SuperHeroBooks - The Savage Sword of Conan, Vol. 2
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List Price: $17.95
Our Price: $9.83
Your Save: $ 8.12 ( 45% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Dark Horse
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 741
EAN: 9781593078942
ISBN: 1593078943
Label: Dark Horse
Manufacturer: Dark Horse
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 544
Publication Date: 2008-03-05
Publisher: Dark Horse
Studio: Dark Horse
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: the best comic ever
Comment: What comics do well is fast, abbreviated action. Comics at their best are like a sped-up movie. Good comics are often "cheesy", but in a good way: over-the-top, wildly inventive, no-holds-barred attempts to entertain, to give everything a great b-movie gives, only for a lower price tag and in a form you can carry with you. What more could anyone ask?
In the Gold and Silver ages of comics (until about 1970), even the best comics were not much more than "camp", that is, simplistic kid's stuff whose greatest value was in its naive silliness. In the modern age of comics (since the mid-1980's), comics are "dreck", insufferably pretentious, precious attempts to be "mature" and to achieve effects that this medium simply is not meant for and cannot do well.
But for a brief shining moment in the 1970's, comics were everything they could be and should be, as the commercial failure of the superhero stuff left the door open for a new wave of creators to try other directions. And no one questions that the defining comic of that great era, the "Bronze Era" as it is called, was the Thomas/Buscema Conan.
Roy Thomas knew better than anyone what the limitations of the comics genre are, which is what makes him as good a comic scripter as has ever come along. He knew how to write comic book dialogue: with a melodramatic flourish and with condensed information to keep the narrative moving. He is at his all-time best doing Conan, a character he obviously loves and was meant for (and Conan and the comic book medium are, of course, another perfect match).
John Buscema's art is of an equal caliber: he was the best at striking the perfect balance between detail and sketchiness. Detailed art doesn't work for comics because it causes the eye to linger, the last thing you want in a medium meant for speed and action. (For much the same reason, black and white almost always works better in comics than color). At the same time, one must create atmosphere; with too little detail the sense of reality, of suspended disbelief, will be lost. Buscema somehow does both, almost regardless of who is inking him; in addition he was a master of anatomic dynamism and expressiveness; and most importantly, he was probably the best in the medium's history at dramatic layout. Why else would Marvel have had him literally write their textbook on the subject?
Savage Sword was the grown-up, magazine version of Conan, the originals were in black and white, and so it is even better than the great comic book run by the same team. In short, this is the ultimate comic book character with the ultimate creative team from the age when comics were comics, so there isn't much chance that anything will ever surpass this.
Here it is nearly forty years later, price inflation has run wild in everything else, and Dark Horse is offering this, what is beyond any reasonable question in my mind the best comic book ever created, for about what you would have paid had you bought the original magazines when they came out.
As they used to say at Marvel: 'Nuff said.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Masterful Inking
Comment: This book is worth the coverprice for the art of Alfredo Alcala alone. When you put his moody, detailed inks over Buscema's action (and ladies), you are looking at a true masterpiece. The only complaint I have about this series so far is it would be cool to get the Kull, Kane, and Sonja stories that originally backed up the Conan stories. Who knows, maybe Dark Horse will print them in their own series, hint hint.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is the one!
Comment: Just about every page in this reprint is a Buscema classic. Most of them are inked by Alcala so you know these are amazing stories. This and the first volume are Marvel, Conan (comics) and Buscema at their best. Amazing classic stories in a very affordable reprint. This is an amazing value at the price here and the quality of the stories is as good as Conan gets. A must have for Conan or Buscema fans and fans of fantasy and great comics as well. Masterpieces abound in this book. The cover here is not the cover that is on the book but thats not a problem.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Conan the Terrific!
Comment: The Savage Sword of Conan, Volume Two
During the mid 1970's, a new kind of magazine hit the stands. While featuring Conan the Barbarian, a full length, black and white magazine appeared. It seemed to be the same as the Marvel Comic, rascally Roy Thomas still wrote the stories, and stygian stalwarts John Buscema, Gil Kane, Alfredo Alcala, and Neal Adams illustrated these `graphic' adventures.
You might say, they were among the first `Graphic Novels' before the term became popular.
And somehow, they conveyed a more dangerous Conan. In black and white, the art was more savage, hence the title. Imagine though, a full size magazine, selling for a whole $1! The color comics were 35 cents at the time, and yet, both formats were selling faster than poultices at a massacre.
This 544 page volume reprints issue #11 to #24, partially complete with covers (in b/w). Now, if the interior art is not spectacular enough for you. Boris Vallejo, Earl Norem, Tim Conrad, Mike Zeck, Ken Barr, and Ernie Chan execute Conan and his hordes with broad savage strokes. If you didn't like the story, the cover art was often worth the price of the issue! One thing I appreciate about the art by big John was that he was able to go to town. Every issue displays his mastery of the format, the male and female form, and particularly, his flair for the dramatic. Certainly, this was Buscema at his artistic peak!
It was the best of times (for Conan), and the worst of times (for those in front of his sword). This collection takes Conan from "Abode of the Damned" to "The Horror of the Red Tower". Savage beasts, meddling priests, scantily clad maids, and demons unleashed encounter a hyborian warrior focused on survival. Thomas adapted "People of the Black Circle" (16-19), "The Pool of the Black One" (22-23), "Tower of the Elephant (24), "The Thing in the Temple" (13), "The Slave Princess" (12), unfinished fragments, and "the Country of the Knife" (12). Robert E. Howard would have been proud of the future Conan he created. Roy Thomas and his artists always managed to create a magazine that oozed blood and savagery. If the magazine would have been color, it would have bled mightily. Each issue was epic in its' proportions, and had the feel of adventure few books can possess.
The only down side to this book is the missing back up stories and perhaps a forward/afterword. If that were included, the series would still be at issue 5-8 however. Something had to be sacrificed....
On that note, I will slink away and pray the Cimmerian comes my way not.[...]
Tim Lasiuta
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good pulpy fun, but erratic quality
Comment: Like the first volume, this collection represents a very different approach to collecting Marvel's '70s Conan comics than the "Chronicles of Conan" series: rather than a thin volume of recolored and relettered comics on heavy, bright-white paper, this is a fat book printed in black-and-white on newsprint, complete with ink that rubs off on eager readers' fingers (and also replete with printing defects, too-light pages, etc). In exchange you get a tremendous amount of story for the buck: more than five hundred pages of classic adventure and adolescent titillation. For my money this value approach is really much preferable to the fake glossiness of the Chronicles of Conan reprints, and the poor quality of the newsprint here seems true to the unpretentious, hastily drawn and written, pure pulp spirit of the source material (which I should point out is quite uneven in quality of both art and story). This series should help a new generation discover the lowbrow pleasures of pulp adventure.
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Editorial Reviews:
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In the mid 1970s a comics magazine was published containing some of the most exciting epic fantasy tales the world has ever known - The Savage Sword of Conan. Based on the work of renowned author Robert E. Howard, each issue offered multiple thrilling of tales of the legendary barbarian. The magazine was also a showcase of comics talent, headed up by Conan aficionado Roy Thomas. Now for the first time ever, these stories are being collected in a series of omnibus-style books, with over 500 pages of classic sword and sorcery - for the complete Conan collector! Included in this volume are tales featuring the stunning art of such comics luminaries as Barry Windsor-Smith, John Buscema, Alfredo Alcala, Jim Starlin, Al Milgrom, Pablo Marcos, Walter Simonson, and many more.
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