Customer Reviews

The Chronicles of Conan, Vol. 1: Tower of the Elephant and Other Stories

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Barry Windsor-Smith is my favorite comic book artist. Even though I have been selling off a lot of my old Marvel comic books, if Windsor-Smith drew the issue or just the cover, then that comic is a keeper. The irony is that when he drew his first comic book for Marvel comics, literally drawing his pages on park benches in Central Park, we all though he was the worst artist in the history of the world. But as you can see in "Tower of the Elephant and Other Stories," the first volume in "The Chronicles of Conan," in which Dark Horse reprints the first eight issues of Marvel's "Conan the Barbarian," Barry Windsor-Smith was quickly developing one of the most distinctive drawing styles in the history of comic books.

The key in these first eight issues of "Conan the Barbarian" are when Thomas and Windsor-Smith work from some of Robert E. Howard's original stories. Issue #4, "Tower of the Elephant" is prominent in the title of this collection because it is the first classic "Conan" comic book, but the adaptations of "The Grey God Passes" (#3), the poem "Zuakal's Hour" (#5), "The God in the Bowl" (#7), and a synopsis by Howard that Thomas uncovered (#8), were all crucial in helping the team find their voice and look in these comics. Just as the writing by Thomas becomes more than standard comic book fare, so does the artwork by Windsor-Smith because more stylized. Sal Buscema's inking of Windsor-Smith's pencils clearly defines this period, but I like the pages done by Dan Atkins a little better. Frank Giacoia's inks were just too different, but the final story, inked by Tom Sutton and Tom Palmer, hints at what we would see when Windsor-Smith would ink himself (did I mention I have the splash page of issue #8 as a black light poster?).

I have been happy to pick up the Marvel black and white reprint collections in the Essential series, but Conan is the exception to the rule. I do not want to take my comic books out of their bags, but with the remastered color of these comic books these reprints look a whole lot better than the originals. With its exotic locales, strange creatures, and gaudily dressed characters, "Conan" is a comic that especially benefits from remastered color. The results are extremely impressive.

Both Thomas and Windsor-Smith continue to make great improvements over the next dozen issues of "Conan the Barbarian," so I look forward to Volume 2 of "the Chronicles of Conan." Hopefully Dark Horse can reprint Thomas and Windsor-Smith's black and white Conan stories that they did in "The Savage Sword of Conan," especially "Red Nails," the splash page of which I had blown up on a giant poster board and colored in myself. I treasure that almost as much as the Windsor-Smith print we have in our bedroom that is signed and enscribed with our names and the date we got married.

When I was young I had read all of Howard's Conan stories and the DeCamp and Carter pastiches, so I was incredibly excited when Marvel brought out the Conan the Barbarian comic books. This volume is a compilation of the first eight issues (sans the covers, unfortunately - a big minus!).

In Mark Schultz's foreward to "The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian," which compiles all of Howard's Conan stories in the order in which he wrote them, he observes that there is no mistaking a Howard story. Reading through that book I was shocked at how elegant and cleanly and clearly written were the Howard stories compared to later pastiches and original stories by other writers. Conan was Howard's and Howard's alone to write, it seems. That holds true in this volume, too. Although all of the stories are written by Roy Thomas, the absolute best (and memory tells me that they were the best when these were still new comics) are those originally written by Howard himself or derived from his material: "Twilight of the Grim Grey God," "Tower of the Elephant" (a very, very memorable piece, even thirty+ years later), "The Lurker Within" (from Howard's story, "The God in the Bowl," it is strong in the parts where it follows Howard's story, weak in the new additions), and one of the most memorable Conan comics of all, "Keepers of the Crypt," based on an original Howard synopsis. The latter especially suffers from the lack of its magnificent cover.

Fortunately, the Afterward by Thomas helps to explain the history of the Marvel comic and the hows and whys of the ups and downs of the comic's popularity, and how it was tied to the (not published here!) covers.

Even without the covers (how we must hammer on that in the hope that future editions will have them) this is an excellent book and a worthy addition to the library of any comic collector or fan of Conan.

I give this 4 stars, the fifth missing because of the absence of ... you know what.

Barry Smith's Conan series is one of my favorites, but the Dark Horse color editions don't really measure up. The colorists for these volumes laid it on a bit thick, the result being a lot of muddied and/or obscured linework. There were many, many pages where the original artwork was blurred to the point of being unrecognizable. Smith's artwork deserves better treatment. BTW, for whatever reason, none of the covers are reproduced here. It seems an odd omission. If you're a Barry Smith fan, you'd be better served by picking up the Essential Conan. Fifteen dollars gets you 25 issues and covers, with all of Barry Smith's lovely artwork left intact.

This first volume in the Chronicles of Conan reprint series, "Tower of the Elephant & Other Stories" is in all honesty the worst of the lot. Roy Thomas had not yet found the right voice for Conan, and Barry Smith was still a hack artist imitating everyone and coming off bland. To top it all off, for the first several issues Conan wears a silly horned helmet. BUT!

It gets better. With each issue, Thomas and Smith begin to gel, begin to flex their creative muscles, and begin to define a Conan that is different from Howard's, but no less true. Conan loses the silly helmet. And then there series gets amazing.

Here we have the seeds of greatness, along with some really excellent stories. "The Tower of the Elephant," including even the prose of the original Howard story, is a great Conan adventure. "Twilight of the Grim Grey God," although not originally a Conan story, is well-adapted to the Northern Barbarian. "Zuakal's Daughter" is a fine story, although the villain looks a bit too much like Dr. Doom.

