News Marvel gets Conan back.
- Thread starter Kai "the spy"
- Start date
No, he wasn't. There were a few "What if"s spread over the decades, like one where Conan fought Thor, and certain supernatural elements of the Hyborean Age were carried over into Doctor Strange, but in general, there was no mixing of Conan and the superheroes.
Having read the first three issues of Jason Aaron's "Conan the Barbarian", I like what the writer is doing here.
Conan works best in relatively short tales without much of chronological order, a concept that goes completely against the trend for serialized story-telling that is all the rage nowadays. So, Aaron uses a framework plot about Conan, King of Aquilonia, being confronted with a witch he thought to have killed in his teenage years, but the individual issues each tell a complete story each from a different era of Conan's life, that somehow relates to the events in the framework plot.
It is a clever way of serving the need for a serialized story while keeping Howard's method of telling stories from all over the place.
Conan works best in relatively short tales without much of chronological order, a concept that goes completely against the trend for serialized story-telling that is all the rage nowadays. So, Aaron uses a framework plot about Conan, King of Aquilonia, being confronted with a witch he thought to have killed in his teenage years, but the individual issues each tell a complete story each from a different era of Conan's life, that somehow relates to the events in the framework plot.
It is a clever way of serving the need for a serialized story while keeping Howard's method of telling stories from all over the place.
Different Conan.
Sorry to resurrect this thread, but it is merely to bring It full circle.
Marvel seems to have lost the license to Conan. The license holder has apparently decided to publish their own comics.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/screen...-barbarian-savage-avengers-rights-report/amp/
Marvel seems to have lost the license to Conan. The license holder has apparently decided to publish their own comics.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/screen...-barbarian-savage-avengers-rights-report/amp/
Yeah, we talked about it in JD's Comic Book Thread. Marvel will keep the publishing licence for the archive, though, and apparently retain the licence to use the character in their Savage Avengers series. I do buy the Epic Collections, so that's good, but I'm ignoring the Savage Avengers.
Isn't it just the title that is under copyright? You can't name a book Conan? Isn't the character himself now in the public domain?
Partly, yes. The character has fallen completely into the public domain here in Europe, including the usage of Conan in the title (the French comic series is titled Conan the Cimmerian, Ablaze cut out Conan for their English translations), but in the US it is only a selected few stories by REH that have fallen into the public domain, some of his stories are still protected, and thus any new story used through the public domain could only use those elements of the character introduced in the stories that are public domain.
Thanks for that. I remembered seeing Conan on Project Gutenberg but maybe it was only a few titles.
Slight correction, as I was in a hurry before: "Conan" as a title or part of a title for comic books is, of course, trademarked in the United States, whereas there is no such trademark in the EU and most of the rest of the world. This also resulted in the Japanese comic and animated series "Detective Conan" (with the title character named after Arthur Conan Doyle) being retitled "Case Closed" for US publication.
It is also important to note that the heavily-edited L. Sprague DeCamp versions of the stories are still copyrighted, only the versions published in the 1930s are public domain. As such, any adaptation needs to be careful not to do changes to the material thaz DeCamp also made. Same for any the licenced comic, movie and TV adaptations. So, no helmet that looks too much like the early Marvel comics, no Atlantean sword, no prophecy of Conan becoming king, etc.
Btw, I just found out that this October, Titan Books will release a new original (officially licenced) Conan novel "Blood of the Serpent" by S. M. Stirling.
It is also important to note that the heavily-edited L. Sprague DeCamp versions of the stories are still copyrighted, only the versions published in the 1930s are public domain. As such, any adaptation needs to be careful not to do changes to the material thaz DeCamp also made. Same for any the licenced comic, movie and TV adaptations. So, no helmet that looks too much like the early Marvel comics, no Atlantean sword, no prophecy of Conan becoming king, etc.
Btw, I just found out that this October, Titan Books will release a new original (officially licenced) Conan novel "Blood of the Serpent" by S. M. Stirling.
Titan Comics To Publish New (And Old) Conan Comic Books
Titan will have a new Conan the Barbarian ongoing series, set to launch in May 2023, and promise comics with other REH characters like Kull, Solomon Kane and Dark Agnes, as well. Nothing on which form the reprint of Marvel and Dark Horse material would take (and that bit is quite surprising, considering the previous information said that the reprints would continue at Marvel). I'm wondering if they'd be up for reprinting the B&W magazine material in its original format, something even the Marvel omnibus series didn't manage. But Titan is a British publisher, so they should be more experienced with larger formats.
Also the promise of comics with the other characters. Marvel did criminally little with them, outside of collections of the older stuff. They had that one crossover miniseries set in present day (so that alone lost my interest), and they published two issues of a Dark Agnes series that never continued after the initial pandemic problems.
So, Marvel's King Conan is about to conclude, Titan's CtB ongoing is set for May next year, that would mean almost a whole year without new Conan comics. Well, no officially licenced Conan comics, anyway. Ablaze's translations of the French comics seem to continue.
Titan will have a new Conan the Barbarian ongoing series, set to launch in May 2023, and promise comics with other REH characters like Kull, Solomon Kane and Dark Agnes, as well. Nothing on which form the reprint of Marvel and Dark Horse material would take (and that bit is quite surprising, considering the previous information said that the reprints would continue at Marvel). I'm wondering if they'd be up for reprinting the B&W magazine material in its original format, something even the Marvel omnibus series didn't manage. But Titan is a British publisher, so they should be more experienced with larger formats.
Also the promise of comics with the other characters. Marvel did criminally little with them, outside of collections of the older stuff. They had that one crossover miniseries set in present day (so that alone lost my interest), and they published two issues of a Dark Agnes series that never continued after the initial pandemic problems.
So, Marvel's King Conan is about to conclude, Titan's CtB ongoing is set for May next year, that would mean almost a whole year without new Conan comics. Well, no officially licenced Conan comics, anyway. Ablaze's translations of the French comics seem to continue.
Dynamite still has Red Sonja and doesn't look likely to give up the property. They get lucky once in awhile grabbing a title at a low point that everyone else seems to have given up on (The Boys..) so that part of Conan's universe probably won't reunite anytime soon in comics, not that there is some huge demand.
Welcome to page three of this thread, though I suspect you skipped a lot of it.
Did I miss a post?