Ah, comic books heroes. For me they were never superheroes. The typical comic book hero always carried a sword, a dagger or a stone ax, rescued maidens, and battled dinosaurs and fantastic beasts, and often evil sorcerers. Only later, did I realize that my heroes of the comics were holdovers from the pulps, and that the superhero was made for the comics almost from the start. The archetypical, and first barbarian hero, was of course, Conan by Robert E. Howard, and most imitations sold poorly and fell by the wayside, both in and out of comics. Here are some of them.
Brak the Barbarian
Brak the Baarbarian was the creation of John Jakes, a blond Conan-like warrior from the north. He inhabited an alternate world that has been described as being at the same basic period as the early Roman Empire on our own earth. Only on Brak's world, magic and sorcerers abound. Brak was briefly featured in the comics in issues of Savage Tales featuring Ka-Zar. It was drawn by artist Steve Gann, one of the finest of the Old Comic Masters, who also drew at least two of the Ka-Zar stories. In them, Brak contended with an evil sorcerous, and her horde of demonic street urchins called "Darter Boys", with silver claws, fangs, and weird pupil-less eyes. There was also one feature detailing the history and creation of Brak, with a pic by Rudy Nebres of Brak defending a captive girl from a dragon.
Here's a page from a comic that I seem to remember from a reprint in Savage Sword of Conan, (as my memory of it is in Black and White). but was first printed in Chamber of Chills 2, in which Brak saves a maiden from a dinosaur-like dragon. The art is not Gann's. and I couldn't locate an example.
I honestly don't a lot about Kavin, or his creator, only that, like Brak, he was one of the many Conan imitations of the late 60s/70s Barbarian boom. Like Brak he also was apparently yellow-tressed, hailed from the North of his world, and had to contend with evil wizards. My first real exposure to him was when I found a paperback copy of "The Return of Kavin", in the break room of a the children's ward of memorial hospital in Indianapolis, when I was around twelve. In it, Kavin had to contend with some supernatural entity called "Ess" that had been banished to a netherworld, and I remember some poor girls being captive to an evil sorcerer. More recently I bought the above copy of the first Kavin novel at a Burroughs convention, mainly for the Frazetta cover. That is one sizzling babe Kavin's got, with a wealth of posterior! I did not finish reading the book, but I still plan to. I don't believe Kavin was ever adapted in the comics.
Fafnrd and the Gray Mouser
The creation of Fritz Leiber, Fafnrd and the Gray Mouser inhabited the world of Newhon, and certainly did make it into the comics, as you can see by the above, though not in their own ongoing mag. As Conan facsimiles go, Fafnrd and the Mouser are considered to be a cut above the rest, literary wise. Their world of Newhon is a unique one, and there was once a role-laying game based on on it, and contained some cool monsters unique to that realm, such as a giant reptile with arms like swords, and a swamp-dwelling leopard-like cat. I've read a little of Lieber in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords anthology, and just really couldn't get into the Fafnrd stories. On a different note, both characters look very like how one might picture them, Fafnrd in particular. I essentially pictured him as looking like Fafnir, a Vanir friend of Conan's from the comics (not to be confused with Fafnir the Dragon from the Norse saga of Siegfried).
And this brings us to...
