Dark Horse's Conan Series was not a book I had originally intending to write about, but after reading several issues over the past few weeks I really did need to make mention of it. In short, Dark Horse has really delivered a tremendous monthly series as well as several solid mini-series as well.

Conan was a character that appealed to me when I was younger for the same reason Conan has appealed to males since he first saw print in Robert E. Howard's WEIRD TALES PULP MAGAZINE stories of the 1920's: Conan was a ripped to shreds, silent, brooding, anti-hero womanizing adventurer. What kid wouldn't want to be Conan and bounce from adventure to adventure in a mythic world?

I first encountered Conan via the Old Power Records CONAN THE BARBARIAN LP circa 1980. This was a real fun LP that I played the hell out of when I was a kid. I later would sit enthralled at the TV when the commercials for the CONAN film played on TV. I didn't see the film in theaters but I did catch the VHS release a couple years later. The movie was an immediate cult classic and an underrated film. When in junior high I discovered MARVEL's CONAN THE BARBARIAN comic. Conan was not a comic title I purchased regularly but I enjoyed every issue I read. Marvel was also publishing another comic book entitled KING CONAN and a long running black and white  magazine entitled THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN. I wanted to read both of these titles very much and I was particularly interested in getting copies of SAVAGE SWORD. But, no shops near me carried them so I never read them...yet.


I pretty much stopped reading about Conan for quite a while. Then, in High School, things changed big time when I purchased a slip-cased five volume collection of the Howard, Carter and De Camp Conan tales. These books had sold MILLIONS of copies worldwide since the 1960's. Let the truth be told: it was hard NOT to buy these books after seeing Frank Frazetta's brilliant artwork. It was just too awe inspiring and alluring to not purchase.

I ended up reading about 9 volumes of the Conan series and they had a huge impact on me.

More on that in our next installment.