This year will mark the 40th anniversary of the first authorized appearance of Conan in comic book form (not including those Mexican “bootlegs” in the ’50s and ’60s). In late summer of 1970, Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #1 hit the newsstands and spinner racks and comic books were never the same. Written by Roy Thomas and drawn by a young Barry Windsor-Smith, this four-color version of Bob Howard’s best-known character helped launch a new era in graphic story-telling. Dark Horse, publisher of the current Conan comics has now released a hardcover volume reprinting the first eleven issues of that groundbreaking series, entitled The Barry Windsor-Smith Archives, Conan Volume One. A second volume containing the remainder of the Thomas/Windsor-Smith Conan run will be released later this year.

The original Conan series broke new ground in the comics medium when it was released. By 1970, the Comics Code Authority, which had effectively emasculated comic book storytelling since its establishment after the Congressional juvenile delinquency hearings in the mid-1950s, was beginning to somewhat loosen its censorial stranglehold on the industry. This allowed for more mature storylines with grittier action, a higher threshold of violence, and protagonists with a bit more moral ambiguity than your typical 1960s superhero – all elements necessary for a successful sword and sorcery tale (at least one that I would want to read). As a result of these new freedoms, comic creators in the 1970s (now referred to as the Bronze Age of comics) began to explore new genres and styles that would take the medium to levels of artistic expression both visual and textually that had never before been achieved – and it was Conan that led the way.

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Courtesy of Damon Sasser, I’ve discovered Jim and Ruth Keegan have started up a blog. They’ve christened it Two-Gun Blog. Simply sublime.

The Keegans are icons in the field of Robert E. Howard illustration, and an inspiration to this sometime illustrator. Their illustrations for the likes of Crimson Shadows, Grim Lands, and El Borak and Other Desert Adventures are dynamic, stylish, and pitch-perfect depictions of Howard’s prose. Their Adventures of Two-Gun Bob strip make the Dark Horse comics they appear in worth the price of admission on their own. One day, I hope to see a collection of every Two-Gun Bob strip, just to have them all in one place.

Their first few blog posts feature some lovely artwork, but of special interest to Robert E. Howard fans is a look at a beautiful illustration which sadly missed publication in the El Borak collection. Since it would have been in black and white for the volume itself, however, there’s an upside, since the Keegans present it here in full, vibrant colour.

I’m going to keep an eye on Two-Gun Blog: no doubt it’ll be a site to watch.

I see where in honor of Bob’s birthday people are relating their first encounter with his work. My story is, I think, unique; at least, I’ve never heard a similar one.

I was 14 and had read every Edgar Rice Burroughs story to be found, and a lot of Andre Norton as well. I went to the downtown Sears by bus, to check out their mezzanine bookstore which was the only place I knew that had those Ace paperbacks with the cool Krenkel and Frazetta covers. And my eye was caught by a crudely painted cover with a gory scene of an ape with its arm hacked off and a near-naked hairy guy who was apparently doing the hacking. Apparently Lancer had put out a new printing of the Conan series, but other people had already bought all the Frazetta ones. No matter; this, and the other Duillo-covered one, Conan the Wanderer, looked interesting enough to pick up and take home.

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I first read the name “Robert E. Howard” in the spring of 1975. I had seen a copy of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #38 on a spindle-rack in one of those little corner grocery stores whose place has now been taken by stores of convenience in America’s small towns. Having discovered the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs the previous year, I was primed for the sort of adventure the cover seemed to promise. My indulgent and sainted grand-mother, responding as she nearly always did to my boyish entreaties, promptly bought it for me (naked blue chick and all).

Conan #38 was Roy Thomas’ (and John Buscema’s) adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s “The House of Arabu.” Howard’s yarn featured a blonde-haired Argive named Pyrrhas as the protagonist and was set during the twilight years of Sumer. Roy, as he often did with other REH tales, “freely adapted” (his own words, right on the splash page) the yarn as a story of Conan during his time in Turan, which he entitled, “The Warrior and the Were-Woman!”. Over the years, it’s been noted more than once that ”Arabu” is one of Howard’s darker tales of high adventure. In my opinion, Thomas managed to convey a lot of that while still toeing the line for the Comics Code.