Thongor
Thongor was a direct Conan imitation by Lin Carter, who also famously (or infamously) penned several Conan pastiches. At least one of these, "Demon of the Snows" was a re-written Thongor story about a "Snow Worm" called a "remora" by Carter, which may well have gone on to inspire the D&D arctic monster the remorhaz. Thongor was a Barbarian warrior of Earth's prehistoric past. Carter set Thongor's adventures on the Island of Lemuria in the Pacific ocean, adventures set in Atlantis having been done tto death already. On Carter's version of Lemuria, Mesozoic monsters still thrive in the jungled south, as well as other, more fantastic creatures like the deodath, which bore a similarity to another beast native to Carter's version of Callisto. Like the Atlantis of fiction, Lemuria boasts high civiliztions, while the rest of the world is still in the stone age. Thongor hails from the Black Hawk tribe in the far north of the continent, though throughout the series he travels south, battling monsters and sorcerers. He eventually takes a mate, Sumia, becomes Sark (king) of a jungle realm, and has a son, much as with Carter's and DeCamp's tales of King Conan, with many wild adventures on the way. Roy Thomas, Marvels' famous adapter of Conan, had actually optioned Thongor before Howard's hero, according to the sources I've read. The interior art of the first Thongor issues was done by an early Val Mayrick, who draws pterosaurs really well. There was also a Thongor movie in the works by the late 70s, with Harryhausen-like effects for the pterodactyls (they were going to adapt this very story, from Carter's first Thongor novel). But sadly, the project was shelved. Here are some of the proposed stop-motion "graks", which are a bit wyvern-like:
Unlike the ostensibly superior Fafnrd stories, I really loved the Thongor tales, which kept me enthralled both in the comics and actual novels, the same with most of the rest of Carter's fiction. These were a guilty pleasure. I was first (unknowingly) introduced to Thongor when my dad bought me the above comic as a small child. It is from the first novel, where he tangles with pteranodons (graks) on an airship, and a tyrannosaurus (dwark) in the jungle. I wound up cutting out the pictures of the pterodactyls, and the comic itself got lost. Later, I searched for it in comic book stores, thinking it was an early issue of Conan. Turned out it was Thongor, a creation of Lin Carter, whom I was already reading voraciously.
Conan
No need to introduce this guy, the original barbarian hero created by the same man who created the genre.
I've decided to use the iconic image created by Frank Frazetta here. The covers of the original pulps contain REH's Conan stories generally made Conan appear more like Roman legionare with short-cropped hair, or even depicted him as looking rather sissified. It was Frazetta who at last established Conan as the Howard described him, with a mane of black hair, and smoldering blue eyes, and the depiction has endured ever since.
It was Roy Thomas who first adapted Conan for the comics, after first optioning Carter's Thongor. Conan's Marvel run lasted well over 100 issues, both in their color comic, and the companion black and white mag, Savage Sword of Conan. There was also the King Conan comic (later slightly altered to Conan the King), which detailed Conan's adventures as monarch of Aquilonia, which lasted a fairly respectable run, but not nearly as long as other two. King Conan adapted some of DeCamp and Carter's tales, and included Conan's wife Zenobia, and Prince Conn, who was a Carter creation, and hated by some fans. Roy Thoma adapted many of Howard's tales for both Conan the Barbarian and Savage Sword. More unusually, he adapted quite a few of Howard's non-Conan tales into Conan stories. One story arc even adapted Norval Page's novel Sons of the Bear God, the difference being it was now set in the Hyborian kingdom of Shem rather than central Asia, and staring Howard's hero instead of Prestor John (a legendary Christian king).
A number of artists worked on the Conan comics, including Barry Windsor-Smith on the early issues, John Buscema (perhaps the most famous of the Conan artists) Ernie Chan, Gary Kwapiz, Rudy Nebres Pablo Marcus, Alfredo Alcala, to name some of the Greats.
While Thomas penned nearly all of the issues during the seventies, soon other writers took the reins, notably Michael Fleisher, whose wildly imaginative stories introduced Conan to re-occuring antagonists such as Wraal, the Devouver of Souls and Bor 'Ac Sharaq, a Baracan pirate who was obssessed with vengeange on Conan to the point of madness. Other writers included Bruce Jones, around the same time that he was a regular writer for Ka-Zar, and generally wrote twist endings for his Conan tales, the same as for his horror stories. Thomas returned to Savage Sword during the nineties, and penned mostly original tales that took Conan even to Australia, and adapted deCamp's novel Conan and the Spider-God. He also transformed another non-Conan (horror) tale of Howard's, "The Black Hound of Death" into a Conan yarn.
Sometimes in the ninties, though, readers seemed to lose interest in Conan. Marvel tried to alter it, and officially cancelled Savage Sword, only to resurect it as as Conan the Savage. These efforts didn't work, and soon Conan's Marvel run ended. But it wasn't long until Dark Horse picked up Conan, and tried to keep him near to Howard's original vision. And for the most part they were successful; perhaps tastes had swung back, but whatever the reason, Conan enjoyed a successful comeback at Dark Horse. A younger generation of artists now drew him, including Cary Nord, who'd been inspired by the Old Masters at Savage Sword. Another new artist, Tomas Giorello, may even have surpassed some of those Masters, and did the art on the several issue adaptation of Hour of the Dragon , Howard's one full length Conan novel, also known as Conan the Conqueror.
