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Do you know anything interesting about Conan comics?
For most fo the 70's, it was Marvel's best selling comic book, and they were able to get the rights for next to nothing...but even paying a little bit didn't sit well with Marvel Publisher Martin Goodman, and he said that they had to put Barry Smith on the book because they could pay him less and make up for the cost of the license fees. In fact, Roy Thomas misquoted to Goodman how much it would be by $50...so he would pay the extra $50 from his page rate so that6 he could do the book.
In the mid-70's, rumor was that Roy got overwhlemed with all of the writing he was doing for Marvel. For an issue of either Conan or Elric, when the artist came in for the plot for the next issue, he ripped a bunch of pages from a paperback book and handed it to the artist and said, "Just draw that."
The "adult stuff" you are talking about was in the Black and White magazine, which John Buscema loved drawing. In fact, one of Buscema's best art jobs is the graphic novel "Conan of the Isles" which is pencilled and inked. Buscema rarely inked his own work, but his work on that one is amazing, and Buscema fans have driven price of it on eBay to over $80 every time it comes up for auction.
When I went to Sandy Eggo in 2001, I chatted a bit with Buscema and told him how much I liked it, and he grabbed my hand and shook it so hard, I thought he'd break it off. We talked horses for abit and the next person in line brought up the Silver Surfer. He visibly rolled his eyes and thanked me for stopping by and started telling the story of Silver Surfer #4 for the bajillionth time.
Marvel's agreement with the REH estate was one where as long as they published a certain number of Conan books a year and paid the fee (which didn't change from the 1970 price), they'd keep the rights. Sales on Conan fell after YEARS of loading the book with artists with no experience, and and after a few half-hearted mini-series, Marvel just let the partnership die...leading Dark Horse to pick up the rights a couple of years ago, along with rights to reprint ALL of the Marvel stuff. The weird thing is that in the 70's and 80's, Marvel tied the Conan stuff into the current Marvel Universe loosely, and now if they reprint any of those books, they'll prolly have to alter it.
As for the "adult stuff off the side of the panels", Conan was Marvel's best selling black and white magazine by FAR, even though Jim Shooter actively hated it, and would tell editors not to pay much attention to it since the only people who bought it were bikers and people who buy tattoo magazines. |
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