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| Copyright MARVEL COMICS and CONAN PROPERTIES, Int. |
I decided to give myself a treat recently, so bought a back issue of CONAN The BARBARIAN #22 - even though I already have the strip contained within. See, apparently pages for the story featured on the cover went missing in the mail, so the mag had to go with a reprint or be faced with penalties for missing its printing deadline. Once the schedules have been arranged, publishers are legally obliged to honour the arrangement - or else.
Anyway, MARVEL decided to re-present the first Conan adventure from issue #1, and also included a previously unpublished piece of BARRY SMITH art so that readers would at least have something new to gape at. The reason the cover wasn't changed to match the contents was because covers are (or were - dunno if it's still the case) printed far in advance of the internal pages*, so Marvel had no option but to use it. The scheduled story appeared in the next issue.
(*In seeming contradiction, covers purportedly weren't usually drawn until after the contents. Not quite sure how that works.)
The cover's been cropped across part of the COMICS CODE stamp, though the mag's still the height it should be. (There's just more space under the story's title at the bottom.) However, I can live with it, as it's reproduced in my Conan OMNIBUS and it was really the contents I was interested in. Why? Well, because (as far as I know) I now have every English language single-issue presentation of Marvel's Conan debut, which appeals to me in an obsessive collector's way.
In case you're interested, that includes CTB #1, CTB #22, CONAN CLASSIC #1, SAVAGE SWORD Of CONAN #1 (UK weekly), and the recent TRUE BELIEVERS printing. Oh, and I've also got CONAN The ADVENTURER #1, the short-lived UK fortnightly periodical, which reprinted his first tale, but with 'Barbarian' changed to 'Adventurer' on the splash page to tie-in with the animated cartoon TV show of the same name.
I've not included CONAN SAGA #1 (though I've got that as well), because it contained the first three (I think) Conan tales, not just the first one. I've also got CBT #1 reprinted in the DARK HORSE volume, plus the aforementioned Omnibus, but I'm not counting collected editions. I think the only CE I don't have is the b&w Conan ESSENTIALS volume, but I can live without that. Owning all the US standard-sized single-issue colour presentations of Conan's first comic strip story will do for me.
I've got more incarnations of it than I actually need, but you can bet your barbarian's boots that if Marvel ever release a Facsimile Edition, I'll be buying that too.
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Oops, how could I forget? I've also got the UK Conan POCKET BOOK (digest size) from the early '80s. Perhaps I shouldn't count that one, as it also reprints CTB #2, plus (if I recall correctly) the first half of #3. Tell you what, let's include all the magazines, but forget the collected book editions. How does that sound to you?
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