Swords and Sorcery and a mouth full’a Sass! Continuing the theme of medieval fantasy adventure (after all, I’m celebrating the 40th birthday of the Dungeons & Dragons RPG), we find ourselves in the midst of a tale of Camelot. Jovial John Buscema is well known for his incredible renderings during a historic run on Conan the Barbarian. At the height of his creative apogee, Marvel’s editorial team became aware of his fondness for the Prince Valiant newspaper strip. Further investigation revealed an idea which had been buzzing around John’s mind for a while concerning the legendary wizard, Merlin, and his service to the king of Camelot, Arthur. For a while, he was given full creative control of this project, and Marvel absolutely loved the pages he was turning in. However, as the project wore on, John noted that the story began to get away from him – he wasn’t sure where the finish line was, despite his passion for the artwork. Doug Moench was called in to join the Merlin team and “Quest of the King” was born!
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VIOLENCE NEVER SOLVES ANYTHING (except for crossword puzzles where the answer is “violence”) What do you do when your comics, which are mainly sold by newsstands, become too much trouble for too little profit by those same vendors? Simple, you reprint old material, blow it up to enormous proportions and slap a price tag on it more than five times the cost of a single issue! Now, you know my style pretty well by now, my fellow front-facer, so there’s no question that I like to write about comics with profound pontifications, filled with meaningful metaphors or beaming with evocative eloquence.
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