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News Marvel gets Conan back.

Kai "the spy"

Kai "the spy"

Admiral
Admiral
CBR| Marvel Comics Regains Conan License

Starting in January 2019.

This kind of pisses me off, especially in the larger context of Marvel being part of Disney. I sure hope they don't go after the film rights, as well.
But also because Dark Horse has done a fantastic job with Conan, from the early Kurt Busiek & Cary Nord run up to the current crossover with Wonder Woman (something we sure wouldn't have gotten at Marvel). And their collections are great, as well, including the reprint of Marvel stuff.

The only thing Marvel could do to win me over was if they did a Savage Sword-style black and white magazine.

First Star Wars, now Conan. If Marvel buys the Buffy license, we know for sure they're out to destroy Dark Horse.
 
I just realized, if the Disney/Fox deal goes through, they'll not only have Buffy, but also Aliens and Predator. With Disney giving Star Wars to Marvel after they bought LucasFilm, it's pretty save to say that Dark Horse is gonna shrink a lot. Pretty much Hellboy and reprints of the Warren and EC stuff will be all they have left to make money.
 
The Mouse has a predilection for acquiring everything connected to a property. The were fishing around Dynamite for the John Carter related stuff back when the movie was coming out. That went by the wayside when the film didn't get enough success for Disney. With acquiring Conan, I wonder if they might approach the Red Sonja owners to see if they want to go over to Marvel? There was some talk of making a Red Sonja film in the wake of Wonder Woman's success:
http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/red-sonja/53145/red-sonja-new-movie-version-is-being-fast-tracked

Talk is cheap and properties are often talked up as in development. If Marvel should think of making a Conan film, I could see the Mouse not wanting some competing property playing in their Hyborian pond not that she'd be all that much competition as things stand now.
 
Maybe losing Conan will finally prompt Dark Horse to do something with the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser rights they've held for a decade. Reprinting the 1970s DC stuff and the 1980s Epic stuff is nice, reprinting the books is nice, but, damn, I'd love a comic book. :)

As for Marvel, I hope they bring back the black & white magazine.
 
I agree that Dark Horse has done a fantastic job with Conan, not only the reprints, but with their own new material as well. To be fair Marvel also did a fantastic job with Conan... back in the 1970s. The Roy Thomas and John Buscema Savage Sword of Conan is IMO the best adaptation of Conan in comic book form. Will Marvel be able to produce something similar in 2019? I highly doubt it.

As for the movie rights, I kinda wish that Disney does acquire them and decides to do something with them, because at this point, movie Conan is deader than a doornail.
 
Red Sonja is not part of the Conan license. Her comics are currently from Dynamite Entertainment.

Edit: Sorry, I didn't want to sound condescending. On other boards, people genuinely didn't know that Red Sonja is a seperate property, and I forgot about @Gov Kodos already mentioning it.

Meanwhile, some of the articles on this news are hilariously pro-Marvel. Like the piece from Syfy:

Syfy said:
Some of the most authentic and faithful adaptations of those original Conan tales were published under the blazing Marvel Comics banner.
Click to expand...

No shit. There've been only two publishers of Conan comics, Marvel and Dark Horse. So "some of the most authentic and faithful adaptations" is as true as it is misleading, as the clear intention is to get people excited about this.
 
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Kai "the spy" said:
No shit. There've been only two publishers of Conan comics, Marvel and Dark Horse. So "some of the most authentic and faithful adaptations" is as true as it is misleading, as the clear intention is to get people excited about this.
Click to expand...
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Allyn Gibson said:
Maybe losing Conan will finally prompt Dark Horse to do something with the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser rights they've held for a decade. Reprinting the 1970s DC stuff and the 1980s Epic stuff is nice, reprinting the books is nice, but, damn, I'd love a comic book. :)

As for Marvel, I hope they bring back the black & white magazine.
Click to expand...

Dark Horse let the Chaykin / Mignola trade go out of print it looks like and I'm not really all that interested in the 70's version having had a few of the originals. I did manage to replace my original copies of the Chaykin / Mignola series over the Christmas holiday, so yay for that.

But yeah, they need to do something with those characters.
 
I've been pretty happy with what Marvel has done with the SW liscense, so I don't mind seeing them get a hold of another property outside of their own superheroes.
 
Kai "the spy" said:
I just realized, if the Disney/Fox deal goes through, they'll not only have Buffy, but also Aliens and Predator. With Disney giving Star Wars to Marvel after they bought LucasFilm, it's pretty save to say that Dark Horse is gonna shrink a lot. Pretty much Hellboy and reprints of the Warren and EC stuff will be all they have left to make money.
Click to expand...
It bugs me that Disney recently closed the Great Movie Ride in Florida. Part of the reasoning was they never owned all the rights to the films in it. Now they own Indiana Jones and Alien which were part of it. Plus all these other properties they have acquired they certainly could have updated and modernized it. Which it needed instead of completely abandoning the idea.
 
I don’t understand how anybody can own the underlying rights to REH’s works; he died in the 1930’s. Any of his writings published in his lifetime have been public domain for decades.

What’s to stop Dark Horse from continuing to publish newly-created Conan pastiches even if Marvel is also publishing them?
 
Daddy Todd said:
I don’t understand how anybody can own the underlying rights to REH’s works; he died in the 1930’s. Any of his writings published in his lifetime have been public domain for decades.
Click to expand...

The issue isn't so much copyright (the copyright status on the stories is unclear, as the copyrights weren't always renewed) but trademark. Paradox holds the trademark on "Conan" and uses it to prevent public domain exploitation (such as audiobooks) of Howard's work and characters.
 
New monthly series announced.
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I wonder if Marvel will pick up from their old continuity or if they will just start fresh and ignore what they did before. I wonder this because what they did before is actually considered part of Marvel canon.
 
Turtletrekker said:
I wonder if Marvel will pick up from their old continuity or if they will just start fresh and ignore what they did before. I wonder this because what they did before is actually considered part of Marvel canon.
Click to expand...

I don't know, it felt kinda wobbly even back then. I mean, how does the REH version of Atlantis mesh with the Marvel Universe Namor the Submariner version of Atlantis?

In any way, I'd just rather Conan not be connected to the Marvel Universe. Besides, starting fresh would give them licence to do new adaptations of the original stories (though they did already do two different adaptations of "Tower of the Elephant").
 
The old Atlantis Attacks crossover dealt with stuff that Marvel did in the Conan Comics. Specifically and mainly The Serpent Crown.
 
I see.

Still, I prefer the RHE-verse not be connected to modern day stories like the Marvel superheroes. Howard used some shaky theories as the basis of both his Thurian and Hyborean Ages, as well as the stories of Bran Mak Morn, that work very well for a Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery setting, but which get really uncomfortable if getting closer to reality as a connection to a modern day setting would do.

Besides, the old Marvel stuff was based on the L. Sprague de Camp version of Howard's work, and not on the original texts. I also wasn't a fan of Roy Thomas idea of Conan being shown a vision of becoming king and therefore seeking that destiny, as the original stories by Howard were very much about the self-reliance of man and against the idea of destiny.
 
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