Excerpted from...
The Hyborian Rage,
by Roy Thomas

... It doesn't seem like two-and-a-half years ...since I helped midwife for Stan Lee the first (and, as it turned out, nearly the last) issue of a black-and-white comic-magazine called Savage Tales

... there were difficulties, not the least of which was distribution of a lone and lonely magazine of its size and type when all our other comic-books were marketed quite differently.



... Ka-Zar and Zabu shortly thereafter ursurped the whole of Astonishing Tales, where they still hold sway over both Naked City and Hidden Jungle today.

... And the macabre Man-Thing, who debuted some months later in a regular feature, became in no time at all the swapbound star of comicdom's surprise success circa 1972.


... This time, I've been privileged to handle Savage Tales pretty well the way I always envisioned it (within the limits of a resonable budget, that is). ...And so, the magazine is designed primarily to showcase the sword-and-sorcery creations of Robet E. Howard (1906-1936).


... The artists of the comics industry came thru for us, too.

... Frank Brunner donated some of his finest drawings for the piece on Robert E. Howard's strange and tragedy-haunted life

... amiable Al Willianson allowed himself to be Indian-wrestled out of a mountain of sketches, scanning twenty years of his productive life, which will appear in this and subsequent issues of Savage Tales

... Jack Caulker of Mirage Press (which has recently published The Conan Grimoire, of whichmore at a later date) granted us permission to reproduce George Barr's beautiful rendering of a photo-potrait of Howard

... Leo Marguiles, publisher of the recently-revived Wierd Tales, was kind enough to allow us to reprint several illoes from the original issues os that revered magazine which first printed the Cona stories, back in the 1930's


... As for the cover:

... When Barry Smith was unable to complete the painting which he had planned for this issue, Marvel stalwart John Buscema applied a few extra brushstrokes to the oil painting he had done in early 1971 for that Savage Tales #2 ...No particular relationship to anything that goes on inside the book, but a thing of beauty.