Conan The Barbarian Omnibus, Vol. 1 is the #54 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot.
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What Is It? Marvel’s first ongoing Conan series launched in October 1970 and ran continuously through issue #275 in December 1993 alongside several other Conan ongoing comics and magazines.
Past Ranking: Tied for #38 in 2016, its first year on the survey.
Creators: Conan The Barbarian (1970) was written by Roy Thomas through issue #115 and again from #240-275. This early run featured pencils mostly by Barry Windsor-Smith with colors by BWS and Mimi Gold through #24, as well as Gil Kane, and John Buscema (with Neal Adams and Rich Buckler on the tail end).
Probable Contents: Conan The Barbarian (1970) #1 to 23-26, or even as far as #42, as well as material from Savage Tales (1971) #2-3 (and maybe also #1 and 4-5).
There’s the added wrinkle that Dark Horse would be releasing this collection rather than Marvel – more on that below.
Can you read it right now? Yes, via Dark Horse’s Chronicles of Conan, as well as the Barry Windsor Smith illustrated content in special Archives editions. See the Guide to Conan for the full details.
All of the possible content of this omnibus is available via Comixology Unlimited, and Amazon has all 34 volumes(!) of Chronicles of Conan available digitally in Kindle/Comixology versions.
The Details:
Marvel went through a craze of licensing properties and spawning horror comics in the 1970s. While many of these experimental expansions are now mostly-forgotten, one of the earliest spawned and entire group of comics and would only grow in popularity over the years – Conan!
Marvel’s Conan’s comics are neither a direct adaptation from novels originally by Robert E. Howard or entirely their own story. Instead, they are loose adaptions of key tales, inserting connective tissue between them. They are also mostly one-shot stories – even when they begin to continue more directly from the end of the previous story, each issue tends to be self-contained with a definitive end.
What is Conan really about? Conan is a Cimmerian, a people known for their barbarism, but he has thrown in against the Vanir in a regional conflict between different tribes of men. The comic follows his adventures, sometimes as a soldier, sometimes as a mercenary, and often simply as a wanderer encountering all of the brutality of the fiefdoms in his region.
These early Conan stories were written entirely by Roy Thomas, and they have a relatively set formula. Issues tend to open in the midst of conflict, or with Conan wading into a trap. There’s often a brief alliance with a gorgeous woman who is brutally killed. Conan is frequently too stubborn to retreat once gaining the upper hand, determined to continue until he slays the big bad or burns down an entire city, tower, or dungeon. [Read more…] about Conan The Barbarian, Vol. 1 – The #54 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017