CONAN GETS STRIPPED!

A surprise hit for Marvel, Robert E. Howard's pulp adventure hero Conan has become an iconic figure in not only the comics, but film and countless toys, model kits, trading cards, action figures and other media. When his stories were going full-throttle behind the team of Roy Thomas and John Buscema, suddenly newspapers around the country were publishing a daily Conan comic strip distributed by the Register and Tribune Syndicate based in Des Moines, Iowa. Coincidentally, R&T was the same syndicate that distributed Will Eisner's THE SPIRIT SECTION every Sunday during the 1940's.

The format fits the Conan episodic style of story well and I always looked forward to reading the next day's 3-panel strip which ran from 4 September 1978 to 12 April 1981. Buscema was not long at the drawing board on this project and he left after the first story arc. leaving the chores to Ernie Chan. Over the course of the strip, other writers and artists were on board, such as Doug Moench, Thomas Yeates and Alan Kupperberg. Despite Barry Smith's initial work in launching the first 24 issues (and becoming famous for it), I believe it is the Thomas/Buscema collaboration that defines the greatness of the Marvel comic. Nobody has been able to touch them since.

In 2010, Dark Horse reprinted a surprising dismally-reproduced collection of the series.

Today features the full first month of daily and Sunday CONAN THE BARBARIAN strips from 1978.