Why did Marvel act like Conan was a Marvel property in the 1970s?

Key points

  • The modern history of American comics began with licensed characters published in pamphlets.
  • Marvel successfully licensed Conan from the estate of Robert E. Howard due to the potential benefits of market exposure.
  • Conan was treated as a Marvel property due to the early favorable terms of the licensing agreement



Welcome to the 941st installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, a series in which we examine three comic book myths, rumors, and legends and prove or disprove them. In the second legend of this installment, we examine why Marvel seemed to treat Conan the Barbarian as if he were a Marvel property during the 1970s.

One interesting thing about licensed characters in comics is that the history of modern American comics is BASED on licensed characters. As I noted in an old Comic Book Legends Revealed, what we now think of as modern comics owes a lot to Eastern Color Printing, who found a clever way to expand their business by printing so-called “Sunday Funnies,” the full-color comic book supplements that ran in most major newspapers (a tradition that continues to this day). They came up with the idea of ​​licensing the comic strips and compiling them into a booklet that could be used as a promotional tool. It was dubbed Fun on parade


The cover of Funnies on Parade

An Eastern Color salesman, Max Gaines, had the idea that maybe they could make these promotional magazines even bigger and have them appear in Woolworth's. The first of these was called Famous Comics: Comics Carnival

The cover of the first Famous Funnies

Now that a clear market had been established for these comics, Eastern Color decided to strike a deal with Dell Publishing to co-publish an ongoing series Famous funny comics 1934 comic strip that would charge 10 cents. These were still licensed comic strips, but they were essentially the first modern comic strip…


The cover of the first ongoing comic of Famous Funnies

The comic wasn't exactly doing great, but it was slowly but surely becoming more popular, and other companies got involved, with competition for material to license becoming so fierce that companies started printing only ORIGINAL comics, which, of course, changed the game a bit, but was seen as reckless at the time. Why would anyone pay to read new, unproven characters when they could just read characters from popular comics? Of course, a little Superman superhero name-dropping changed the deal.


However, licensed comics have continued ever since, and one of Marvel's most popular licensed characters was Conan the Barbarian, who became a hit comic book in the 1970s. However, reader Patrick Duke noted that it sure seemed like Marvel was featuring Conan on a lot of Marvel merchandise in the 1970s, right? He was on Marvel calendars, he was on Marvel Slurpee cups at 7-11, and he was in the Marvel Topps sticker collection…

And if you look at Conan's sticker, it even says that the brand is MARVEL'S!

The brand on a 1975 Conan sticker

So…what happens in this case?



How did Marvel get the license for Conan?

The cover of Conan the Barbarian #1

As I wrote on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Conan the Barbarian #1 at Marvel, Roy Thomas recounted how the Conan license was acquired by Marvel:


Marvel readers kept writing us letters saying that we should license some of these things that were coming out in the bookstores, as well as doing superheroes. One thing they suggested a lot was a sword and sorcery title, and Robert E. Howard and Conan were mentioned in particular. I knew them pretty well and Stan didn’t really know. He asked me if that was a good idea and we discussed the whole concept of what sword and sorcery was. Stan really had no idea. He asked me to write the publisher Martin Goodman a memo, a couple of pages or so, saying why we should license a sword and sorcery character. So I did.

I must have been pretty convincing because Martin Goodman said it sounded like a good idea. I know I told him in the memo that after all, we have a powerful, muscular hero, we have a lot of beautiful women, maybe dressed for a warm climate, we have a lot of sorcerers who were almost like super villains, plus a lot of monsters. It sounded pretty good. I didn’t stress that it would also look like it was set in an ancient or medieval world, so he gave me the OK to go after the rights to a sword and sorcery character, even though Conan wasn’t what I actually wanted. I didn’t think it would fit into our small budget, the small amount of money I was allowed to offer.


Although the original deal didn't quite work out, I ended up contacting Glenn Lord as a literary agent for the Robert E. Howard Estate. His name was mentioned in the introduction to one of the Conan volumes that came out, around the time I was frustrated with the other deal. So I contacted him and said, “We don't have a lot of money to offer, but this might open up the market for Conan a little bit by introducing him to a lot of readers who wouldn't normally read paperbacks, and that made sense to Glenn, so we started a kind of partnership that was good for Conan, good for me, and good for Marvel.

Ok, so it's clear that Marvel licensed the character, so how do you explain the OTHER things?


Why has Marvel managed to treat Conan almost as if he were their property?

A Conan Slurpee cup on a white background

I asked Roy Thomas about this, and he pointed out that Conan Properties didn't even EXIST when the original deal was signed, so it wasn't like there was this strong presence to negotiate the rights with Marvel, and as a result, while Thomas doesn't know the EXACT details of the 50+ year licensing deal, he does know that it included merchandising rights for Marvel. When Conan Properties was formed, the deal was renegotiated, which is why you stopped seeing Conan appearing on all that Marvel merchandise by the late '70s.

Many thanks to Roy Thomas for the info! And thanks to Patrick for the original question!


A Comic Book Legend About Marvel and Conan Licensing Rights

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