I’m pleased to see that Marvel are producing beautiful crisp reprint print-books of their black-and-white Savage Sword of Conan magazines and its precursors. The first 1000-page volume is out now, with Vol. 2 due in mid November, and Vol. 3 in January 2020. According to the reviews Marvel have done an excellent job here, apparently marred only by some copyright trolls who are preventing the reprinting of stories featuring certain of R.E. Howard’s supporting characters. Vol. 3 has a bit of a naff front cover, which I’m thinking may be a ‘holding cover’.

These are the old magazines with black-and-white art by the likes of John Buscema, Gil Kane and Barry Windsor-Smith. The art hasn’t been given the usual gaudy re-colour, thankfully, though possibly the paper may feel a bit too bright n’ white. Scripts by Roy Thomas match the quality of the art, and being magazines aimed at an older market in the 1970s and 80s they were not subject to Comics Code censorship. Which means art that can get a lot closer to the Lovecraft-influenced bits that Howard employed in his Conan stories.

The PorPor Books Blog has pictures of interior pages in his review.

The reviews also usefully point out the poor quality of the previous attempt to reprint Savage Sword as collected volumes, and the superiority of the new Marvel books.

While one could tweak up a good .CBZ reader app’s contrast and saturation settings, on scans of old yellowed originals, these new 1000-page slabs seem the ideal — if rather costly — way to view the art in the crispest manner possible. Just make sure to also order a pair of the Conan™ Steel Wrist-bands, so you can heft and hold these slabs.