Savage Sword of Conan

I don't read comics. I haven't since I was in junior high school. Two of the players in my group do read them, though. From time to time, they'll give me something that they think is GREAT, and I'll give it a look.

Well, that just started this year. I used to just politely say, "No, no thanks." But, for whatever reason, I decided to give 'em a go earlier in the year.

I read a series called Criminal, about hard case crime. No super heroes--just crime stories. I thought it was: OK. Not great. It didn't suck. I just don't get out of comics what I do from novels and short stories.

Then, the new Star Trek movie was coming around. I was interested in it. And, one of my players gave me the four issue prequel series.

I liked it. I'm glad I read it before watching the film, because I do feel that the backstory presented in the comics did enhance my viewing of the film.

But, again, just reading the comic did little for me. I'm just not that kind of reader. I like a good book--not a comic book or graphic novel.

But, that was before....

As I've stated (and like most of you here), I absolutely LOVE Conan and the universe he lives in. I love it's dark grittiness. I love it's "pulp" feel.

And, for whatever reason, that led me to the reprints of the Savage Sword of Conan.

http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Sword-Conan-Vol-v/dp/1593078382/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242087199&sr=1-1

I've gotta tell ya...

I'm hooked.

I read the comic's version of The Tower of the Elephant recently, and I could imagine the rope made of dead women's hair in my hands. I could hear the scrape of my sandals as I scaled that long, cylindrical building. I could see torchlight off in the distance among the hovels and twisty-turny streets of Arenjun.

When Conan and I got to the top, I heaved myself up over the waistwall and sat there for a second because I was tired.

I could feel the wind blow at that altitude. And, Taurus' voice broke me out of my reverie.



There's something about the black & white art--the presentation--that_just_feels_"right" about the books.

And, they're such a value. I just got vols. 4 and 5 in the mail today. Each of these is about the twice the size of any of the first three. At over 500 pages, with a cost under $14 bucks (and free shipping if you spend $25 or more...so buy more than one vol.!), there's a lot of value there.

One of the things that gripes me about comics is there cost. They're expensive, if you count how long it takes you to read them. These Conan vols. make the books economical.



For someone that doesn't have a large Conan story collection, I'd recommend them. About 70-80% of the stories are Howard's works. There's all the Conan stories, of course, but the authors also take other Howard stories and convert them to Conan stories.

I like that. It give me new Conan stuff to read.

And, they write a few originals, too. Some are sequels to the Howard Conan stories.

As I flipped through vols. 4 and 5 today, I see that they've expanded into non-Howard Conan stories. For example, I am right now reading Andrew Offutt's excellent Conan novel, Conan The Sword of Skelos. To my surprise, I see that vol. 5 devotes 264 pages to the entire Offutt trilogy.

That's cool, man. That's cool.



If you are like me and consider yourself not a comic reader, you may want to try these out. If you don't like them, I'm sure you can subsidize your purchase by selling them on eBay. Or, you can take a look "inside this book" on the Amazon page.

They're good stuff, though. I like seeing the interpretations of the Hyborian world: what the monsters look like; what characters look like; what the cities look like; the different flavor of clothing and archetecture in different parts of the world.

It really adds to my minds-eye view of the Hyborian Age.





From a gaming stand-point, I bet it would not be hard at all to take one of these less-well known stories (maybe one of the non-Howard's, or the non-Conan Howard stories) and make an adventure out of it. The plot is there. You, as GM, just have to stat it out, add the maps if needed, and create the NPCs. The pictures will prolly help you make an addicting description of the events as they unfold, too.



The stories aren't told in any type of order. Like Howard's original telling of Conan, they skip around all over the place. I find myself skipping around the books, reading that story, but not reading that one because I want to read the short story first...or skipping it because it's an original story sequel to a Conan story I haven't yet read.

All-in-all, though, Savage Sword of Conan is damn good stuff.

