Roy Thomas - Barbarian Life: A Literary Biography of Conan the Barbarian (Volume 1)

A Literary Biography of
Conan the Barbarian

VOLUME ONE

Roy Thomas

PULP HERO PRESS

www.PulpHeroPress.com

Issue 1

Issue 2

Issue 3

Issue 4

Issue 5

Issue 6

Issue 7

Issue 8

Issue 9

Issue 10

Issue 11

Issue 12

Issue 13

Issue 14

Issue 15

Issue 16

Issue 17

Issue 18

Issue 19

Issue 20

Issue 21

Issue 22

Issue 23

Issue 24

Issue 25

Issue 26

Issue 27

Issue 28

Issue 29

Issue 30

Issue 31

Issue 32

Issue 33

Issue 34

Issue 35

Issue 36

Issue 37

Issue 38

Issue 39

Issue 40

Issue 41

Issue 42

Issue 43

Issue 44

Issue 45

Issue 46

Issue 47

Issue 48

Issue 49

Issue 50

Issue 51

This is the first of a two-volume set written by Roy Thomas that chronicles the comic-book life of Robert E. Howards Conan, as revealed in the first hundred of so issues of Conan the Barbarian that Roy wrote for Marvel Comics, with art by Barry Smith, Gil Kane, and John Buscema. The first volume takes us through issue #51, and the conclusion of the six-part Curse of the Conjurer saga. The second volume will take us the rest of the way, through Roys initial tenure on the series.

In addition to Roy, without whom there wouldnt have been anything to publish, and who more than anyone except Robert E. Howard himself deserves credit for turning a pulp hero into an enduring American pop culture icon, this book owes its existence to several other honorary Hyborians:

• Pat Mason, who flawlessly translated various Spanish-language articles for which we couldnt find Roys original English versions;
• Barry Pearl, who provided the top-notch cover scans;
• Benito Gallego, who drew the cover art, and who contributed some of his original black-and-white art that Ive scattered throughout the book.

Back in the early 1970s, when I was eight or nine years old, I read Marvel comics, only Marvel comics, and many of themusually my favoriteswere written by Roy Thomas. Of course he didnt know it, but it was Roy who got me stoked about reading, and later about writing, too. Nearly 50 years later, Im publishing books by Roy Thomas. Isnt life a blast.

Bob McLain
Pulp Hero Press

What you are about to read is a detailed behind-the-scenes account of the first approximately five years of Marvels color comic book Conan the Barbarian, as published between 1970 and 1975its first 53 issues.

In recent years, Ive been gratified (and, to some extent, financially rewarded) to see a number of heroes and villains and concepts I helped create for Marvel Comicsand even DC Comicserupt into movie blockbusters and popular TV and Netflix series: Marvels Wolverine, Havok, adamantium, Banshee, the Vision, Ultron, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Yellowjacket, MBaku, and Dr. Stranges home address in Greenwich Village, with Carol Danvers (the once and future Captain Marvel) and Morbius the Living Vampire waiting in the wings, so to speak. Not to mention Obsidian, Hazard, Deathbolt, Artemis (soon to be Tigress, Im informed), and maybe one or two others on DCs WB channel, in either live action or animation.

Even so, theres never been any character Ive enjoyed writing more than Conan the Cimmerian, the 1930s creation of that strange but talented Texan, Robert E. Howard.

Thus, when Bob McLain of newly launched Pulp Hero Press approached me earlier this year about the possibility of my telling the story of Marvels Conan the Barbarian in book form, I told him that I had already written about the subject back in the 1990s, in a series of approximately 100 articles, which Id be happy to help him edit into shape to reprint for the first time all in one volume.

These pieces were written for Forum/Planeta, a Spanish comics company that was then launching an ambitious program to reprint at least the first 100 issues of Marvels Conan el Barbarosoa comic book which, years earlier, had printed Spanish translations of the then-new Marvel stories scripted by yours truly and illustrated by handful of splendidly talented artists. Antonio Martin, Forum/Planetas then-editor, had commissioned me to write an article on each individual U.S. issue, which would appear in the pages of the 1990s editions.

The only thing is, my articles had been printed, of course, only in Spanishand, with my usual improvidence in such matters, I hadnt bothered to save the English-language originals of any of them. Fortunately, my level-headed wife Dann convinced me that, if I looked through the overflowing file drawers in my office, I would probably come up with quite a few of themand she was right, as she so often is. The original versions of between two-thirds and three-quarters of the articles still existed, strewn about here and there, ready to be retyped for the new book and never before available in English. (Of course, Ive told the stories behind some of the issues elsewhere, but never at so much length and in so much detail as in these pieces.)

So what about the lost articles, which now existed only in the published Spanish translations? Well, as it turned out, one of Danns and my best friends is the estimable Pat Mason, a former professor of Spanish language and literature at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Pat and her husband, Don Rosick, a Texan with a mild interest in REH, had accompanied my wife and me to the 2006 Robert E. Howard Days celebration in Cross Plains, Texas, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the authors birth (and the 70th of his death), when I was that events guest of honor. So Pat thought it might be fun (though strenuous fun) to translate back into English the articles available only in Spanish.

Of course, by the time she finished, the precise language of each piece was twice removed from what I had originally written, but Pat is a skilled translator, and familiar enough with the rhythms of my speech from a quarter-century of acquaintance, that by the time the book was finished, I could rarely if ever be certain which of the installments was my original version, and which was one of her translations from the Spanish! Pat is the unsung heroine of this bookexcept to the extent that the above paragraph inadequately attempts to sing her praises. Shes also a good friend, who went above and beyond what was required, even comparing quotations embodied in the articles with the precise words as written in the original Marvel comics.

The articles mostly speak for themselves, except for a couple of points of needed clarification.

First, while proofreading and editing, I did take the opportunity to rewrite or clarify or even correct an occasional line or two where needed, and occasionally I added a line or so in order to bestow additional information I felt I should have included the first time around.