The Chronicles of Conan Vol. 1

These reprints from Marvel's Conan the Barbarian (originally published in the early 1970s) shows the best and worst of sword and sorcery adventure. At its best, S&S fiction enables readers to identify with heroes who fight against vast, cosmic forces. At its worst, it features muscle-bound louts in fur skivvies who bellow insults at each other while waving enormous, phallic weapons. Robert E. Howard, who created Conan in a series of pulp magazine tales, achieved the former level more often than he sank to the latter. Eventually, Thomas and Windsor-Smith did, too. Thomas's informative closing notes explain how, under Stan Lee's editorship, he got permission to write a Conan comic in collaboration with young artist Windsor-Smith. He admits to glitches in the writing and blemishes in the art, but correctly states that the comic hit its stride by issue #4, an adaptation of Howard's "Tower of the Elephant." This archetypal Conan story sets the quick-thinking, tough outsider against a corrupt, over-sophisticated society. The young barbarian is exasperated by the superior attitudes of the experienced rogues in the slums of a decadent metropolis, so he decides to test himself by robbing a powerful, evil sorcerer. This comics adaptation isn't without flaws, but Thomas does preserve Howard's escalating sense of menace and strangeness. Windsor-Smith's pencils do justice to the mood too, making Conan believably muscular enough to prevail against human or superhuman foes. The stories in this deluxe collection are much more spirited and solid than those featured in the original printing.