Currently, Conan has been passed back to Marvel, where it is doing fairly well, with good, though not great, stories and art. Marvel is also doing some strange things with Conan these days, like sending him to the modern (Marvel) era, and teaming him with the Avengers. Conan's future seems uncertain at this point.
Kull
Kull is another barbarian hero created by Howard, perhaps the next most famous one to Conan, also adapted by Marvel, and later by Dark Horse. Neither ran for a very long time. He was a predasessor, and perhaps a prototype to Howard's Cimmerian hero. Kull lived earlier, in the Time of Atlantis, which was a actually a land of Barbarians; the higher civilizations existed on the Thurian continent, where Kull deposed a tyrant named Borna and took the crown of Valusia for himself. Kull was an orphan raised by tigers, and who took the tiger as his totem animal, as Conan did the lion (Amra). Though humans dominated Kull's era, there also existed a few survivors of the serpent-men, who possessed the insidious ability to shape-shift into humans, and a winged race of bird-headed men, as introduced in an Alan Zelenetz story, "The Amulet of Ka." Kull might well have been an actual ancestor of Conan, as the blacked-maned Atlantean barbarians were established as ancestral to Cimmerians, as told (I think) in Howard's history of the Hyborian age. Though separated by millenia, Conan and Kull did manage meet on occasion, by means of sorcerous time-portals.
Kull's comic book run is a bit confusing. He first appeared in Marvels' Bizarre Adventures, illustrated by John Bolton, and there was very brief black and white Kull magazine, Kull and the Barbarians. I didn't really pay much attention to the small color Kull issues Marvel produced during the seventies.
In the eighties, they brought Kull back, starting with direct-to -comic -book-store issues at the same time that they marketing Ka-Zar, Mirconauts and Moon Knight in direct sales market. I still do not know why they did this, but it was sort of cool; there were two or three "first issues" of Kull, one being a werewolf tale with a wrap-around cover, and printed on slick paper. It featured the art of little-known Great John Bolton. The other two direct premiere issues also featured wrap-arounds. One featured Bolton art with Kull on the front and his tiger totem on the back, with interior art by another Great, Nestor Redondo. The third premiere issue of Kull sported a Joe Jusko wrap around by Joe Jusko (not a painting) of Kull battling tigers.
This issue was interesting in particular, because it was written by Bruce Jones, who introduced Kull's sister Iraina, also an orphan reared by Thurian tigers, who humiliates Brule the Spearslayer, Kull's Pictish friend, then beheads her own ruler, and goes on to conquer most of the known world with her army of female were-tigers. Of course she is ultimately undone by her brother. After that Alan Zelentz took over the scripting, penning the aforementioned "Amulet of Ka" story, in which Kull sets out to recover the aforementioned amulet to save the life of Tu, his councelor.
After that, the Kull series went mainstream, with no more wrap around covers and zero- ad format Though the scripts maintained the general quality, it didn't last long, because, well, Kull didn't have the staying power that Conan did. Kull went on to appear in a back series in Savage Sword for a time in the late eighties, written by then-Conan writer Chuck Dixon, whose take on Kull often had gruesome twist endings. More recently Kull appeared at Dark Horse, though little as been seen of him since.
Solomon Kane
Solomon Kane was a Puritan hero created by REH. He appeared in a number of short-lived comics and limited series. Kane was intelligent brooding and introspective, and a bit philosophical, even more so than Kull. Kane traveled the world, combating evil. Inevitably, the Kane stories tended toward horror. While this was almost true of Howard's original Conan tales, it was even more true here.
I'm out of time, and I'll write more later on the rest of the heroes.
Okay, time to post more.
Cormac Mac Art
Bran Mac Morn
Bran Mac Morn was Howard's Pictish hero. Howard had an interest and admiration for the Picts, a race/culture from Breton's ancient past. Bran lived at the time of the ancient Roman Empire, and to defend his people against the Romans, he enlists the aide of a race of subterrean beings who had once been men, a staple of REH's fiction, in the horrific "Worms of the Earth."
