From February 1985: Grace Jones graces the eye-catching cover of MARVEL UK's THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN THE BARBARIAN magazine issue 88. The still is, of course, from the sequel flick CONAN THE DESTROYER.
This is from the UK title's final year in print (although the Barbarian would make two further comebacks over the next decade), issue 93 was the last, and it's safe to say that it was probably the feature films that were keeping the venture afloat at this point.
The MWOM masthead continues to adorn the cover as one of the most incongruous mergers in the history of the Annex of Ideas officially continued. In reality this was the reprints of the X-Men limited series MAGIK and a few feature pages. The reprint, launched in MWOM's lacklustre finale, was presumably chosen because its fantasy fare was a reasonable post-merger fit but it still seems unlikely that Conan's self-contained audience would have been overwhelmed by the sudden invasion of the superhero universe. Did the merger prolong Savage Sword for a few more months... or did it hasten its demise?
I think the writing was already on the wall for this title as the sword and sorcery cycle was running out of steam by the mid-80's.
ReplyDeleteA few items of news :
The new edition of BACK ISSUE is out next week and it includes an article on COMICS SCENE , an 80's mag published by Starlog.
a preview can be seen here :
http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1223
Also, you may have noticed that FANGORIA hasn't appeared for some time on the shelves but worry not. The new issues are due out soon, as you can see here :
ReplyDeletehttp://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/topic/62966/Re-Has-FANGORIAs-print-edition-officially-been-cancelled?page=-1#.Vv5lKE3u2Uk