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Post by bunty0barbarian on Sept 24, 2017 13:08:03 GMT -5
Honestly, I enjoyed despite its barbaric flaws. I was browsing Amazon when i was surprised to find a Conan comic strip collection(never knew about it). Reviews weren't kind, mainly criticizing for the sub-par production values but i thought " What the hey, it has a nice discount nonetheless" so i bought it.
Frankly i enjoyed it much more than the Chronicles of Conan reprints, The stories are shorter but memorable yarns with no dip in quality.Roy Thomas's dialogue fits perfectly with the comic strip format. The artwork was definitely botched due to the half assed effort reprinting it but it still shines, John Buscema and Ernie Chan are simply masters at their game.
One thing i have to say about Marvel's Conan is that they're so damn funny, filled with snarky humor i love it. I don't remember the original yarns having humor though (Black Colossus and Xuthal of the Dusk perhaps).
Overall i liked it but it is still a dick move by Dark Horse. If they gave it an equivalent amount of dedication IDW has with Russ Manning's Tarzan, it would've been awesome.
Also was this collection financially successful for DK? Can't seem to find any sales figures online.
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Post by terryallenuk on Sept 25, 2017 12:54:25 GMT -5
Don't think it was as there _was_going to be a Volume 2 that never materialised
Terry
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Post by mrp on Sept 25, 2017 13:35:24 GMT -5
I got a cheap copy form an Amazon seller a few years back, and my cover is on upside down/backwards compared to the pages within. I open up the front cover to the last page which is upside down. As for the material itself, I remembered seeing it in the papers when we visited friends of the family on vacation but it didn't run in our local papers, so I was aware of it and excited when I heard DH was collecting it. I enjoyed the material, and as long as you accept that the daily installments are mostly just killing time between the Sundays which are the "tentpoles" and where the important stuff happens (and that you can mostly read just the Sundays and not miss much) and get used to that rhythm, it's a fun read. I wish they had been a volume 2, as that material is all but impossible to get anywhere else, but strip collections are tough sells in this market, even for top notch material, so I am not surprised it didn't sell enough to justify a second volume.
-M
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Post by bunty0barbarian on Sept 26, 2017 2:59:13 GMT -5
I got a cheap copy form an Amazon seller a few years back, and my cover is on upside down/backwards compared to the pages within. I open up the front cover to the last page which is upside down. As for the material itself, I remembered seeing it in the papers when we visited friends of the family on vacation but it didn't run in our local papers, so I was aware of it and excited when I heard DH was collecting it. I enjoyed the material, and as long as you accept that the daily installments are mostly just killing time between the Sundays which are the "tentpoles" and where the important stuff happens (and that you can mostly read just the Sundays and not miss much) and get used to that rhythm, it's a fun read. I wish they had been a volume 2, as that material is all but impossible to get anywhere else, but strip collections are tough sells in this market, even for top notch material, so I am not surprised it didn't sell enough to justify a second volume. -M I agree with u mostly, quite enjoyed the collection and i wish there would be a volume 2 with better production values obviously. I personally disagree with your assertion that strip collections are a tough sell. I mean there is a comic strip collection boom out there with numerous reprints of Lee Falk's Phantom, Dick Tracy, aforementioned Tarzan and many more. Of course they are niche products but they sell.
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Post by mrp on Sept 26, 2017 9:23:53 GMT -5
Niche products are by definition a tough sell, there's a limited audience with limited dollars available to spend on that type of product. They have a small market and the more strip collections that are out there, the more competition there is for a limited number of dollars available. If consumers in that niche market choose product x over product y, product y is not going to sell to anyone else. If people skip product y, the next month more volumes will hit, and more the month after that, and it's likely the window for product y to sell will be lost, and that may mean no more future volumes of the property being collected in product y. That's what makes them a tough sell because you never know what will sell or when a bunch of collections will hit the market at the same time squeezing out other options on the market. Depending on the publisher and the margins on the product, profitability can vary, and some companies may need to have higher print runs that sell to make that kind of product viable for them. And many may be watching the initial sales window to determine if future volumes will happen.
-M
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Post by Von K on Sept 26, 2017 19:27:49 GMT -5
The Conan collection could be the 'product x' that sells better than the others...
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Post by mrp on Sept 26, 2017 19:34:41 GMT -5
The Conan collection could be the 'product x' that sells better than the others... It could be, but sales on the first weren't enough to justify a vol. 2 for DH, so it likely wasn't. It was probably product y if they didn't give a green light to vol. 2, and it's been several years since Vol. 1 came out now, so vol. 2 is less likely now than it was a few years back. It means there was no late upswing in sales to make a second volume more attractive. Publishers don't often leave easy money on the table, so if they don't put out something it likely means the margins are too low for it to be profitable for them after costs are covered based on sales projections. First volumes are usually the best sellers in any line as not everyone who tries it will like it and be on baord for volume 2. If Conan 1 didn't sell enough (especially if it didn't sell out its print run and go back to press), vol. 2 won't because it will sell less than Vol. 1 did. -M
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Post by Monster on Sept 27, 2017 17:24:44 GMT -5
And I it is quite unfortunate. DH shot themselves in the foot here. Had there been better production quality, it probably would have sold more! Release a poor product and hope for the best? Why did they waste their time and money?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2017 23:56:10 GMT -5
I remember picking this up at the time. Fortunately, the cover was the right way up and the reproduction quality? Not bad from what I can remember.
The problem I find with the reprints of newspaper strips is that when they're collected in these volumes, it kinda don't feel right. There's no flow to the story arcs and the yarns are kinda fragmented - something that can be difficult to adjust to. Obviously, it worked in the original format with a few panels when published in the newspaper. Beautiful artwork though.
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Post by garbanzo on Dec 2, 2020 7:54:33 GMT -5
Does anyone have a sense of what percentage of all Conan strips were reprinted in Conan Saga? Is it complete or are there gaps/omissions?
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Post by danieljames495 on Dec 2, 2020 11:51:00 GMT -5
Does anyone have a sense of what percentage of all Conan strips were reprinted in Conan Saga? Is it complete or are there gaps/omissions? It's definitely not complete from my experience. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there's any complete archive save for the newspapers themselves.
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Post by danieljames495 on Dec 2, 2020 11:55:18 GMT -5
And I it is quite unfortunate. DH shot themselves in the foot here. Had there been better production quality, it probably would have sold more! Release a poor product and hope for the best? Why did they waste their time and money? They did that for a long while after the Truman/Giorello run honestly. Especially the art in Conan the Avenger (which is a shame because Van Lente's writing was one of my favorites). I personally loved the newspaper strips but I read somewhere that John Buscema left because the panels were too small and he wasn't given as much artistic freedom as he'd liked. The continuity was smooth and honestly, it is the production quality that messed up the success of this. The stories and art were absolutely great.
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Post by Jason Aiken on Dec 2, 2020 14:01:22 GMT -5
Guys, just an FYI and a little background on the one collection that came out from Dark Horse. While the collection does get hit hard for quality in reviews, I learned a few years back on Facebook a lot of these strips were taken from forum member Bill Thom's own collection. Evidently Dark Horse and I'm guessing Conan Properties/Cabinet did not have their own complete archive to pull from... that they were forced to ask private collectors to provide what they had...
I think we were lucky we got anything in regards to Conan newspaper strips being reprinted...
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Post by terryallenuk on Dec 2, 2020 14:27:50 GMT -5
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Post by wolfshead on Dec 2, 2020 17:49:51 GMT -5
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