OK, while I would love to have each and every tabloid sized book from Marvel and DC ,
Marvel Treasury Edition #23 from 1979 is right at the top of my list. It features some terrific Conan material that I don't believe has appeared elsewhere. First off, it has the "A Witch Shall Be Born" story from
Savage Sword of Conan. This is the one in which our favourite
Cimmerian gets crucified (on a St. Andrew style cross, if memory serves). It is all very gruesome. I've seen it via my computer, but I'd really love to see all of that
Buscema/Chan artwork in full treasury sized glory. There's also a map of Conan's world - I don't know if that was produced especially for this volume.
In addition, there are some terrific full-page pin-ups produced by some fantastic artists such as Alex
Nino, Tim Conrad and Gray Morrow (included above). While I'm not normally a huge fan of pin-ups, I've always thought that they were appropriate for Conan as it was the covers to those old paperbacks that attracted so many fans in the first place. What really intrigues me about this volume, however, is that it collects the Conan newspaper strip. I have no recollection of this strip, so perhaps it was not in any of the Toronto papers. Strips often don't work all that well when published in book format, as the narrative can be both choppy and repetitive but beggars can't be choosers and from what I've seen, the
reproductin quality looks superb.
OK, while I would love to have each and every tabloid sized book from Marvel and DC , Marvel Treasury Edition #23 from 1979 is right at the top of my list. It features some terrific Conan material that I don't believe has appeared elsewhere. First off, it has the "A Witch Shall Be Born" story from Savage Sword of Conan. This is the one in which our favourite Cimmerian gets crucified (on a St. Andrew style cross, if memory serves). It is all very gruesome. I've seen it via my computer, but I'd really love to see all of that Buscema/Chan artwork in full treasury sized glory. There's also a map of Conan's world - I don't know if that was produced especially for this volume.
In addition, there are some terrific full-page pin-ups produced by some fantastic artists such as Alex Nino, Tim Conrad and Gray Morrow (included above). While I'm not normally a huge fan of pin-ups, I've always thought that they were appropriate for Conan as it was the covers to those old paperbacks that attracted so many fans in the first place. What really intrigues me about this volume, however, is that it collects the Conan newspaper strip. I have no recollection of this strip, so perhaps it was not in any of the Toronto papers. Strips often don't work all that well when published in book format, as the narrative can be both choppy and repetitive but beggars can't be choosers and from what I've seen, the reproductin quality looks superb.
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I recently saw that Dark Horse is going to reprint those strips. I used to have a scrapbook filled with them from the Des Moines Register printed on some hideous orange paper they used for that one section. Like most adventure strips, it always got lots of negative votes when they asked their readers what strips they liked.
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