So, I guess...that makes me a comic book reader, now (even though this is the only comic book I'm reading).
 
I've been thinking about getting into Conan comics (the recent Darkhorse run, or Savage Sword), but I've heard complaints about the poor copy-quality of the art in the reprints, and that the reprints are very small. How do you assess the quality of the SS reprints, sir?
 
Yogah of Yag said:
I've been thinking about getting into Conan comics (the recent Darkhorse run, or Savage Sword), but I've heard complaints about the poor copy-quality of the art in the reprints, and that the reprints are very small. How do you assess the quality of the SS reprints, sir?

Again, I'm not a "comics" person, so I'm prolly not the right person to ask that particular question.

It's black ink drawings on newsprint. You can see images on Amazon using the "look inside this book" link, and you can find some pages using a Google images search.

I think it's fine. I think it looks good. I haven't found any blurry images or anything like that.

If I had a gripe, it would be two: First, the original book was oversized. So, what you get is a bit "shrunk down" from the original. I mean, the bigger the better, right? It would be nice to collect over-sized omnibuses, but that's not what we've got. And, I think what we've got is pretty good. I'm sure enjoying them (looking forward to Vol 6 in Sept., too), which is saying LOADS for a guy who doesn't "get off" to comics.

I really enjoy the story telling, and the images, I think, really add to the atmosphere.

My second quibble was that these omnibuses, although huge (vol. 5 is 544 pages) and well worth the money, do not include everything that originally came in the original magazines. The covers show Red Sonja and Kull stories, among others, and it seems these omnibusses only collect the Conan stories.

I'm OK with that. I don't need to read the Soloman Kane stories. But, anything having to do with Conan's universe should be included.

I will note that, starting with vol. 4, the books are getting bigger and including more stuff. Both vols. 4 and 5 have several full page drawings "just because".

There's no color anywhere in the book except on the cover. Now, the covers of the original SSoC are included as "Chapter" pages, but they're B&W (and, I know the originals were color).



I've looked through some of the newer Dark Horse Conan, and that art certainly is breath-taking.

But...

There's just something about the B&W drawings, without the ink, that, for me, really ADDS to the material. It just "fits".

Of course, I love old B&W movies, and 30's/40's old time radio shows, too.

The B&W seems to add "grit". The newsprint gives the book a "pulpy" feel. And, it just seems more like an illustrated book of high adventure tales than it does a comic book about super hero.

Maybe that's why I'm digging the books so much. I open 'em up, and it really doesn't feel like a "comic".

It feels like a peek into the Hyborian Age.

Some comic collector out there may tell you a completely different story. But, if you look at the Amazon comments, it seems that all the books out so far are getting high marks.

If they sound cool to you, then you'll probably enjoy them.
 
I really enjoy the Conan comics. Of the classics, I like the Savage Sword of Conan and the Conan Saga the most. The newer Dark Horse issues are great, and keeps well to Howard's vision of Conan - it even has a comic strip called The Advenutures of Two-gun Bob (take a guess what the strip is about?).

My favorite all-time issue is Conan and the Jewels of Gwahlur, by P. Craig Russell. The artistic style of Russell is unique, and has a classic feel about it. He also dont make Conan look like the same old muscle-headed brute you see in other works. In fact, he is how I imagine him from his younger "Conan the Thief" years.

As pure as the Dark Horse line is, I'm not a fan of the photoshop style of Cory Nord and Dave Stewart (to me, it looks like a really rough style of Art Neavou). I have always been a fan of the classic black & white art. The best part about the classic issues are all the awesome pin-ups.
 
In my younger days I use to get Savage Sword every month. The stories were usually pretty good. The artwork was always fantastic. And it helped my craving for more Conan.

Actually the stories were usually better than some of the pastiches that came out.

Just recently purchased an omnibus of Savage Sword for the first 12 or so stories of Conan. Was actually pretty good. Was very readable and artwork was great.

