Comic Books

‘Conan The Barbarian Epic Collection: The Original Marvel Years – Of Once And Future Kings’ overview

On the incredible importance of Marvel Epic Collections.

March 30, 2022

If you, like me, have been reading through all the reprintings of Conan the Barbarian as they’re released in Epic Collection format, several things may have become apparent to you. The first is that things in Conan were getting out of control back in 1976, and the second is that you’ve lost a small fraction of your will to live after speed-reading 71 issues of a comic about an Angry Naked Man to keep up with reviews as the books come out.

The latter might be easily avoided for those of you who aren’t reading these books to critically weigh their merits nearly fifty years after their initial publication. Take it easy. Read one or two issues at a time, at your leisure. They’re not going anywhere, and regardless of what the cliffhangers at the end of each issue imply, your boy Conan isn’t in any mortal danger. He’ll be there when you pick the book up again.

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You see, the thing is that no matter how legendary a creative team, no matter how groundbreaking a story or persistent a character, it’s probable that at least a portion of these classic stories being reprinted has lost some of their power in the intervening years. Don’t get me wrong; Roy Thomas and John Buscema are at peak craftsmanship in this volume, as are occasional contributors like Jim Starlin. It’s just that I never meant to fall into the rabbit hole of collecting Conan.

Conan The Barbarian Epic Collection: The Original Marvel Years - Of Once And Future Kings — This was never meant to be.

That being said, this isn’t so much a review of Conan Epic Collection: Of Once and Future Kings, a book that contains, among other things, the inclusion of my beloved Power Records, a little Red Sonja, and a pile of F.O.O.M. supplementary material. It’s not exactly a review of that book because while reading it I began to think about the Epic Collection itself.

Launched nearly a decade ago, the series will hit 285 volumes by the end of the year. It’s a big year, with fifty volumes slated to drop by December. . . announced so far. With anywhere between twelve and twenty issues each, that’s a staggering 3,400 collected issues at a conservative estimate.

Discounting Marvel Unlimited, the Epic Collection is the most important archivist product Marvel Comics is releasing. Billed as “featuring the best characters and stories from Marvel’s vast history” that “are not published in chronological order” so as to allow readers to jump in at their leisure, the Collection doesn’t aim to be a complete archive, it aims to deliver interesting stories. Certainly Amazing Spider-Man and Avengers and Captain America—characters with titles from the dawn of Marvel’s history—aren’t presented completely. Releases jump around frequently, and with little evidence of pattern. But some titles have been given chronological treatment. These Conan the Barbarian books, a property Marvel lost and is now reclaiming, for example.

Major MCU player Carol Danvers had her entire short, initial run collected in two volumes of Ms Marvel. Moon Knight, which has been getting a ton of reprint coverage to support this week’s Disney+ debut, has doggedly been presented from the beginning, as is relatively short-lived Generation X. Though printed out of order, all but twelve of the one hundred issues of New Mutants will be in Epic Collection format as of June 8^th. For a series whose last attempt at complete collection stalled out a little after the halfway point, that’s a huge boon to readers hungry to collect a series now old enough to suffer a mid-life crisis.

There’s a myriad of reasons why this is important, not the least of which keeping these stories alive and in the hands of readers. The Epic Collection doesn’t only print the Greatest Hits stories—your Demon Bear Sagas and X-Tinction Agendas, to keep the New Mutants context. It prints the B-Sides and Rarities right alongside them. Modern readers wouldn’t necessarily go back to visit Gosamyr and her idiotic love powers if they weren’t presented the opportunity.

Large in my mind is the price point. At $30 to $45 a pop, a series spread out over several volumes is a much easier feat for readers than the all-at-once, unwieldy $125 price point of Marvel’s Omnibus releases, some of which (like New Mutants) are also spread out over several releases. Sure, in the long run, New Mutants will end at a similar total price, but the leisure to spend a fraction for a self-contained story arc is a relief for paycheck-to-paycheck collectors.

Consider, if you will, Dazzler, which ran for 42 issues between 1981 and 1986. If you’re someone who collects vintage floppies, it can be found at around 3 bucks an issue from your local comic book shop (or upwards of six with shipping on eBay), the whole series could set you back around $120 to $250 bucks if you’re lucky and every issue can be found. There is no omnibus option, and while the series has been getting Marvel Masterwork attention, each volume there starts at $75 MSRP, and upwards of $100 on the aftermarket.

42 issues (plus the likely inclusion of Dazzler: The Movie and, maybe, Beauty and the Beast) could easily fit in two to three Epic Collections, landing you at around that first $120 price point. For people who aren’t back-issue hunters, those potential Epic Collections mark the cheapest and easiest entry point to the series (including, as of present, Marvel Unlimited).

Why am I speculating about Dazzler, a series that no one seems to be clamoring for about a character with no MCU presence to promote (aside from my deep and utter love for the character)?

Because Marvel isn’t averse to releasing oddball Epic Collections. Last year, they dropped Killraven, a character so niche as to be forgotten. And this is important.

Essentially, by soliciting Killraven for pre-order, Marvel Comics was asking, “Hey, do you guys want this?” And the people who did, indeed, want it got to have it. As I noted in a recent Avengers Epic review, every comic book character is likely someone’s favorite character. If Killraven happened to be yours, right now is your brief and joyous period to rediscover that love.

More importantly, it gives new readers the singular option to experience the character. More than the chronological, completionism model—a model that the series masthead implicitly refuses—the recollection and reprinting of forgotten or hard-to-find stories is invaluable, particularly for people who didn’t know Killraven before but for whom Killraven might become that fabled favorite character.

For people who never had a chance to experience the Marvel era of Conan the Barbarian—an era and a product that may very well have single-handedly kept the character in the public consciousness rather than languishing in out-of-print pulp paperbacks—the five volumes of the Epic Collection out so far (with one more presently announced) might be hugely valuable. Certainly, they’ve given me a huge appreciation for Roy Thomas, who nurtured the project and single-handedly wrote most of the series (and one of the feature films).

Where product lines like the Classic books have faltered and ended long before their conclusions, where not every story gets its due in quality print collections, and where not everyone has the ability or inclination to be a collector of either ten-pound tomes or long box after long box of hard-to-find and hard-won singles, the Epic Collection is a light in the dark. It presents a powerful opportunity for revitalization for characters, and it gets stories into new readers’ hands. Even stories and volumes I didn’t particularly like feel precious to me, welcome if not beloved additions to my bookshelf, and I’d be more than happy to invite as many of the oddballs in as possible, whether they be Angry Naked Man or Angry Naked Space Man.

The Epic Collection is important because these stories are important, as are their characters. My hope is that they continue to churn out–and make present–these little chunks of history. Especially if they give me my damn Dazzler.