Saturday, October 18, 2008

Not Quite Conan! Vol. 1

Hail to All!

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!

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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).

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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).

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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.

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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!

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See you all again soon!


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