Titan and Heroic, who are co-publishing the Conan comics (see “Titan Comics to Co-Publish Conan”) also announced that the first issue of the ongoing monthly comic, Conan the Barbarian #1, has confirmed sales of 80,000, making it the top-selling comic in Titan’s history. The publisher will go back to press for a second and possibly a third printing for the comic, which is set to be released on August 2, and they expect total sales to exceed 100,000. The comic is written by Jim Zub with art by Roberto De La Torre.
The original Savage Sword of Conan was published by Curtis Magazines, a Marvel imprint, and later by Marvel itself, and ran from 1974 to 1995. The magazine format exempted the series from the restrictions of the Comics Code Authority, so it became a darker, more mature version of the Conan story. Roy Thomas, who wrote Conan the Barbarian for Marvel, wrote the first 10 issues of Savage Sword of Conan (see “Roy Thomas on the History of Conan”); other contributors to the original run included Neal Adams, Barry Windsor-Smith, John Buscema, Ernie Chan, and Walter Simonson. Titan is collecting the original Savage Sword of Conan magazines in omnibus format (see “Titan Publishing New Editions of Conan Omnibi”).