It is a shame that the original covers where not included. Otherwise, this is a excellent collection of Conan stories. Roy Thomas's musings on the series are very cool, like having a director's commentary track on a DVD.

Having read each and every one of these when I was a kid, I was very much looking forward to reading them again, and I was not disappointed. The color is much better in these Dark Horse reprints than in the original Marvel comics. The only complaint I have about them is that they do not reproduce the cover of the comics that they came from.

Its great having comic book issues assembled in one volume. I used to have all of these comics once upon a time. Like an idiot I sold them when I went to college back in the early eighties.
I have to say the art of Barry Smith is indeed very good. However, I remember it being much better when I originally read them.
Over all a good re-living of the past for me.

For many years, there has been a push to return Robert E. Howard's Conan to his roots; meaning, get rid of all the modified tales from L. Sprague deCamp and others that were incorporated into the Lancer and Ace paperback Conan series, leaving us only with the original REH Conan. By doing this, however, we are left with only a handful of stories and fragments of questionable quality. Let's be honest: while REH was innovative and had an extremely active imagination, he was not the literary talent that many would have us believe. Plus, as there have been countless characters to imitate Conan, I feel that the involvement of other creators to flesh out this archetypal barbarian can only help Howard's legacy and should not be ignored. I grew up on the modified Conan stories, and I feel that they certainly help to present Conan as a more complete and accessible character. Others must have felt this way as well, for as a result, Conan and other REH characters were propelled into paperbacks and other media, including comics.

What I'm getting at is, by pretending that the modifications never happened, everything inspired by them stands a good chance of never being reprinted. I was quite suprised and happy, therefore, upon hearing that Dark Horse Comics received the rights to reprint Roy Thomas' & Barry Smith's Conan tales, originally done for Marvel in the '70s. This is some beautiful work from both creators. Be warned, however, that the artwork contained within is faux-Kirby from plain old "Barry Smith", not the pre-raphaelite renderings of "Barry WINDSOR Smith". You won't see BWS' artistic transition until the last couple of issues, to be reprinted in the third Dark Horse volume. There are a few REH tales here, plus some pastiches, but all serve to present Conan as an individual instead of just another brute with a sword. This first volume reprints #1-8 in full color on bright glossy paper, with restored and recolored art. It is unfortunate that more issues couldn't be included in this volume, but for Smith's art, I would prefer to spend more money for less stories in color than a black-and-white reprint ala Marvel's Essentials.

This was a decent effort but that's all it was. These classic stories of a cult comic could have been collected in a format that was larger to show off Barry Windsor Smith's struggling but dynamic art. Instead, we get the standard format comic collection. The publisher could have had extra material covering the whole creative tone of this offbeat success from writer to artist and inker (even the original colorist keys would have been nice). Instead the only extra material we get is the self-serving writer reflecting on his contribution. While he covers the creative process pretty well and gives credit where credit is due the text is still only one perspective and that's it. This volume could also have been collected in an economical hardcover edition. Maybe that'll happen one day but not any time soon.
Last of all are the great liberties taken by today's colorists who use their high tech coloring toys to sculpt and tone their myriad color schemes over the original line drawings. I know I'm in the minority when I criticize this but I know more than a few artists in the comic industry who are tired of these painter want-to-bes who have so little respect for the lines on the paper. They use those lines the way kids use the lines in coloring books. They add whatever they want with little, and often no consideration to what the artist is trying to accomplish with the drawn art. Ironically this is one of the better volumes in this series. I've studied art and color as an illustrator and I don't get the concept that all caucasian flesh tones intensify into dark brown hues as they head into the shadowed areas of that form. In the original versions of the comics the colorist did something very bold for that time period. That person colored flesh in shadow with a blue ink tint over the flesh tone. It was absolutely innovative and effective. This was a formal flesh color method being used in a comic book! Too bad the new folks are still in the coloring book mindset.

The reprints here have put 2005 production values onto 1970 comics--resulting in clear lines and vibrant (perhaps too much) color. If you never read these back in the 1970s, you're in for a treat--you'll see the development of Barry Smith as an artist--comparable only to Jim Steranko on S.H.I.E.L.D. or Frank Miller on Daredevil. My only real criticism is that they didn't reprint the great Smith covers. If they don't want to promote Marvel, they could've covered the logo. The covers alone were worth the 15 cents we originally paid.

Have you ever had to stop reading a decent comic because the art was so terrible? This is one of those, only it's not the drawings that ruins it but the colors. Usually I can bite my lip and bear recent re-colorings, but this one is so bad it makes the book unreadable. These early Conan stories, while not the best, are among the most famous of all time and the foundation for the whole Conan comic empire; Thomas' writing is as always above par and we get intriguing drawings by a gestating Barry Windsor-Smith. However, this book has re-colored it so poorly it's literally unbearable; they have reduced what is considered very good art to something you don't even want to look at. The original drawings were specifically designed to be reproduced with flat, simple colors and to be printed on standard paper. Changing those things by printing it on glossy paper and, especially, coloring it in a very modern faux-3D way truly just ruins it. This is just another cheap, thoughtless cash-in on a popular classic- they had to spiff it up and make it look shiny and new for kids to buy it. In the early '90s Marvel reprinted the first 11 issues of Conan with much better results in a series called "Conan Classic"; they are very cheap and easy to come by. Another way to get these stories is the first six issues of the magazine-sized "Conan Saga", each one presenting two or three stories plus extras in enlarged black and white. Not surprisingly, the art looks way better in black and white- maybe even better than the old-fashioned colors. Plus it's bigger too (like the original art, which is normally scaled down quite a bit for publication). Either way, skip this book. It stinks.