: the siege of Venarium, his thievery in Zamora, Belit's whirlwind love for him, time served in various militaries, time spent fighting several gods, time fondly remembered with friends. Thulsa Doom asks, "Is it really more than ten years since Belit died?" Conan replies: "It seems hard to believe." It feels to me like Roy reminding us what's so great about this fictional world, and reminding himself what he loved about it. Is it really more than ten years since he last wrote one of these adventures? It seems hard to believe.  A page from Savage Sword #194. Art by John Buscema It is almost comical at how much better Savage Sword gets the very second Roy returns. Most of the stories for the previous 100 issues were one-and-done adventures, feeling sometimes painfully small-scale. But the guy writing the book was not the only change that was being made here. Savage Sword of Conan was about to do something it had never done before: be told in chronological order, like the Conan the Barbarian title. Yes, it begins with a four-issue arc entitled "The Skull on the Seas," but issue 194, "The Witch-Queen of Yamatai!" would pick up right where 193 left off. I've made this comparison before, but many Savage Sword stories treat continuity like Star Wars does these days. It's sort of empty. Sure, Solo: A Star Wars Story tells the story of how Han Solo got the Millennium Falcon and expands on what the Kessel Run actually is, but did it do it in some kind of satisfying way that made you feel it was a story that had to be told? I sure as hell didn't think so. Roy Thomas is the Andor in this Star Wars metaphor, though. The same way Andor takes a one-off character that was fine in his first appearance and makes you root for him, exploring his history and the world around him in interesting ways that feel vital and full of life, Roy Thomas breathes fun into every aspect of his second run on Savage Sword, bringing together disparate aspects of Conan's life in ways that feel fresh. He rolls together some of the best personalities of Conan's late career: we meet Valeria prior to her adventure with Conan in "Red Nails." He expands the adventures and personalities of the pirates Strombanni and Black Zorano from "The Treasure of Tranicos." He takes second-rate Conan stories like "Drums of Tombalku" and returns to their environs in a more fleshed out and satisfying way that makes even the original feel better. Issues 202 through 206 tell a four-issue arc titled "The City of Magicians," and it's a testament to Roy's writing that I don't give a shit that we don't even get to the titular city of magicians until the last issue. That conclusion is a spectacular 50-some-odd page action epic that ends in an incredible impalement and an alley-oop style cleave. After "The City of Magicians," Roy begins to lean more heavily on adaptions. Much of the rest of Savage Sword is adaptions of Conan novels, adding Conan to existing fantasy stories, or writing sequels and prequels to other adventures.  Savage Sword #211. Cover by George Pratt Even though I've been singing pretty high praises, I don't want to mislead you. Not every single issue of Roy's second run is solid Zamorian gold. After "The City of Magicians," Roy adapts the pretty-good novel Conan and the Spider God into a four-issue set, which feels like a little bit of a disappointment, but mostly only because what immediately preceded it was so excellent. The pacing's just not quite as tight and the story's not quite as adventurous as previous issues seeing as Conan spends most of it blacksmithing, drinking, and doing recon. While John Buscema, the most prolific Conan artist, still did the pencils for this arc, the inking fell to ER Cruz, whose inks change Buscema's work quite a bit. He renders Conan a little sharper, like a Lee Van Cleef lookalike, and uses lots of hatching. Issue #211 kicks off an adaption of Conan and the Gods of the Mountain, which is Roy's first real misstep back on the book. It's a direct sequel to the all-timer "Red Nails," and the art feels like it's aping Barry Windsor-Smith, which isn't a bad combination. It's just that the pacing is so incredibly slow. Gods of the Mountain is serialized in issues 211, 212, 213, 215, and 217 but not 214 or 216 for some reason. The adaption already feels overlong (I bet Roy could've done it justice in two or three issues instead of five), but it has several stories sandwiched between as if to lengthen it even more. All the other stuff is great: #213 has some really fun backup stories, #214's "The Reign of Thulandra Thuu" is cool, and issue #216 is an adaption of- get this- a Tennessee Williams story, and it's excellent. Andrew J. Offutt's novel Conan the Mercenary is adapted in just two issues from 217 to 218 and it's much leaner and meaner than Gods of the Mountain, so it comes across as a real blast. The story quality wasn't the only thing that started to get a little more inconsistent after the 200-mark. Since Roy was now just the writer on Savage Sword, he didn't have control over things like what the covers looked like or which artists he worked with. Fine artists all, he says today, but it's pretty clear that few of the late Savage Sword artists quite measure up to Buscema, Windsor-Smith, Kane, Mayerik, and other heavy hitters of the early issues. Fin Savage Sword #235. Cover by Rudy Nebres Savage Sword goes out with two concurrently-running storylines. Set in different parts of Conan's life, they bring together a bunch of different characters from his adventures. In one, he and Red Sonja join forces with old friends Turgohl, Zula, and Fafnir. In the other, Roy is penciled one last time by "Big" John Buscema as Conan reunites with Nafertari from "Shadows in Zamboula." Both of them are appropriately epic, fun adventure stories. Commander Grimm of Cimmeria, bad guy for the former story, is an original antagonist that is much cooler and more threatening than any of the original Michael Fleisher villains with his ruthless ways and razor teeth. And though he's a good villain, he's certainly no Thoth-Amon to go out with. While both final storylines are a lot of fun, they certainly feel like just another day at the office for the big guy. One of the stories ends with Conan yawning, saying that he'd like to sleep until the rains wear down Crom's mountain into a molehill. It's not a bad ending, but you would never think you were reading the conclusion to 20 years of sword-and-sorcery action. The other is a little more thematically appropriate: it has Conan walk off into the sunset, promising, "There will be many more foes for him to face, before he lays down his sword one last time." Sure, just not in the pages of Savage Sword of Conan.  Roy Thomas circa 1995 By 1995, the year of its cancellation, Savage Sword of Conan was only selling about 4,700 copies per month. From 1990 through 1992, both Conan and Savage Sword had sat somewhere in the 60th-80th best-selling book each month, but numbers gradually slipped. By '93, both titles fell out of the top 100 for the first time. In January '95, it was the 274th-best-selling comic that month, and even the poorly-reviewed Conan the Adventurer was selling about twice as many issues. The Copper Age of Comics was in full swing, with 9 of the top 10 best-selling comics that month being X-Men titles, and the X-books were easily clearing more than a million collective floppies. Roy has opined that maybe times were just different now, and perhaps Conan's heyday had passed. He admits that they were never able to get Marvel's Conan titles back to the heights of the 1970s. Neither Conan the Barbarian or Savage Sword had even been relaunched or re-numbered, which was increasingly impressive in the days when everyone was getting new number ones. Even Superman, which had been running continually since 1939, had been renumbered a few years prior. Conan didn't escape the renumbering / relaunching trend entirely. Right after Savage Sword wrapped up, Conan the Savage hit shelves with the cover promising the "beginning a new era of barbarian action!" The first issue has two stories, both by former Savage Sword writers Chuck Dixon and Roy Thomas. They're both fine. It certainly feels like they were trying to do "Conan, but more 90s." Unfortunately, "This ain't your granddaddy's Conan" doesn't land quite as well when it's the 60 year-old stories that everyone loves the most. This new era of barbarian action lasted just ten issues and Marvel sold the rights to publish Conan books in 1998.  