Marvel recently announced that it has regained the license to publish comic books starring Robert E. Howard's classic character, Conan (beginning in January 2019), after Dark Horse maintained the rights to the character since 2004, while Marvel had the rights to the character from 1970-2000, but they last published a Conan ongoing series (Conan the Savage) in 1996.

Why, then, is it so significant that Marvel is regaining the rights to a character it hasn't published since 1996? Well, for over a decade, Conan was one of Marvel's most popular characters. Read on and we'll fill you in on how Conan came to become a comic book phenomenon in the 1970s.

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Creator Robert E. Howard initially published his Conan stories in the pages of the pulp magazine, Weird Tales, throughout the 1930s (when Howard passed away in 1936, he had a number of unpublished Conan stories as well as some unfinished Conan stories). After Howard died, other writers still told new Conan stories. It was not until the 1950s, though, that Conan's adventures were put into actual book form, as Gnome Press began a series of hardcover collections of Howard Conan stories from 1950-1957. Gnome Press did the novel approach of putting the stories in order of Conan chronology rather than in the order of publication. Howard, you see, told stories all throughout Conan's life and they were not originally chronological. Even at the time of the original release of the stories in Weird Tales, readers were fascinated in the chronology of Howard's Conan stories, so it made perfect sense for Gnome Press to put the stories in that order.

In 1966, Lancer Books decided to do trade paperback editions of Howard's Conan stories, only they would also supplement the works with new Conan stories. These stories were written by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, who would do some new stories while also finishing Howard's unpublished works and even refining Howard's original stories. These paperback books were very popular, especially due to their stunning Frank Frazetta covers...

As the 1960s ended, Roy Thomas was looking into licensing other characters for new Marvel Comics series, now that Marvel was finally free of their restrictive distribution deal that they had with Independent News (who were owned by DC Comics, who therefore restricted how many titles Marvel could release every month). Thomas was not some big Conan fan at the time, but he knew of the series due to the Frazetta covers and he knew that they were popular. So popular that when Martin Goodman gave Thomas $150 an issue to offer as a license to acquire a character, he thought that there was no way that the Howard Estate would accept such a paltry licensing sum.

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While he wasn't working on the Conan books, Lin Carter also wrote some of his own stories at this time, including Thongor the Barbarian, who starred in 1965's The Wizard of Lemuria, a sort of Conan/Lovecraft mixture series...

Therefore, since he assumed Conan was off the table, Thomas instead went for Thongor the Barbarian, especially since he knew that Stan Lee liked the name a lot. However, Lin Carter wouldn't accept just $150 for the licensing fee. Thomas then began to read the Lancer Conan books and he loved them. He thought that they would make for great comics. He began telling John Buscema about them. Buscema, at the time, was Marvel's biggest artist (in the wake of Jack Kirby's then-recent departure for DC Comics). Buscema, though, always preferred more realistic heroes to superheroes. He was old enough that he grew up on the pulps and adventure strips like Tarzan and not superheroes.

Thomas made an offer to the Howard estate, but he went rogue a bit and upped the offer to $200 an issue. The Howard estate agreed. However, with the increased licensing fee, Marvel was now unwilling to let Buscema draw the book, since his page rate was so high at the time. Instead, a young artist named Barry Smith was given the assignment.

Conan the Barbarian #1 came out in 1970, as a bi-monthly title, written by Thomas and drawn by Smith...

The first issue was excellent. Not only that, but it sold like gangbusters. It was one of the earliest comic books where people started trying to pick them up wherever they found them for investment purposes, because it was such a great book. So the future of the book seemed set. Stress seemed....

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Despite opening up like gangbusters, the sales on the series astonishingly began to dip with each successive issue! Still, the book was doing well enough that it went monthly with Conan the Barbarian #6.

Marvel also used Conan to launch a black-and-white magazine series called Savage Tales in early 1971 (so obviously they thought that the character had legs enough to use him to launch a second series)...

Finally, after the release of Conan the Barbarian #7 (so Thomas and Smith would have been working on Conan the Barbarian #13 at the time), the sales continued to go down with each issue, so Stan Lee decided to cancel the title. It was not just a sales issue, but also that Smith was clearly a rising talent and Lee figured that if they canceled Conan the Barbarian, he could easily move Smith to a superhero title where he would of more use to the company (Smith was improving with every issue and he was clearly becoming more and more of a draw - he even began signing his name on the covers. His signature soon got its own little box on the covers).

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Lee made this decision, though, on a day when Thomas was not in the office (Thomas would split his time between home and the office during the week, as he was writing a bunch of titles on top of his editorial duties, so he would do most of his writing work at home). When Thomas got into the office the next day, he was shocked. He then defended the series and explained that if Lee really wanted to have Smith do another book, then fine, take him off of Conan, but just put someone else on the series.

Lee ultimately agreed to give the book another chance. He didn't even take Smith off of the title. However, he did put it back to a bi-monthly schedule.

Sales began to stabilize and then rise again. It didn't hurt that the book was getting a lot of awards, as shown on the cover of Conan the Barbarian #21.

The book had gone back to monthly status with Conan the Barbarian #20.

Barry Smith, though, left the series with Conan the Barbarian #24, which was the second appearance of Red Sonja.

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With Smith gone, amusingly he was replaced by the man who was considered too expensive to "waste" on Conan, John Buscema...

Buscema's association with Conan would last for the next twenty years. Conan was popular enough that Marvel then launched a black-and-white magazine spinoff series, The Savage Sword of Conan, that lasted over twenty years (when Conan the Barbarian was canceled in 1993 and rebooted as Conan the Adventurer in 1994, Savage Sword kept going until 1995, well after the era of black-and-white comic book magazines had gone out of vogue).

In 1980, Marvel also launched King Conan, telling stories from later in Conan's life (it was later re-named Conan the King, under the presumed logic that it would allow it to be shelved near Conan the Barbarian on comic book racks)...

As noted, languishing sales (even as Marvel kept rebooting the series after Conan the Adventurer. First Conan and finally, Conan the Savage) led to the last Conan ongoing series ending in 1996. Marvel released a few miniseries until they allowed the license to lapse in 2000.

Time will tell whether Marvel will catch lightning in a bottle a second time when Conan returns in 2019!