In the Howardian universe, Picts were also around during Kull's time (in the Pictish Isles) and during the Hyborian age, where they were confined to a stretch of wildland known as the Pictish wilderness. Howard describes them as "a white race, though swarthy," though never spoken as such by the Aquilonian settlers of the region. The Picts are adversarial in the Conan tales like "Beyond the Black River," where Conan fights on the side of Aquilonia, the indigenous Picts basically filling the same role as American Indians to white settlers. Savage Sword writers often penned their own tales set in the Pictish Wilderness, notably Chuck Dixon, who often depicted them as far less noble than Howard did. Though Picts, "like American Indians" according to the letters column once, varied in nature from tribe to tribe, and were occasionally de-picted sometimes as heroes, as in "The White Vulture," Dixon often portrayed Picts as a degenerate culture. Generally, the more savage and ruthless the Pictish tribe was, the more degenerate, with one especially savage tribe literally wallowing in filth.
During the transition between the Hyborian Age and out modern era, Howard establishes that the Picts were defeated by the Celts.
Later on author Karl Edward Wagner, creator of his own Barbarian, Kane, wrote a few Bran Mac Morn pastiches. Bran has seldom been de-Picted in comics, but Dark Horse did do an adaptation of "Kings of the Night." "Worms of the Earth" was adapted long ago in an issue of Savage Sword as a backup feature, then reprinted as a single graphic novel years afterward.
Red Sonja
Red Sonja was a character quasi-created by Howard. His original creation was of a swordwoman named Red Sonya (slightly different spelling), set in historical times in "Shadow of the Vulture." Roy Thomas re-planted her as a Hyrkanian in the Hyborian age, and tweaked her a bit.
Sonja had a relatively short-lived series in the seventies, followed by a limited series during eighties. She also showed accasionally in the Conan comics, as a backup feature, or to cross swords or team up with the Cimmerian. Since thn, however, she's become much more popular, notably in the Dynamite series.
During the eighties, there were a series of Red Sonja paperbacks porduced, sporting covers by Boris.
One Savage Sword issue told the very disturbing backstory of Sonja. She grows up happily with her parents and siblings, when one day an army officer from her retired father's millitary days shows up with his men. Her father seems to realize that the man is dangerous, for he herds his wife and family inside their cabin. He greets him in a friendly manner however, calling the man "old friend," though the man replies that he is now "first in command," indicating a possible rivelry, more than a friendship. After a brief exchange, the man simply utters the words "Kill him." His men kill Sonja's father, and go on to slaughter Sonja's innocent family while the captain bursts into laughter. When the (now teenage) Sonja threatens him with a sword, he spares his men from killing only to rape her himself. Then, on a sadistic whim, he leaves her alive. Years later, after Sonja can best near anyone alive with a sword, she comes upon a band a brigands torturing some poor wretch. After driving them off, she discovers their victim is none other than the captain who murdered her family and raped her! The unknown man has finally recieved his due, though Sonja feels robbed of her personal revenge.
Niord
Niord was Nordic barbarian native to some primordial, possibly pre-Hyborian era. Howard's tale of Niord and the Worm was both stand-alone, and one of his James Allison stories. Allison is a modern disabled man who experiences dreams of earlier incarnations, this one being the tale that supposedly spawned all the legends of monster-slayer heroes down though that ages, including Siegfried, Beowulf, St. George and others. Niord is a warrior of a blond-haired barbarian tribe, who journeys into the jungled southlands. There they come in contact with the Picts, here de-picted as a dark-skinned, brutish people. During a battle, Niord spares the life of the Pictish warrior Gorm, and the two become friends. Later, when Niord's tribe makes the fatal error of camping among the ruins of a cursed ruin, in spite of the warnings of the Picts, Niord finds them slain. He and Gorm seek out Satha, a gigantic serpent with venhom-bearing fangs (another Howardian staple), whom he slays and coats his arrows with the poison (the story also features Nirod's battle with a saber-tooth tiger.
He then used the envenhomed arrows to slay the slayer of his people. This turns out to be a somewhat catapillar-like, Lovercraftian monstrosity, that slithers forth from a well in the ancient city, summoned by the piping a bizarre, vaguely ape-like entity. It is "not a beast, as humanity knows beasts" according to Howard. "Valley of the Worm" was printed in Supernatural Thrillers with art by Gil Kane. It has been reprinted since in Savage Sword, though always as a stand-alone. Thomas, surprisingly never transformed the tale of Niord into a Conan story.