Conan the Savage #1. Cover by Simon Bisley Dark Horse had the rights for a while, and how good those books are depends on who you ask. They sure did a lot of them. In 2019, Marvel relaunched Savage Sword as a 12-issue series, spearheaded by writer Gerry Duggan and featuring gorgeous Alex Ross paintings for covers. While I've heard decent things about this series, I haven't picked it up yet, though I'm sure I will eventually. Conan would also show up in the main 616 Marvel universe in places like Savage Avengers, which is a truly excellent and bloody time. Wolverine and Conan interacting is everything that you hoped it would be. After just a few years, Marvel would lose the license to print Conan stories, transferring it over to Titan Comics, who I had never heard of prior to their Conan licensing. I was goofing around in Colorado Springs one day in 2023, in a godawfully messy comic shop. They had piles of books from the floor to the height of my shoulder with no apparent organizational system, and I was struggling to find what I was looking for. I decided to just ask the clerk if they had any old Savage Swords. He said they didn't have much in the way of back issues, but they were going to get the new one. "New one?" I asked. He told me that Titan was about to launch Savage Sword once again, just like the old days: it would have at least an A story and a B story, celebrate several different Howard characters, and- perhaps most importantly- be printed on oversized black-and-white newsprint. I added it to my pull list as soon as I could.  Savage Sword #5 (2024). Cover by Alex Horley The new Savage Sword, now into its second year at the time of writing, has been continually excellent. It's brought together modern champions for Conan like Jim Zub and Jason Aaron, while bringing back some of the throwback staff like Joe Jusko and my man Roy Thomas. The spirit of those Bronze Age Conan stories are completely in tact, feeling like both a retro celebration of one of our favorite old books while also feeling refreshingly pure in the modern comic landscape. The other titles I'm reading might get interrupted for months at a time by event crossovers I don't really care about or might shoehorn in garbage for big movie synergy, but not Conan. A nerd for the continuity like has had a lot of fun picking through the new book. There are references to the 70s Conan the Barbarian and Savage Sword, to Dark Horse's and Marvel's 2000s books, to pastiche novels, the movies... it may not all be canon, but it's all Conan, and it's all fair game. A lot of people are waking up to how interesting Savage Sword was throughout its life. You can find the Dark Horse reprints of it with increasing scarcity: I bought Volume 1 for twenty bucks back in 2015, but spent about $100 on Volume 22 this year. I once saw Volume 11 in a glass case at the Bizarre Bazaar in Fort Collins, CO with a sign that said "Very rare! Do not touch!" I'm not so sure about that. For those not looking to hunt down out-of-print TPBs, Titan Comics is reprinting all of Savage Sword as a part of their "Original Marvel Years" series of omnis, which are beautifully-packaged and full of extras, but they'll set you back about $125 brand new. Or maybe you should go to your local comic shop where you can find loads of Savage Sword back issues for just a few bucks. Weirdly enough, most of them don't have enough demand to command more than a $5 or $10 pricetag each. For 50 years, Savage Sword has never really gone away, though the spirit of the original has been elusive. Roy and the other writers and artists have popped up from time to time to delve back into the Hyborian Age, seeming to be as reluctant to let it go as many of us readers. I know that, for the time being, it's great to have it back where it's a brand new adventure every month. Enjoy it while it lasts!  Art by Geof Isherwood If you've read this far, thanks for playing ball with me. I really enjoy writing these more longform pieces, but they take a hell of a long time to put together (I think I've been writing this since just after Christmas). I appreciate you reading!
This is usually a blog about trying to put every Conan story into a coherent chronological order. Meet me over at the "Chronology" page if you're interested in that. -Dan
4 Comments
Abhi
4/22/2025 08:41:28 am
Very interesting article and retrospective on an iconic comic series.
John C. Hocking
4/22/2025 09:59:49 am
Thanks for putting in the work on this nifty little history. Lots of details here I didn't know. After issue #61 I too kept reading but rarely felt the same about the mag until Roy returned.
JohnV
4/22/2025 06:32:26 pm
Great article!
Rick Tate
4/26/2025 09:10:34 am
Great Read!! I think I actually prefer the B&W Savage Sword to the original Conan the Barbarian full color series. The ability to tell a story in that medium is just amazing. You also sent me down the rabbit hole for some of these more unique issues. So...thanks for that. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorHey, I'm Dan. This is my project reading through the career of everyone's favorite sword-and-sorcery character, Conan the Cimmerian, in chronological order. 
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