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Here on Robert E. Howard’s 104^th birthday I thought I’d share the story of how I came to discover and to read the grandfather and reigning champion of swords-and-sorcery. Unlike many others, it wasn’t through old issues of Weird Tales, the Frank Frazetta-illustrated Lancers, nor even through the ubiquitous cable-TV showings of Conan the Barbarian that I first made acquaintances with the man from Cross Plains.

For me, I came to know and love REH through the comics.

As a kid I used to take weekly walks to a used book store—a dusty, creaky old shop on the edge of town, with a unique character like single malt Irish whiskey—to blow my meager allowance. It was there that I first discovered The Savage Sword of Conan. Thereafter, my life would never be the same.

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After the Breckinridge Elkins webcomic by Gary Chaloner, another of Howard’s westerns will have a comic version. Graphic Classics’ nineteenth Western Classics comics, due out in May 2010, will include a Buckner Jeopardy Grimes story, “The Knife River Prodigal.”

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In the wake of the Robert E. Howard navy’s sinking of the U.S.S. Van Ostrand, Conan.com forum veteran Mark Singleton has proposed an award dedicated to those who propagate myths, misconceptions and downright lies about the Man From Cross Plains.

Like most of you, I was outraged by Maggie Von Ostrand’s article on REH, by far the the most incindiary piece thing ever written about the man IMO. As REH continues to gain popularity through film adaptations and whatnot, my fear is that the lies and misinformation is going to continue to be perpetuated. As Mark Twain said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes”. As a way of fighting back, I propose an annual award, the DeCampista Award, given out to a single individual who did the most in the calender year to set back the progress of REH studies, both in terms of the man himself and his literary creations. It could be voted on by a panel of REH scholars (Mark, Rusty Patrice, etc).

Mark provides a fairly strong list of contenders, ranging from the ignorant to the willfully misrepresentative, from scriptwriters and authors, to journalists and editors. An eclectic collection, to be sure. I have put together my own thoughts on Mark’s nominees, and pull no punches in the process. You have been warned!

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As I’m sure you will appreciate, Christmas over here in Bonny Scotland has veered between the agony of organizing an efficient Christmas dinner & present delivery route, and the ecstasy of knowing the madness is over for another year. Thus, I thought it an idea to stick to something cheerful and enthusiastic.

Generally, Howard fans have been blessed and cursed with adaptations. The films (which may or may not include Conan the Barbarian depending on your view), the cartoons, and the television series would naturally be considered on the “curse” side of things, but what of blessings? By far, the most numerous and accurate Howard adaptations are found in comics. The Dark Horse comics have their hits and misses, and while they are more faithful in some ways, they unbalance that with some annoying and sometimes baffling divergences of their own. In my opinion, Roy Thomas is the most consistently successful translator of Howard into a new medium, all the more effective when you have the likes of Barry Windsor-Smith, John Buscema and Gil Kane on the art side of things. He isn’t beyond reproach by any means–there are a great many of artistic or narrative decisions that just plain bug me, even in his Savage Sword adaptations–but his mantra of sticking to the text as closely as possible is one that certain other translators into other mediums would do well to adopt.

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This week I’m going to take a break from my series on pulp collecting in order to report on some of the actual sales of notable REH collectibles over the last month or two. This is something Leo has done in the past and I would like to make it regular feature.

Of course, the biggest news in recent weeks was the November 11th sale of Frank Frazetta’s painting “Berserker” for $1,000,000, as reported here by Deuce Richardson. This original oil painting is perhaps better known to REH fans as the one used for the cover of Conan the Conqueror in the Lancer/Ace paperback series. It is almost a certainty that this is the most money ever paid by anyone for any REH-related collectible of any kind. Ever. It’s hard to imagine any other REH item topping it, except of course for another of Frazetta’s Conan covers.

This seven-figure sale puts Frazetta in rare company. Norman Rockwell and N.C. Wyeth are, to my knowledge, the only other modern commercial illustrators to have cracked that million-dollar barrier. To put this Frazetta sale in perspective, only last week the original Wyeth painting for the cover of Robinson Crusoe sold at auction for $722,500.

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Courtesy of Tasmanian artist Gary Chaloner, who just posted the announcement on the Official REH Forum: Howard’s western character from Bear Creek, Breckinridge Elkins, will soon have his own webcomic!

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