SAVAGE SWORD Of CONAN REFORGED #s 2 & 3...

Copyright CPI

I must confess I've quite enjoyed the first three issues of The Savage Sword Of Conan Reforged, where Heroic Signatures/Titan have sensitively coloured various b&w classic Marvel strips and breathed new life into them, visually speaking.

However, what I don't quite understand is this: Although CPI own the copyright on all things Conan, 'twas Marvel who originally commissioned these strips and paid for them.  Surely, then, they belong to Marvel, who you'd think would retain ownership of the images even though they no longer have a license to publish them.  Why, then, are Titan (or whoever) allowed to reprint Marvel strips when they never financially contributed to them when they were first published.  Or is there something I don't know about?  Like, perhaps Marvel receives a fee for the use of pages which should really still belong to them, even if they can't publish them themselves as they no longer license rights to the character?  If not, I'd say they should.

But that's not really what this post is about - I just got carried away.  (Whaddya mean I should be?!)  Thought you might like to see the covers to numbers 2 & 3, as well as some interior pages to show what a good job has been done with the colouring.  However, this wouldn't be a Crivens post without a bit of criticism.  Take a look at the pic of the woman being seized by (spoiler alert) cannibals: to my eyes, her head seems too high above her shoulders, as well as too far back to be entirely natural looking.  I'd say Neal Adams erred with this one (or maybe one of his assistants) and should've put a bit more work into it.  Having said that, though, these are nice looking mags, and a Roy Thomas-scripted Conan Tale is usually always worth reading.

In the text piece in issue 2, there's a couple of typos, but I'm not sure if the article was retyped or simply scanned from whatever issue it originally appeared.  Either way, it would've been nice if they'd been corrected, as I, for one, hate anything that detracts from a mag's potential perfection.  I haven't yet read the text piece in #3, so am unaware if it's error-free or not.  Anyway, enjoy the piccies and feel free to leave a comment on what you think about these Cimmerian comic mags if you've bothered to buy them.  (And if not, why not?!)