The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2080: Conan the Barbarian #10, October 1971

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We enter the Bronze Age with a tale of the Iron Age, or one of them at least. My exposure/knowledge of Conan can be summed up in hazy memories of Arnold Schwarzenegger's turn in the roll. I've read a bit of Robert Howard's stuff, but mainly his Lovecraft-inspired mythos tales. The Conan stuff never really did it for me. I think I also must have read a few of his stories when I was first getting into Cerebus, if only for context. And today's comic offers that as well.

Barry Windsor-Smith is a fantastic artist. He stands out to me alongside someone like P. Craig Russell for having come out of the 70s with an art style unlike anyone else producing comics at the time. Marvel's Bronze Age, I think, is characterized by their house style with superheroes, but in the non-continuity, non-superhero titles, there was a little more wiggle room for differing aesthetic choices. Russell's Killraven and Windsor-Smith's Conan are wonderful examples of this.

Storywise, not bad. I think I enjoyed the Black Knight story that is sandwiched between barbarians in this comic, a reprint from a comic of the 50s. Sir Percy is an interesting character, effecting what really seems to me to be a medieval version of Clark Kent to keep suspicion away from his identity as the Black Knight. A fun little story, borrowing liberally from the Robin Hood tales.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 633: Backlash #8, May 1995

Two covers for the price of one today! I quite like this idea - the primary cover has the "Wildstorm Rising" trade dress, for symmetry's sake, but there's a secondary cover on the back, so that the comic fits nicely into one's Backlash collection.

We get dropped in medias res in today's issue, which works out kind of nicely for a comic that's part 8 of a line-wide crossover. The exposition is a bit clunky, but gives all the information one needs, and Backlash gets his tail handed to him by a giant, fiery-mouthed alien. There's actually not much more to this comic, aside from an unsurprisingly great Barry Windsor-Smith cover (just FYI, the scene in the comic that the BWS cover is from does not involve a naked woman, though if Chabon's contentions about supersuits are anything to go by, even though she's clothed in the comic, she's not really).

I don't know if it's my tastes shifting, or if the current state of the world leaves me in an angst-ridden state at all times, but the grimness of the Image U, and specifically the Wildstorm section of it, seems to be growing on me. Recall all those other times I've read extended runs of titles, I've become very bored with them very quickly - Backlash is having an opposite effect. Each comic I read is making me want to know more, not only about 'lash, but about the universe he inhabits. Steve Gerber wrote a weird little corner of this universe in his Cybernary stuff. Maybe that'll be my next read...

Onward.