Monday, December 2, 2024

The Savage Sword Of Adams!


For all too brief a time Neal Adams knocked out some outrageously exciting covers for Marvel's sword and sorcery brand. Here are the ones I could gather up. 




Adams had a real flair for this kind of material, his sense of realism was particularly effective in translating the tough nature of these adventures. In particular is art on "Curse of the Golden Skull" stands out from those early days when Marvel still had the Conan license. 


Here's a vigorous Adams illustration for a Supergraphics Portfolio. Other artists featured within are Barry Windsor-Smith, Vaughn Bode, and Howard Chaykin, along with Supergraphics boss Jim Steranko. 


Here are sonic Conan the Barbarian treats. Above is the cover to the Power Records. The Neal Adams cover is outstanding, and the stories are a lot of fun. 


This album features four Conan adventures. This link will take you to them.


As it turns out Power Records also produced "Crawler in the Mists" as a 45 single. Here's a link to this one along with the full comic book which came along with it. 


The artwork is some cool Neal Adams with a lot of help from the Crusty Bunkers over the layouts of Big John Buscema.


This Post is a Revised Dojo Classic. 

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Sunday, December 1, 2024

December!


The barbarian welcomes you to the bleak month of December. The year of 2024 has been a memorable one to this point for all the wrong reasons. I want to right the ship and give us all something to smile about. That Neal Adams illustration of Robert E. Howard's famous Cimmerian is a tip off. It's nearly all barbaric action this month -- fantasy with a finishing blow.  


In the somewhat warmer climes of Narnia, we reach the end of that delightful children's saga by C.S. Lewis. For Lewis this all leads to a dramatic final battle which is good news for many of us. 


Frank Frazetta gets represented a few times this month. One is with Thun'da, the one comic book that the great artist illustrated all the way through. That's on tap as well as more recent sequel by other talents. 


Idyl by the late Catherine Jeffrey Jones is poetry. I don't pretend to understand it all, but revisiting these supremely crafted pages which originally appeared in National Lampoon are always intriguing and in the end heart-warming. There are other things from Jones as well such as I'm Age from Heavy Metal


And speaking of heart-warming, one needs look no further than Peter Beagle's magnificent and elegant The Last Unicorn. A striking mythology for a modern time sorely in need of it. 


It's the allure of more ancient myths which attract the reader to Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword. This magnificent saga was first published in the same year as Tolkien's great yarn about Hobbits, and some hold it higher regard. 


No wants to see Groo the Wanderer. He's a mental deficient who poses a threat to all those who come in contact with him. He blithely wanders (hence the name) through life creating havoc not only for villains, but heroes and bystanders as well. He's a barbarian they can't kill -- no matter how hard they try. I take a glance at one of the sturdiest barbarians in comics. 


One of my favorite Marvel yarns is when the Hulk got shrunk and found love and courage in a strange sub-atomic world. This turned into a downright saga. I was a downright Hulkamaniac back in the day, and this one always stood proud among the many tales about old Jade Jaws. 


And speaking of shrinking, the master of being little -- The Atom found himself having to retool to survive when he's stranded in a tiny world for a time. He finds adventure and romance in the smallest kingdom on the planet. 


The Viking Prince featured the astounding artwork of Joe Kubert, who caught the feel of the bygone age with a deft but firm touch. These tales are vivid when often comics of the time were quite timid. 


Kubert supplied the covers for DC's Nightmaster stories in Showcase, but it was left to an up-and-coming Berni Wrightson to draw the story. 


But Nightmaster was just DC sticking its collective toe into the Sword and Sorcery genre. In 1975 they took a deep dive when they cobbled together their "Adventure Line" which was filled with vintage crimefighting, prehistoric tales of survival, and scuds of swords and oodles of sorcery. I want to take a look at each of the comics that DC launched in this campaign, and I want to do it in the order they pictured above beginning with The Avenger and Justice Inc and sliding right all the way to Kong. 








This should be a ton of fun and is a project I've been thinking about for quite a while. I just needed a few comics to make it happen and now I have them. 


And I haven't forgotten about Neal Adams who kicked off this introductory post. He'll be popping up here and there as the final month of 2024 tumbles along to its inevitable conclusion. 

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