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.
Publication history
Marvel
The first of the two volumes of Savage Tales ran 11 issues, with a nearly 2-year hiatus after the premiere issue. It marked Marvel's second attempt at entering the comics-magazine field dominated by Warren Publishing, 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
- 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 and penciler Gene Colan
- the jungle lord Ka-Zar, by Lee and artist John Buscema.
When the magazine eventually began publishing again years later 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 artists John Buscema, Pablo Marcos & John Romita, Neal Adams, Boris Vallejo, Stephen Fabian, Michael Kaluta, and Michael Whelan. 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, 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. A third installment of "5th to the 1st", initially unused due to the cancellation of Savage Tales, was published in The 'Nam #8.