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As a result, I came to read a relatively few indyish horror comics like Creepy, Eerie, and Vapirella, and west coast Marvel enterprises like Savage Sword Of Conan and Rampaging Hulk (so much cooler than the tame, 4-color Conan The Barbarian & Incredible Hulk, just ask our president). Even our negligent local comic guy wouldn't sell them direct to me (or maybe I was too chicken to find out), but my parents would sometimes buy them for me on vacation because they had a lot of pages per $.
And that same consideration has come full circle in my adulthood, with Marvel & Dark Horse doing massive reprints of them that seem to be the best buy in comics today. There's a lot of cheap reprinting going on in general, but the magazine reprints are relatively unique in that unlike most they were MEANT TO BE READ IN BLACK & WHITE, so reprinting them in b&w doesn't take anything away. Kind of basic, yeah?**
I've read just a couple books so far (they're HUGE), but I've got some positive reporting to do:
Savage Sword Of Conan Volume 1 just freaking rules. The art is awesome, and the stories are surprisingly intricate and true to Conan's 1920s origins (Lovecraftian horrors, post-Atlantean mysteries, and such). I was mostly just expecting dumb fun, but it's better than that. Conan talks like a real pig as regards (a) women and (b) everyone, but in actions he's a real hero if a reluctant one. And what he lacks in self-awareness is occasionally supplied by commentary from recurring foils like Valeria and Red Sonja. Dark Horse, 542 eye-popping pages for $17.95.
Essential Tales Of The Zombie is cool, but in a different, more detached way. The story of an amoral businessman brought back as an unstoppable, uncommunicative (mouth sewn shut), and rarely-in-control-of-his-own-actions killing machine has a nice Christmas Carol quality to it, mixed as you go on with Friday The 13th-the-series-esque*** vignettes of people gaining control of him, seeking to use him for their own selfish ends, and generally bringing about their own ruin. I have to respect both the purity of the premise and the attempts of these 1970s American artists to understand (and often defend) the culture of Voodoo, but this remains a mixed bag. Great art mixed with questionable, cool arc-plots alternated with a very mixed bag of contemporary articles & essays. But, as with all B-art that keeps the courage of its convictions, it still has value even at its worst, as below, in what may be the most awesome explanation of an off-panel death ever:
(this art lacks detail because I've blown it up about 4x...it's just a teeny tiny panel)
So yeah, still a pretty good time even at its most ludicrous. Especially since, at this price, you can pick & choose which parts to read. Marvel, 592 pages (on some of which eyes are popped), $16.99.****
* There was of course a fully underground scene at the same time, featuring actual pornography and adult art, but the magazine-comics had accessible characters and were more likely to be sold in neighborhood stores.
** Also, the magazines are bronze age, and most of the other reprints are silver age. If you don't know what I'm talking about, trust me: bronze age rules, silver age sucks.
*** - I'm sure there's some more literary antecedent but I'm not thinking of it. Monkey's Paw? Melmoth The Wnderer?
**** - A curse, however, upon whoever at Marvel decided not to put in master page numbers. It makes going back to the best parts much more of a chore than it ought to be.
