Marvel UK's Savage Sword of Conan, Take 2.

What a strange time 1977 was. It was a time in which Marvel UK appeared to be approaching death at full speed, with its roster reduced to just two comics, thanks to poor sales and plunging profits.

But then, just as it hit its lowest ebb, it bounced back like a super-charged yo-yo, launching The Complete Fantastic Four and Rampage within a month of each other.

And then, the month after that second title was introduced, it did it again. This time launching not a weekly title but its first ever monthly mag.

That mag was Savage Sword of Conan which was a familiar title indeed to the handful of people who'd bought the weekly comic of that name two years earlier, before its cancellation after just eighteen issues.

But Conan's not a man to go down without a fight and, despite that failure, Marvel UK refused to give up on the hyperactive Hyborian.

And so it was that November 1977 saw the start of his second bid for British stardom.

On the face of it, it was a strange move, as the new book was virtually indistinguishable from its US forebear which, judging by the number of issues I had of it, was readily available in Britain. Still, it must have been a good idea because, unlike every other Marvel UK book that had been launched since 1975, it was actually a success, lasting for a walloping ninety three issues and eight years.

Not only that but it signalled the start of a new direction for the company and led to them creating a whole bunch of monthly titles to supplement their weekly staples.

The first issue of the original US magazine - and the first Conan comic I ever owned - was issue #4 which reprinted John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala's take on Robert E Howard's Shadows in the Moonlight. So, how strangely ironic it was that the UK mag featured that very tale in its first issue. Why it was in issue #1 and not #4, I have no idea. Perhaps the good people at Marvel UK just liked the cover?

As for me, I can't say too much about the UK mag, as I only ever had one issue of it, which was issue #20 from 1979.

By that point, its similarity to the US book had been reduced by it adopting a cover layout that noticeably resembled Dez Skinn's Starburst magazine, a change which I assume Skinn himself was responsible for.

As for the insides, I remember the Conan tale featuring art by Pablo Marcos, which was a bit of a disappointment to me after being used to the likes of Buscema and Alcala.

The Red Sonja tale in that issue was drawn by Dick Giordano, which might be the only work I ever saw him produce for Marvel. I vaguely recall the Sonj working her way through a crypt or some such and having to see off various threats along the way, including something that resembled Pan.

Sadly, I've no memory at all of the Solomon Kane story. In fact, my knowledge of Solomon Kane comes entirely from that James Purefoy movie of a few years ago. The one that I remember so well that I thought it starred Hugh Jackman, up until I Googled it five seconds ago.

Anyway, there you have it. From a sea of failure, Marvel UK suddenly found a success and a whole new direction for the company, proving that barbarism can have its upside.

This is why, to this day, I insist on wearing nothing but a loin cloth, smiting my foes and drinking nothing but mead.

No wonder I lost my job at the bank.

My Top Ten Savage Sword of Conan covers.

Not that I'm a violent man but there are times in this life when all I want to do is pick up my broadsword and hack a monster to death.

The only problem is I can't because I've already killed them all.

Happily, I can at least seek solace in the adventures of Conan, a man who's clearly determined to follow in my footsteps.

And that leads me to fling together another of those Top Tens that always push up the site's visitor numbers. This time, I'm looking at the covers of Marvel/Curtis's Savage Sword of Conan. How impressed by their covers I remember being when I was a mere lad.

As so often with these things, I've not given them any sort of ranking, as doing such a thing tends to hurt my brain, and so they're posted here in a purely random order.

What does strike me is how many of them are from the title's early days. There are some covers I like from later on in the mag's run but I don't like them enough to put them in the Top Ten. Plus, a fair number of them are badly marred by what, to me, seems to be a highly unsympathetic typography that destroys their chances of feeling suitably Howardian no matter how hard the artist tries.

It's issue #1 and I've only just discovered that this cover's by Boris Vallejo. It doesn't look as photographic to me as his usual efforts. It also feels a lot livelier and more comic-booky than I'm used to from him.

Neal Adams shows what he can do when let loose on our favourite swordsman.

And what he can do is give us a bold image with an elegant background.

Mike Kaluta gives us a dynamic scene where the strongly-lit characters contrast starkly with their black background.

That might not sound like a big deal but an awful lot of the covers that I rejected failed to make it because their total lack of colour variation between background and foreground made them fail to grab the attention.