In another James Allison tale, "Garden of Fear"another northern warrior presses southward into verdant lands, only to have his love Gudrrn, a woman whom the most ravishing beauties of today are mere shadows, captured by a bizarre flying man. He saves her or course, by drivng a herd of mammoths to trample the garden of blood-drinking plants that circle the winged man's tower. Howard establishes that winged man is some relic of some earlier time, a theme repeated in "Queen of the Black Coast."
"Garden of Fear" WAS turned into a Conan tale by Thomas, and illustrated by Barry Windsor-Smith.Esau Cairn
This is a strange one. Esau Cairn was the hero of Amalric, Robert E. Howard's one sword and planet novel, his one attempt to imitate Burrough's Mars stories. "Amalric" was also the name of a blond-haired warrior who was a friend of Conan's in "The Scarlet Citadel". Amalric, however, is the title of the both the novel, and short comic series from Dark Horse (I thinkThat makes a bit hard to remember that Amalric is the name of the, planet, where the story takes place, and Esau Cairn is the name of the hero. The hero is disabled, rather like James Allison, and a professor friend of his propels him, via a new invention of his, to the suface of Amalric, where he is reincarnated in a new body. Thus Cairn's advetures begin. Amalric is frought by mostrous animals, including tusked bears, giant felines, and hyena-like beasts, what seems to be a huge serpent, and some sort of carnivorous moose-like monstrosity. Sentient races also inhabit Amalric, including dog-headed manlike things, a race of beast-men, who capture Cairn and take him to their city. During a war between the beast-men and a black-skinned winged race known as yagas, Cairn and his newfound love escape. But the woman is later made prisoner of the Yagas, and Cairn must rescue her. During the climax, a giant tentacled monster appears, and it's been speculated that this final scene of the protagonists' escape, may actually have been penned by Otic Adelbert Kline, a vetern of the sword and planet genre. The publication above depicts Cairn's battle with the yagas.
Amalric was adapted by Marvel comics in their Heavy Metal-like magazine Epic, and later a sequal to Howard's original was published by Dark Horse.
Bront
Bront was barbarian hero that appeared as a backup feature in the pages of 80s Savage Sword of Conan
The stories were written by then-Ka-Zar writer Bruce Jones, who also possibly created the character. "There has NEVER been a barbarian such as Bront!" so the tagline went.
Bront seemed to be an odd fusion of Conan with the Sword and Planet genre, such as Esau Cairn and John Carter. In the far-flung future, after humanity has colonized other solar system, Bront is exhiled to a primitive planet where he battles a feline beast called an Eeowee, befriends an Amazon tribe of beautiful women, and later has conflict with a wizard who puts him through a series of tests, including a battle a lizard like beast.
Blackmark
Blackmark was the creation of writer/artist Gil Kane, also a Conan artist. He was a warrior in a post-apocolyptic future, when earth had reverted to barbarianism and was overrun my monsters and human tribes. It was first printed in Marvel Preview, and later as a trade paperback.
Talos
Talos was another creation of Kane's about a platinunm haired warrior, also set in a postapocolytic future reverted to barbarism, and overrun by mutant monsters. It was intended to be a limited series, but they only got as far as one issue. I have the issue somewhere, and recall the boy's testing by, and friendship of, the great white cat, and a battle with a monstrous purple furred cat-like mutant the size of an elephant, but that's all. He was supposed to be a sort of savior to his people, or the fullfillment of a prophecy. Wait, I did find a link that fills in some of the details on Talos. It was supposed to be a twelve-issue run: http://thoulsparadise.blogspot.com/2012/12/inspiration-wilderness-sea.html
Dagar
Dagar the Invincible was a character very much inspired by Howard's Conan, published by Gold Key during the seventies. He was created by dinophile and s-f writer Donald F. Glut, possibly most famous for his Empire Strikes Back novelization. Glut also created two other Gold Key properties at the time, Tragg and the Sky Gods, and the somehwat Lovecraftian Occult Files of Doctor Spektor. All three were drawn by Jesse F. Swantos, and inhabited the same universe. Dagar's world was very Hyborian-like, inhabited by evil wizards and monsters. One of the sorcerors was a necromancer named Ostellon, who also gust stared in the final regular issue of Tragg where he brings a t-rex skeleton to life. The mammoth and the skeletal warriors in the above issue are likely Ostellon's doing. "Some of the prehistoric beasts hadn't died out yet," Glut tells us in the premier issue, and a few mammoths and sabertooth cats persist. One issue features a duel between a ground sloth and a huge snake.
