Savage Tales

Savage Tales is the title of three American comics series. Two were black-and-white comics-magazine anthologies published by Marvel Comics, and the other a color comic book anthology published by Dynamite Entertainment.

Savage Tales
Savage Tales #1 (May 1971), cover art by John Buscema.
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Schedule	Bi-monthly
Format	Ongoing series
Publication date	May 1971 – July 1975
No. of issues	11 and one annual
Main character(s)	List Conan Ka-Zar
Creative team
Written by	List Roy Thomas Gerry Conway Doug Moench
Penciller(s)	List Barry Smith John Romita Sr Gray Morrow Bernie Wrightson Gil Kane Neal Adams Jim Starlin John Buscema Steve Gan
Inker(s)	List Pablo Marcos Al Milgrom Tony DeZuniga

Publication history

Marvel

The first of the two volumes of Savage Tales ran 11 issues, with a nearly 21⁄2-year hiatus after the premiere issue (May 1971, then Oct. 1973 - July 1975).^[1] It marked Marvel's second attempt at entering the comics-magazine field dominated by Warren Publishing (Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella), following the two-issue superhero entry The Spectacular Spider-Man in 1968. Starring in the first issue were:

• Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery pulp-fiction character Conan the Barbarian, adapted by writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith (as Barry Smith)
• the futuristic, Amazon-like Femizons, by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist John Romita
• the first-ever appearance of the swamp creature Man-Thing, plotted by Lee and Thomas, scripted by Gerry Conway and drawn by Gray Morrow
• the African inner-city defender Joshua, in the feature "Black Brother" by Dennis O'Neil (under the pseudonym Sergius O'Shaughnessy) and penciler Gene Colan
• the jungle lord Ka-Zar, by Lee and artist John Buscema.^[2]

Thomas, who would shortly thereafter become Marvel editor-in-chief, recalled in 2008 that:

...there were several things that led to Savage Tales being cancelled after that first issue. [Publisher] Martin Goodman had never really wanted to do a non-[Comics] Code comic [i.e., not bearing the Comics Code Authority's parental seal of approval, essentially required on mainstream color comics of the time], probably because he didn't want any trouble with the [Code administrator, the Comics Magazine Association of America] over it. Nor did he really want to get into magazine-format comics; and [Marvel editor-in-chief] Stan [Lee] really did. So Goodman looked for an excuse to cancel it.^[3]

When the magazine eventually began publishing again years later (after Goodman had left the company) in the wake of a Conan-inspired sword-and-sorcery trend in comics, it starred the likes of Conan; fellow Robert E. Howard hero Kull of Atlantis; and John Jakes' barbarian creation, Brak. As of issue #6, the magazine cover-featured Ka-Zar.

The series featured painted covers by comics artists including John Buscema (#1-2), Pablo Marcos & John Romita (#3), Neal Adams (#4-6), Boris Vallejo (#7, #10), and Michael Kaluta (#9). A 1975 annual, consisting entirely of reprints, mostly from Ka-Zar's color-comics series, sported a new cover by Ken Barr.

Volume 2 ran eight issues (Oct 1985 - Dec. 1986), edited by Larry Hama. It featured adventure and action stories with a military fiction slant. Stories in the first and fourth issues, a feature called "5th to the 1st" by writer Doug Murray and artist Michael Golden, were the forerunners of the duo's color-comics series The 'Nam.^[4] A third installment of "5th to the 1st", initially unused due to the cancellation of Savage Tales, was published in The 'Nam #8.^[5]

Dynamite Entertainment

In 2007, American publisher Dynamite Entertainment started a new Savage Tales, a color comic book sword and sorcery anthology starring the character Red Sonja.^[6]