Sunday 8 May 2016

Savage Sword of Conan #1 (Marvel UK/1977)



One of Marvels great successes in comics adaptations was their rendition of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. In the US both the four colour and black & white monthlies were a big success and Conan was an obvious choice to launch in the UK.

 

Marvels first attempt to break into the UK market with Conan was one of their glossy covered weeklies. This lasted just 18 issues before being merged with the Avengers weekly.



A character more suited to older readers Marvel revived Conan a couple of years later with this monthly and much more "meaty" attempt. The first issue contains a full length story Iron Shadows in the Moon which sees every ones favourite cimmerian escaping in the marshes after his allies had been massacred in an ambush.

Conan was the sole survivor. In a twist of fate he comes across the inevitable damsel in distress who just happens to be at the mercy of the enemy that had just killed his comrades.

You can guess the outcome of that.

Escaping into the inland Vilayet sea the two fugitives seek sanctuary on one of the many, supposedly uninhabited Islands that it contains.

Except they hadn't reckoned for beasties, pirates or ancient curses.....

The format of the UK edition does change in due course but the early issues of this adult oriented comic are well worth a read.

 

1 comment:

  1. Although most of the contents were taken from the US issues , during the later ones there were a number of original articles published ,mainly IIRC about the films.

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