By Crom: It’s Conan…I Mean, Starr the Slayer!
Having finished the first 100 issues of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian, I did a post last week on Roy Thomas’s memoirs and that series. Which OF COURSE you read, here.
I started reading the first Savage Sword of Conan Omnibus from Marvel, but I’m still in a CtB mood. So, I decided to write another post about it. Sort of…
The first issue of Conan the Barbarian actually followed the sandalled feet of Starr the Slayer.
Just for fun, Roy Thomas had written a sword and sorcery story, and he had Barry (not yet ‘Windsor’) Smith draw it. Starr the Slayer was a very Conan-esque barbarian. In the story, he was the creation of Len Carson (named after Conan pastiche writer, Lin Carter), who dreamed his plots. But mentally exhausted from this, Carson wanted to kill off his meal ticket. Starr somehow travels to Carson’s time and kills the writer for attempting to dispose of him. Uh, okay, sure.
Starr appeared in the fourth issue of the Marvel anthology, Chamber of Darkness, hitting newsstands in April of 1970 (CtB debuted in October of the same year). Smith both penciled and inked the entire installment for Starr, from Thomas’ story.
Thomas did not intend for it to be an ongoing character, though it seems entirely conceivable that if Marvel had followed form and developed their own in-house character (giving them all the rights), instead of licensing one, Starr could well have been Marvel’s sword-swinger.
Smith gave Starr a distinctive medallion necklace. He also adorned the barbarian with a horned helm – except, the horns were in the front, rather than the side. This turned out to be important, because Smith and Thomas decided to keep both of those items for Conan. Marvel fans were used to superheroes in costumes. Conan got a bit of a mini-costume in this manner.
At only seven pages, it’s pretty short. Smith had been booted out of the United States green-card violations, and drew Starr while in England. He had also been doing some barbarian drawings for his own amateur magazine called Paradox. This black and white drawing by Smith might be one of them.
So, Smith had experience with drawing barbarians when Thomas approached him about Conan. Boss Goodman had put the kibosh on John Buscema by limiting the amount he would pay the illustrator. Which also knocked out fellow candidate Gil Kane (both of who would later draw much Conan). Thomas had passed on a couple Stan Lee suggestions, and then settled on Smith, who was near the bottom end of the pay scale.
Thus, Marvel rather unintentionally did a trial run at Conan. I talked a bit about how the Conan comic book came about in last week’s post. But I do a deep dive into it in the started but nowhere completed series I have planned here at Black Gate on Thomas’ first ten issues of Conan the Barbarian. I have read the first hundred issues as prep work though. And this essay you’re reading was part of the series.
Marvel could easily have created their own in-house barbarian. And they had offered to pay Lin Carter for the use of his Conan clone, Thongor. But Carter’s agent held out for more money (apparently Martin Goodman NEVER caved on financial matters), and Thomas contacted Glenn Lord, the rights agent for Robert E. H(‘Of Aquilonia’ had come out.oward’s estate.
Lancer was essentially finished printing new Conan books (all but ‘The Buccaneer’ and ‘Of Aquilonia’ had already come out, and there was no popular Conan movie. There was no guarantee that Conan would be a hit. Thanks to those paperbacks with the Frank Frazetta covers, he was more recognizable than Thongor, or John Jakes’ Brak the Barbarian. But Conan was no sure thing as a comic.
Thankfully, Thomas convinced Stan Lee and Martin Goodman, and Conan became not only a Marvel best-seller, but is a popular franchise to this day (Marvel having re-obtained the rights a few years ago, but they are now held by Titan.
Starr did return, though not very memorably.
In 2007, Marvel included a version of Starr in its new version of the newuniversal series. I’ve never seen it, nor am I interested in the concept. You can go look it up for yourself if you want.
In 2009, Marvel’s Max Comics (adult-oriented imprint put out four new Starr the Slayer comics. All four are available digitally.
Prior Conan Comic Posts
By Crom: Marvel, Roy Thomas, and The Barbarian Life
Bob Byrne’s ‘A (Black) Gat in the Hand’ made its Black Gate debut in 2018 and has returned every summer since.
His ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column ran every Monday morning at Black Gate from March, 2014 through March, 2017. And he irregularly posts on Rex Stout’s gargantuan detective in ‘Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone.’ He is a member of the Praed Street Irregulars, founded www.SolarPons.com (the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’).
He organized Black Gate’s award-nominated ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series, as well as the award-winning ‘Hither Came Conan’ series. Which is now part of THE Definitive guide to Conan. He also organized 2023’s ‘Talking Tolkien.’
He has contributed stories to The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories — Parts III, IV, V, VI, XXI, and XXXVII.
He has written introductions for Steeger Books, and appeared in several magazines, including Black Mask, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, The Strand Magazine, and Sherlock Magazine.
You can definitely ‘experience the Bobness’ at Jason Waltz’s ’24? in 42′ podcast.
Just observing that the Lancer paperbacks were far from being out of print when Marvel’s Conan comic (or even its Starr predecessor) debuted. They were, in fact, in full production, and being reprinted as fast as any of them sold out. Lancer’s last new Conan title (Conan the Buccaneer) appeared in 1971, and its reprints continued into at least 1973 before the publisheer went belly up (for non-Conan related reasons). The last of its projected titles (Conan of Aquilonia) was appearing in installment form in Fantastic from 1972-1975, and was ultimately issued by Ace Books in 1977. The comic certainly kept the fires burning between the last new Lancer and the Ace revival of the paperback series, but Conan was definitely a hit when it hit the stands. The only question at the time was whether or not the COMIC would be a hit.
Ah. Thanks. Thomas talked about Lancer going into bankruptcy, in his memoirs. I had the timing wrong. It wasn’t before.
I loved the Starr The Slayer clonan when I read it in “Conan Saga” which reprinted the old stuff but in magazine comic format.
Just FYI you’ll WANT to check out the more recent limited series. Why? Richard Corben (rip) did the ART! NOT just covers, INSIDE art!
It’s not Den (fully painted looked like 3D even before it was feasible) but good comics. It’s like his 70s Underground stuff but with his modern polish so it’s excellent comics with again underground high quality style vs the 3rd world worker tracing over stuff with photoshop the modern comics have. Note Corben did some neat comics for Marvel in his later years, like CAGE – about Luke Cage of Power-Man and Iron fist but solo.
That pencil drawing looks to me to be from quite a bit later in Smith’s career than Starr — like when he had become Barry Windsor-Smith. I’d guess it’s three years or more later. I’m not expert though.-