JMO. :wink:
 
Supplement Four said:
My second quibble was that these omnibuses, although huge (vol. 5 is 544 pages) and well worth the money, do not include everything that originally came in the original magazines. The covers show Red Sonja and Kull stories, among others, and it seems these omnibusses only collect the Conan stories.

I'm OK with that. I don't need to read the Soloman Kane stories. But, anything having to do with Conan's universe should be included.

I think the issue with the Red Sonja stories is that the rights to the character currently belong to another company rather than to Dark Horse. As far as I know, collections of the Kull and Solomon Kane strips will be released seperately later in the year (Amazon.com has them listed with December 2009 release dates).
 
Columbo's right on the money. Dynamite comics has the rights to Red Sonja, but she's a lame character anyhow. Redheaded Hyrkanian indeed. :evil:

The Solomon Kane stories are going to be sold as a collection later this year.

I've got the first two Savage Sword books and they're decent. I probably won't buy any more though. As to the monthly series from Dark Horse, the first 40 issues of DH's first run were superb. The latest incarnation, "Conan the Cimmerian," leaves a lot to be desired. Tim Truman needs to be fired as writer and DH needs to bring somebody on board who respects REH's stories and is not just a hack fantasy writer. Heck, they need to fire their editor too. Little things like characters saying Shem is east of the Vilayet Sea continue to find their way into the stories.
 
SSOC (savage sword of conan) is widely considered to be amongst the greatest of the all the Conan comics. At the time of its original printing it broke the Comic Book Code that stopped violence/nudity and suchlike. It was really quite a ground breaking and "close to the knuckle" venture!
Artists like Earl Norem and John Buscema created a cult following that is still considered amongst the greatest artwork ever seen in comics.
Roy Thomas' adaptations of Howards work was exceptional and was pretty much as good as it gets. Even some of the pulp stuff that appeared later, Conan and Solomon Kane together in one story etc wasnt as terrible as it could have been!
For any Conan fan SSOC is a very good read!
currently its released 5 issues of the collection with number 6 due out at the end of the year i believe.
 
Well, I grew up with the Marvel CONAN the BARBARIAN comics, not SSOC. so when I saw them, I picked them up from Amazon.
#1 Quality: Very Good. The one problem is that the original SSOC were printed on giant pages (like 11x14 inches or something), these books are on standard 8x11 paper. When you shrink the page to fit you need to look closer at the detail (especially w/ my 36 year old eyes).
#2 Order of comics: Well, these are not entirely chronologically ordered. THey don't have the "lesser" stories. What's printed are the multi-issue sagas of Conan. So the collection doesn't go stright off, like you might think. That being said there are no "out of order stories.
#3 They have showcased thebest comics of the series, so far, so I'm pretty happy.


I just oredered #5 and love it.
Plus they are dirt cheap, about $12-13 bucks.


My opinion is that it is definitely worth it.
 
The SSOC collections are great. Not only for the stories, but for the quantity. You get 500+ pages for fifteen bucks. The b&w illustrations really fit the gritty pulp feel of the Conan stories, and Roy Thomas, the writer obviously has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Conan universe.

It's funny. The first three volumes were printed on cheap newsprint paper, but the paper quality went up for volumes 4 & 5, and I have to admit I much prefer the cheap paper. The look and texture of the cheap stuff makes it seem like you're reading the original pulp adventure comics.

Anyway, if you are a fan of Conan and/or comics, get these books.
 
Dark Horse has hit a home run with these SSOC phone-book size compilations as evidenced by them making the NY Times best seller lists for graphic novels. Well worth the investment - and they look great on the shelf! Once again proving - if it's good (or true) it will stand the test of time! 8)
 
My University I attend is near the Dark Horse home of Milwaukee, Oregon- as such they donated their entire collection to the school. I guess we are the only university in the country to have such a collection. Makes it hard to study when there are endless volumes of Conan staring at ya! :p
 
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