In one very notable issue, Tragg enters a time portal into the prehistoric past to rescue his love-interest Graylin (though just how she got there, I can't recall). Once there, he saves Tragg's brother Jarn from a pteranodon. Later, Jarn returns the favor when he slays a dimetrodon, and Dagar must confront a huge tyrannosaurus rex before finally saving Graylin and returning to his own time. Glut has commented on this issue that he wasn't actually able to have Dagar and Tragg meet because of some kind of legal problem, but he was able to draw Tragg into one scene. I still have been unable to find it. I do recall though, that in an issue of Doctor Spector, that features a gaint squid-like monster, Tragg and his red-haired mate Lorn definitely do appear in one panel showing the beast in the prehistoric past.
Tragg
Tragg's world apparently takes place in the Plesticene, but in an isolated region, perhaps a lost continent, where diosaurs survived into the age of mammals and even humans. Unfortunately, Swantos left after the first two issues, the rest being drawn by the same artist who did the Lost in Space comic for Gold Key. Though it didn't last long, there was one more Tragg issue presented in Gold Key Spotlight, that featured the giat prehistoic shark known as Charcarodon Megalodon.
Tor
Tor was the caveman hero upon which Glut's Tragg as based. He was created by Joe Kubert in the 1950s. Kubert had always wanted to do something similar to ERB's Tarzan, and he was partly inspired by the oringinal One Million B. C.
The world Tor the Cro-Magnon was inhabited by raging diosaurs, gigantic mammals, cavemen and bestial subhumans. There was no real explanation for this, unlike with Tragg. It was just a generic prehistoric fantasy realm, like the B. C. movies. It had a short run during the fifties, with some issues in regular and 3D version, and inspired future comic authors at the time, such as Ka-Zar's Bruce Jones. Kubert unsuccessfully tried to make Tor into a children's story book, a comic strip, and a Saturday Monring cartoon at one point, along the same line as The Mighty Mightor, also set in a prehistoric age that never was.
Kubert revived Tor in the seventies, starting a new story that was partly the aborted comics series. The rest of the run consisted of old stories that were not technically reprints (though they looked the same except for the coloring), but redrawn and taced from the some of the original stories. This was published by DC.
In the late seventies, a brand knew silent Tor story appeared in the pages of Kubert's own maazine Sojourn, which sadly lasted a mere two issues. The story had him driving a horde of small scavenger theropods from a brontosaur carcass, only to battle with a deinonychus for the remains, a struggle he loses. (Although it appears Tor may be injured or even dead at the end, it is explained in a "making of" feature in another series that a cave girl finds Tor and tends his wounds). The Sojourn Tor story was reprinted in the nineties Tor series as a backup feature, along with another silent strip wherein Tor battles a tylosaurus.
Kubert gave Tor a four issue miniseries in the ninties, this time published by Marvel's Epic division. it was released around the same time as Jurrassic Park, though it featured few dinosaurs (other than in the re-prints), and instead had Tor battling fantastic creatures that never were, including a race of scaley ape-men, semi-humanoid subterrantian reptilians and gigantic worm-like beast. The main story involved Tor revenging himself on some Neanderthal rogues who had killed his father and made slaves of his tribe. He saves a girl from being s sacrifice for the ape-men at the beginning, and she accompanies Tor through the rest of his ordeal. But at the end Tor leavses her with his tribe to go off adventuring beyond the far hills.
There was also a never-finished Tor story, printed in an omibus volume, in which the hero slays a tryannosaurus, and befriends a tribe of Homo Erectus, whose chief happens to have a beautiful Cro-magnon captive. There is a flashback to a time when Tor's own tribe was invaded and father killed, like in the ninties series.
Sadly, though each Tor series hinted at picking up where it left off, Kubert never picked up on Tor's further adventures in that particular storyline.
Instead, each new Tor series was a complete reboot.
The final Tor series was released in 2009. It cast Tor as a non-conformist member of his Cro-magonon tribe, sometime in the Plesticene. He is again outcast, this time discovering a lost world, filled with dimunitive ape-men, sabertooths, dinosaurs, and subterranena monstrosties.
Kubert is rumored to have been working another Tor series at the time of his death.
Mighty Samson
Samson was a Dell/Gold Key hero in a post apocalypic nuclear furture. He lived in the ruins of New York city, now called N'Yark, and infested by primitive human tribes and mutant monsters. He had two friends, a girl and a doctor, whose names I can't recall.
Thundarr
Thudarr the Barbarian was a Saturday-morning cartoon series from the early 80s, created by Ruby-Spears. It appeared to have been inspired party by Might Samson; Thundarr was also a barbarian in a post-aopocolyptic future, ruled by mutant monsters. There were also evil wizards to contend with, as with Howard's Hyborian age, and non-human beings like the reptilian Carocs, the rat-like Groundlings, and the Moks. Thundarr was also a blond barbarian from the north, who rebelled against his inhuman masters. He was accompanied by educated sorceress Arial and Ookla the Mok, as they traveled ruined North America battling evil.
Thundarr may or may not have had a connection with Samson, but Jack Kirby and Alex Toth did some of the production art. There was never an actual Thundarr comic, though.
Killraven
This was a very strange Marvel comics series from the 70s era. I sort of knew about it, but didn't really know what it was until very recently. Marvel ran a series of Classic adaptations during the seventies (Tom Sawyer, Moby Dick, etc..), which were kind of cool and contianed no adds. They did HG Wells' Food of the Gods, and War of the Worlds. Killraven may have been a spin-off from the latter. At any rate, Killraven did not take place at the time of Wells' novel; it was set in an alternate timeline in the furture of what was presumably the Marvel universe.
See what I mean about this being wierd?
The earth had reverted to barbarism, rather like Samson and Thundarr. The world's superheroes had apparently fought the invading Martians, and lost, with the superhoeroes now dead, and the Martians ruling the earth. One earthling broke his chains however, to fight for freedom, and that man was...Killraven!
There's really little else I know about this so far, as I've never read an issue.
Stalker
This is another one I know virtually nothing other than the fact that it was a very short llived series during the time when DC was attempting various Sword and Sorcery comics to compete with Marvel's Conan.
Claw
This was another shrot-lived DC barbarian series.from the same era, with the same intent.It lasted slightly longer than Stalker did. I don't know a lot about it either, but Claw hailed from what was apparently alternate universe where wizards and sorcery reigned, much like Brak or Kaven. He resembled Conan more with his shock of ebon hair and rilling muscles, and some of the issues were drawn by Conan Great Errnie Chan (including the above cover). The hitch was that one of Claw's hands had been replaced by a demon's claw. Claw was briefly featured as a back up in an issue of Warlord, which was likely intended to wrap the series up. Claw and the demon (whose wears Claw's actual hand) do battle. They are at a tie, when the Gods intervene, and judge the pair. The demon is cast into the outer darkness, and Claw finally gets his hand back.
Beowulf
At last, we come to one of my two very favorite series of all time, MIke Grell's Warlord. Unlike the previously mentioned DC series, this one really had staying power, lasting well over one hundred issues. Grell had originally intended to set the series in anceint Atlantis, but wound up going a more Burroughian route. Travis Morgan flies his plane into the northern polar opening, crashing in a lost world at the earth's core with an uncanny resemblence to ERB's Pellucidar. It is inhabited by dinosaurs, and primvel beasts from all eras, but is also home to remnants of Atlantean civilization, who fled their sunken continent and colonized the lost world, known as Skartaris, millinia past. We learn the history of Skartatis as the series unfolds. In the first issue special, Morgan saves beautiful warrior-queen Tara from a voracious deinonychus, only to become captured by the enemies of her people. Morgan runs afoul of the devilish high preist, Deimos, who vows vengeance, becoming the series main villain. We later learn that the Atlantean colonists destroyed themselves in a nuclear holacaust, and the resulting radiation mutated some tribes into beastmen and lizard-folk. The first story-arc has Morgan returning Tara to her homeland of Shambala. Later, Deimos, resurrected by sorcery, kidnapped Morgan and Tara's infant son, Joshua. This is followed by a long quest to recover the child. Deimos used Atlantean technology to make a clone of Joshua.. he then grows the child to adulthood using the same tech, and forces Morgan and the clone to fight. Morgan kills the clone, thinking it is his own son he's killed. The witch Asheya takes the real child to live with a peasant family outside Shamballa.
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