Marvel Entertainment and Conan Properties International announced an agreement today to bring Robert E. Howard’s famed pulp hero back to the comics publisher beginning in January 2019.
It’s an interesting move, because Darkhorse has been publishing Conan for quite some time now. So, you have to wonder – is Conan that popular of a comic book that Marvel would seemingly go out of their way to reacquire the license? I suspect there’s more to this. I am wondering, if comic book sales are good enough, that Disney (under whatever ‘flagship’ movie studio they want to select) is considering releasing a brand new Conan the Barbarian movie as well? Perhaps something to try and capture the Game of Thrones and Vikings type market? I remember owning quite a few issues of Conan the Barbarian back in the day when these were coming out (issue #141 sticking out the most in my memory for some odd reason – I may even still have it somewhere in one of my Random comic boxes) – but, I have to admit, I don’t remember being very enthralled by the Conan the Barbarian comics – they were cool to pick up if no other new comics I collected came in and I had a spare 60 cents burning in my pocket, begging to be spent.
Marvel has not released any creative teams information; only that it will be coming out in 2019. They also released these two promotional pieces: