Tuesday 12 March 2013

Savage Sword Of Conan

I'm sure i've brought this subject up before here - are Marvel UK titles considered British comics? As far as i'm concerned they are: (A) They're reformatted to UK comic size, (B) they have UK letters pages, (C) they're have UK adverts (D) most crucially - they're in B&W over the original colours. To this day why i can't read any Marvel superhero comic, along with their Star Wars strips, in colour. They just look wrong to me. In the case of "Conan", along with "Dracula" and "Planet Of The Apes", having them in black and white helped immensly with the tone of the strips, giving added gravatas and mood to a strip that might've not been there to begin with. Personally, this was my first taste of Robert E Howards hero and Barry Smith's art, at the time, was pretty darn neat. It wasn't till the later monthly titles with art by John Buscema and, at the same time actually reading the novels that spawned the tales, that i realised how reedy Smiths version was. And then Alfredo Acala came on board - and the definitive version was born, one i imagine whenever i re-read the books today. But this is a page for UK titles, so lets stay on track - a typical early Smith tale from 1975, showing a rather crude, slim Conan, but great dynanism all the same. But best thing though are the ads - did we really want to "support our super-heros"? by not missing out on this "tantalising treat" of a badge/patch combo for a mere 70p?