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 749: Marvel Premier #6, January 1973

I've begun, this week, to delve back into the mysteries of my dissertation, though it's a slightly altered one than the one I took a break from almost a year ago. I think the comics portion of the work is going to have to be removed, as I simply can't work with the supervisor I'm working with anymore. Which means that the Lovecraft aspects of the work are coming more to the fore. So it's a nice (sort of) coincidence that I came across this comic today. I've had it for a few years now and, somehow, have never got around to reading it. The inside cover notes that it's based on ideas from Robert E. Howard, but there's a remarkable amount of HPL dripping from the sea-drenched shores and gables of the tale.

That said, I couldn't find any of the referenced creatures and deities in my Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, which makes me think it's not quite as complete as it could be. Perhaps that's another project for another time.

I like Doctor Strange and his over-the-top magicalness. His calling out each of the names of his powers is reminiscent (or maybe that's the other way around) of the tradition in anime and manga of naming and shouting an attack before it happens. What this gestures to is perhaps a culture that sees magic and the spiritual as far more a part of life than one does in the Western world. It's a worldview I appreciate a good deal, as, apparently, does Marvel's Master of the Mystic Arts. I'd love to follow along with this story, in the hopes that it continues its Howardian/Lovecraftian bent, though I imagine comics this old will be tough to track down. Thank goodness the Calgary Expo is coming up.

To be continued.