As for the gross and overwhelming majority of other Noble Barbarian Swordsmen, however -- your "Thongor"s; your "Warriors of Gor"; and what-have-you -- never did a thing for me. Plain and simple.

So: at that point in time, however -- back when an enterprising lad (or lass) could still readily afford the comic book outputs of both DC and Marvel without turning to a life of crime -- I bought pretty much everything without the dreaded, tell-tale word "romance" on the cover. (This explains the complete run of NIGHT NURSE in my collection, incidentally... albeit, just barely.) And that explains -- however circuitously -- how CONAN THE BARBARIAN #1 ended up in my weekly mega-stack of funnybooks, that one faithful Saturday afternoon.

Wow.

... and, again: WOW.

Robert E. Howard (the creator of "Conan," as well as a horde of lesser sword and sorcery characters) was a deeply unhappy and depressed misfit of a man. Overweight (and overly devoted to his domineering mother), he lived out his entire life in the same flyspecked, dustbowl Texas town in which he was born; never traveled more than fifty miles in any one direction from said spot; and ended up committing suicide, sitting in a rusty and dented old automobile, shortly after the passing away of his equally doting mater.

He was -- in short -- A Major Whacko.

His CONAN stories -- and he wrote an ungodly lot of them, believe you me -- were, really, just atrocious. Sentences were frequently sway-backed, and front-loaded with the sort of prose which could only be ennobled by the designation of "purple." The female characters in these little wish-fulfillment fantasies were (when not ornamental, outright) scheming and duplicitous minxes, only lacking One Really Good Night In the Sack with a certain barbarian (hint: his name begins with a "C") to get their respective outlooks decently prioritized. And the actual "plots," themselves, were as ritualized and rote as any "Roadrunner" cartoon: Conan Wants To Steal Some Treasure; Conan Has To Fight Big, Honkin' Monster; Conan Rides Off With Hot Damsel.

If you're a veteran comics scripter by the name of Roy Thomas... what do you do, given a situation such as this...?

Simple: you ditch Howard's silly prose stylings in favor of your own more nuanced and considered ones (not for nothing, as it turned out, was this guy a former English teacher); "beef up" the actual plots so that they aren't all "M is for Monster," any more; and keep everything else -- even the morbid love/hate demi-fascination with The Fairer Sex -- exactly as you found it, warts and all. (You are writing for an audience primarily composed of adolescent boys, after all. To their way of thinking... that was probably the one area where Howard was spot-on.) )

... and then: you get Barry Windsor-Smith to illustrate the thing as no comic book (before, or since) has ever been illustrated: with a lush, florid baroque sensibility. [See picture, above]

The Windsor-Smith contributions to the early issues of CONAN, quite simply, can not be overstated. By his hand, such goony,featherweight notions as (say) serpent-headed gods living in small bowls; great apes prowling about in the robes of temple priests; and captive, elephant-headed alien demi- deities [see picture, accompanying] took on a storytelling weight and substantiality that -- I flat-out guarantee it -- could never have been otherwise achieved, if attempted by any artist currently working under the dictates of the more "Kirby"-esque house style of the day.

Not to sell short the heroic labors of Roy Thomas, by any means (the CONAN stories still stand as exemplars of the man's numerous storytelling virtues: pacing, economy and emphasis, chiefest among these)... but: if he'd turned over precisely the same scripts to, say, John Romita, Sr. (just to pick another fine artist of the same period)... the results would have been Pretty Damned Dire, really. An obsessive such as Howard -- even after being "filtered" through Roy Thomas, in turn -- really does require the painstaking sort of ministrations provided by another obsessive, in sequence, in order to become fully realized.

In Barry Windsor-Smith... Howard (and Conan) found that fellow obsessive.

Windsor-Smith was blessed, throughout the length of his CONAN tenure, with a host of inkers ranging from the careful (at worst) to the deliciously subtle (such as, for instance, longtime war and horror comics veteran Ralph Reese; see page reproduction, accompanying)... a necessity, certainly, given the nigh-feverish meticulousness and draughtsmanship of his penciled work. (Not until the coming of George Perez, years later, would the comics field see another artist so slavishly devoted to the credo of: "you can never have too much finicky filigree in any one panel, God wot.")

There was something lyrical and effervescent (if, admittedly, sometimes studiedly so) in Windsor-Smith's lunatic efforts to give every leather coin purse a feeling of heft; every floor tile in a ruined mausoleum, its own spiderweb tracery of hairline cracks. Even if the subject matter of the comic itself ("barbarian fantasy") left a reader's hair singularly unturned... one simply couldn't help but gape, admiringly, at the heroic efforts to bring a sense of fidelity to same.

Thomas, in turn, did his level best to tether the storytelling proceedings to some sort of baseline "sanity," throughout hisgasp- inducing one hundred issues-plus run on the title. If Windsor-Smith was was CONAN's Raphael... then he, similarly, was its Magellan: arranging the hodgepodge of Howard's (occasionally) self-contradictory chroniclings into something very like a semblance of order, and salting them throughout with an ever-increasing cast of supporting characters, both of his own creation and -- in some instances -- the invention of others.

One of the most fascinating of these was the aforementioned "Elric of Melnibone" [see pictures, accompanying]: the wraith-like sorceror/adventurer sexually obsessed with his own dead cousin (don't ask), and wholly dependent upon the ebon, rune-encrusted sword known as "Stormbringer" in order to maintain his own life and vitality, in turn. Other major recurring characters -- "Red Sonja"; the pirate queen "Belit"; the scheming thaumaturge "Thoth-Amon" (just to name three) -- added, likewise, to the sense that Howard's "Hyborean Age" was (or, at least, could have been) as temporal and actual as -- if not downtown Duluth -- at least downtown Rangoon.

Thomas' greatest achievement with the series, however, was to take the somewhat cipher-ish character Howard had left him, and weave his disparate parts into a well-rounded, human whole. The wandering Cimmerian outlander, as explicated by his modern-day, self-appointed "Boswell," was roguish and opportunistic, to be sure... but: he also was possessed of an adamantine sense of honor, as well. In The World According To Conan: "loyalty" was as finite and measurable a resource as gold; a man's oath was his bond; and anyone (or anything) attempting to vitiate either of these was just begging to take a dirt nap .

Naturally -- the realities of the comics industry being what they were (and still are) -- it was all too fine and marvelous to endure for long.The increasingly perfectionist Windsor-Smith found himself, eventually, physically incapable of producing the caliber of work he wanted to, while adhering to the dictates of a monthly publication schedule, and -- after a revelatory run of twenty-four issues (give or take) -- finally handed over the artistic reins to Marvel workhorse John Buscema.

The resulting issues, in the years following, were seldom (if ever) awful, really; Thomas and Buscema were both, after all, seasoned comics veterans. They never gave you less than your dollar's worth, certainly...

... but: in all honesty: the "magic" (if you will) simply wasn't there, anymore.

True magic, you see, requires more than simply conscientiousness, and a willingness to try one's hand at turning the requisite miracle or two.

It also requires obsession.

MONSTERS, HEROES AND GOOD/BAD MEN

PAGE THREE (Jonah Hex)