This was the first issue of the mag I ever had and probably my first ever exposure to the work of Boris Vallejo. It had a huge impact on me.

Nowadays, I do feel that, accomplished as he was, his practise of painting from photos means his work does lack the energy and character of Frank Frazetta who he was clearly influenced by. Still, it's all lovely stuff to look at and he was clearly the king of the Savage Sword of Conan cover artists.

It's Vallejo again. I know I said I wasn't going to put the covers into any sort of order but I must confess this is easily my favourite. It has Conan being crucified. It has a giant skull. It has a vulture. How could I not love it?

Alex Nino and Frank Magsino give us a subterranean battle to the death.

Boris Vallejo again.

I'd say this is the least impressive of the Vallejo covers, with it all looking too much like models posing but it would definitely have made me want to buy it when I was a kid, so it makes the list.

Vallejo again.

My main memory of this issue is me throwing up halfway through reading it.

Fortunately, it was because I had a bug, not because I didn't approve of its cover.

Bob Larkin. I don't like the painting style on this cover as much as on the others I've chosen - because it all looks far too clean and modern for my liking - but what matters is the sheer strikingness of its imagery, with our hero about to be swallowed by a well-known movie star.

Savage Sword of Conan #4: Iron Shadows in the Moon.

Tarim's blood, has there ever been a more lusciously illustrated picture-story than The Savage Sword of Conan #4's adaptation of Robert E Howard's Iron Shadows in the Moon?

I was always going to like this story because it arrived in my life on a Sunday and, as I've remarked elsewhere, I'm psychologically incapable of disliking any comic that does so.

I also remember reading it while listening to Pilot's January on the Radio 1 Top 20 show. At the age of eleven, a combination of Pilot and Conan was always going to be a heady brew.

But there's more to the thing's appeal than the coincidence of timing. Savage Sword of Conan #4 was the first comic I ever had that possessed an oil-painted cover, and that alone was enough to knock my socks off. But to then see the interior was to seal the deal as Alfredo Alcala laid down an extraordinary set of inks over John Buscema's pencils.

Finding the obligatory slave girl - Olivia - while roaming the marshes, Conan slays her pursuer and, together, he and she flee to an island in the middle of the Vilayet Sea. There they soon realise they're not alone, as an unseen assailant flings a huge block of stone at them.

They then stumble upon a temple filled with sinister iron statues that, according to a nightmare that afflicts Olivia, come to life when moonlight hits them.

As though that weren't enough, they're then joined by a bunch of pirates who capture Conan after he kills their leader in his attempt to become their new captain. Still, not to fear, Conan and Olivia escape the pirates (who find themselves attacked by the statues) but only to run into a giant man-ape.

According to an interview I once read, John Buscema was not a fan of Alfredo Alcala's inking. At first glance that seems perverse, bearing in mind how much it brings to his work but it seems Big John wasn't happy that Alcala was at heart obliterating all trace of his style, and it's at this part of the story that you can most see Buscema's beef hung up in the shop window. I've seen a fair few giant man-apes that were drawn by John Buscema, and the man-ape in this tale bears no resemblance to any of them. You do get the feeling Alcala may have simply ignored Buscema's pencils and drawn his own man-ape over them. You can see why this might annoy an artist.

Fortunately, we the readers don't have to worry about such things. Having put no effort at all into the production of the tale, we can take it purely as we find it, and the truth is that, whatever Buscema's reservations, the combination of his story-telling prowess with Alcala's evocative inks produces a masterclass in how to bring Robert E Howard to life.

For me, Iron Shadows in the Moon has, along with Red Nails, always been Howard's finest Conan outing and it's as it should be that both Buscema and scripter Roy Thomas stick so closely to the original. There's none of that Hollywood, "This'd be so much better if we changed this, that and the other," about it. They have the sense to give us the tale as Howard intended it.

This faithfulness to both the words and spirit of Howard produces a tale that manages to achieve a sense of eeriness and vaguely surreal dread that the strip didn't always achieve when it came to newly-written stories. Highlight of it has to be Olivia's nightmare in the temple when the events of thousands of years earlier are revealed to her. In it we really do get a sense of dark times before man walked the Earth, and our world was a thing unrecognisable, plaything to incomprehensible forces from other realms.

But wouldn't that be... ...illegal?