Those were the days

I was perusing the Conan issues from MARVEL TREASURY EDITION when I came across this ad in the interior backcover for MTE #19 (1978). And it took me back a few wonderful years. Although I only started reading Marvel comic books in the early 80s through the Brasilian translations from Editora Abril (before that I'd read the DC Comics that were published by EBAL, also a Brasilian publisher), these were the exact three titles I was reading when I first discovered Sword & Sorcery, Conan and Sonja. At the time, Abril’s superhero comic books  were made up of collections of several stories that in American comics had been published in single issues. They were a little over the traditional digest size (being 19x13cm) and ran for 82 pages. They had titles like Superaventuras Marvel or Heróis da TV. Conan and Sonja were usually featured in the pages of the former, alongside Daredevil, Doctor Strange, the X-Men or Kull. As they didn’t print the entire series run for each character, but only selected stories, a typical issue would be extremely varied; take for instance issue #5 from Supervanturas Marvel (one of my favourites, cover dated November 1982, which means I would have read it about six months later – that was the time it took before they could be sold across the Atlantic): you would have the two stories from CONAN THE BARBARIAN #8 and #10 (1971), the Doctor Strange story from MARVEL PREMIERE #8 (1972), and the Daredevil story from DAREDEVIL #166 (1980).  The Portuguese language editions were coming out with over two years delay relative to the original American publication and sometimes, as was the case with SAM#5, with over ten years delay, which meant they had all this wonderful backlog of issues to choose from, something from which they took full advantage. Athough I guess some great stories went unpublished, I don’t recall many duds that were. Then, in 1984, Abril started publishing A Espada Selvagem de Conan (THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN) in all its glorious black-and-white grandeur (although with some extra inking to hide some undully exposed breasts, if I recall faithfully). Be as it may, those were the three titles I was reading at the time I was fourteen, in a hapilly serendipitous way in the mid-eighties. And so it was a nostalgic rush I got from this advert with the unmistakable art of John Buscema. Those were the days, all right.

Whoring Sonja

Just the other day I was browsing one of my favourite comics blogs, Pete Doree's The Bronze Age of Blogs, when I came across this Brian Bolland 1978 advert for Derek and Diane Stokes's  Dark They Were, And Golden Eyed, published in STARBURST #1.

DTWAGE was an iconic science fiction and comic book shop in London, which counted among its most distinguished costumers Nick Laundau, Alan Moore and a host of other soon-to-be famous writers and artists before it closed its doors in 1981. Not having ever been to London prior to that time, but having always been a fan of horror, science fiction, comics and, yes, even Fortean literature (and its sixties derivates from Erich Von Daniken and Robert Charroux, to Jacques Vallée and J.J. Benítez), the famous and sadly missed bookstore was an ever present reference in my imaginarium.

In 1978 Red Sonja was at the peak of her popularity thanks to Frank Thorne's run on her book at Marvel, and she clearly dominates the advert in question, relegating even Batman, Mr. Spock and Robbie the Robot into the background. As I had never seen this advert before, it was something of a surprise to see the high esteem in which such a revered artist as Brian Bolland held our lovely Sonja, or, at least, the popularity she seemed to have on the other side of the Atlantic pond. And that she's here associated with one of the most important and beloved fantasy bookstores in the world, advertising it (without the copyright holders's knowledge, I'm sure) just made me ponder how Dynamite has been legally whoring Sonja in a way that not even an unauthorized advert could.