Today I'm starting a new ongoing themed series called "Not Quite Conan" which will take a look at various other barbarians from pop culture. Some of these characters are really original and deserve their name in the annals of history, while others are blatant rip-offs of the King of Aquilonia.
And today's installment may be a little more of the latter than the former. But who am I to judge? Today we're talking about...
CLAW the UNCONQUERED!
Claw was DC Comics' answer to one of Marvels top-selling titles Conan the Barbarian. He was created in 1975 with the help of no other than long-time Conan artist, Ernie Chan (who will be spotlighted in a later blog).
Claw was basically, and arguably, Conan with a deformed demon hand that he kept covered in a red metal gauntlet. His real name was Valcan and he wandered around a fantasy world called Pytharia fighting wizards and lizard-men and stuff like that. I actually remember loving the comics back in the day and have since managed to find several of the isses again (not that there were many of them).
Alas, Claw was destined to live a short life. After only about a year's worth of comics from DC, he was cancelled. A couple years ago, Wildstorm comics revamped and tried to put some life back into the poor fellow with the withering hand, but it lasted less than 6 months despite a high profile team up with Red Sonja herself.
So when the smoke all clears on the battlefield it turns out that you may be a badass, Claw, but you're still no Conan!
See you all again soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment