Regular marked price: $13.95Discount Price: $11.16
Cost Savings: $2.79 (20%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Not yet published
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 741
EAN num: 9781595821775
ISBN number: 1595821775
Label: Dark Horse
Manufacturer: Dark Horse
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 244
Printing Date: April 15, 2009
Publishing house: Dark Horse
Sale Popularity Level: 137264
Studio: Dark Horse
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
The incomparable Gil Kane (Green Lantern, Amazing Spider-Man) is featured in this special 244-page Chronicles of Conan volume! Joining storyteller J.M. DeMatteis on Conan the Barbarian #127, Gil Kane's short but stellar Conan run in 1981 and 1982 thrust readers into a new era of magical quests, strange creatures, and inventive fantasy adventures. In Chronicles of Conan: The Creation Quest and Other Stories, Kane collaborates with DeMatteis, Bruce Jones, and longtime colleague Roy Thomas. In addition to the 'Creation Quest' story arc, readers will enjoy the meticulously restored colour pages found in 'The Ring of Rhax,' 'A Hitch in Time,' and the heartbreaking 'Snow Haired Woman of the Wastes' - where Robert E. Howard's mighty barbarian finds himself unraveling horrific mysteries and testing his thresholds of pain and mental fortitude!
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
Just making a note to people looking at this product. The other reviewer is reviewing the wrong product. He is reviewing the Conan comic book collected edition. This book is all of the original Robert E Howard Conan stories in chronological order in their true form. If they were not completed, then they were left that way. This is pure 100% Robert E Howard.
Rated by buyers -
The one substantive complaint about these reprints of the "Conan the Barbarian" comic books that Dark Horse has been reprinting has been that the original covers drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith for Marvel Comics have been omitted. That omission is mitigated somewhat by Volume 4 of "The Chronicles of Conan," which has the splash page from "Red Nails" as the cover. I have a strong affection for this particular piece of Windsor-Smith art because my college debate partner took the original grey & white drawing from "Savage Tales" and blew it up on a 6-foot board that I have colored in and which has dominated my "office" for about half my life, to the dismay of my family and amusement of my friends.
This collection has issues #23-26 of Marvel's "Conan the Barbarian" and the acclaimed "Red Nails" (For those concerned with continuity #22 is omitted because it was a reprint of #1) Of those two issues, all of which were written by Roy Thomas, Windsor-Smith drew the very first two and John Buscema, who would be Conan's artist for most of the rest of its original run, took over as penciler on the last two. The second of those was inked by Ernie Chua (later Ernie Chan), who would be Buscema's primary inker on the comic book (the way Alfredo P. Alcala tended to do the inking over Buscema's pencils in the grey & white magazine "The Savage Sword of Conan"). However, the chief attraction here is Windsor-Smith's final work on Conan.
Issue #22 "The Shadow of the Vulture," freely adapted from a Howard short story, is inked by Sal Buscema, Dan Adkins, and Chic Stone. The Vulture is Prince Yezdigerd's right-hand sword, who is sent to dispatch Conan. However, the story is more noted because this is the very first Conan adventure with Red Sonja. This sets up #23 "The Song of Red Sonja," which Windsor-Smith inked himself (be sure to read Thomas' reflections in the back of the volume that cover some of the changes the Comics Code forced them to make with the artwork). When you compare how far Windsor-Smith came from the very first issue of "Conan," let alone the infamous "X-Men" #53 that he drew on a New York City park bench, it is amazing how far he came as an artist. "Red Nails" has more scope and Thomas and Windsor-Smith are unfettered by the Comics Code, but all things considered "The Song of Red Sonja" is the best of their joint efforts. This explains why it gets to be the title for this final volume.
The Buscema issues are included, rather than whatever odds and ends Smith ever did of Conan and Howard related stories, because they finish the siege of Makkalet story line. Issue #25 "The Mirrors of Kharam Akkad," inked by Sal Buscema and John Severin (the latter does the King Kull flashback pages in a nice touch), is inspired in part by Howard's "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune" story, another one of those stories where a sorcerer tries to get the better of Conan. In #26 "The Hour of the Griffin" the city finally falls and Conan tries to save Queen Melissandra. Conan's big fight is with a giant rat, which is not exactly a big thrill, but he does get to see the face of the one true Tarim, the reason for the war.
Buscema's Conan is a larger, more muscular version of the barbarian than what we saw with Windsor-Smith's art, which I always read as representing the fact he was a more mature character at that point. One of the interesting aspects of this final collection of early Conan stories is that the remastered colour better suits the Windsor-Smith artwork. I know that part of why this works is that these stories are reprinted on much better quality paper in these volumes and that another key part is that this sort of thing is now done with computers, but Windsor-Smith's attention to detail in his drawings really gives the colorist something with which to work. Just look at the intricate lines on the shield on that great cover. Besides, now that we have this four-volume set of "The Chronicles of Conan" we can enjoy these classic comic books without having to take them out of the plastic that is keeping them safe for posterity.
Find other books like this one:
