The Thing in the Crypt!

CONAN THE BARBARIAN — Issue no. 92, August 1978

Book: Conan the Barbarian

Issue No.: 92

Published: August 15, 1978

Title: “The Thing in the Crypt!”

Cover Price: 35¢

Format: Original paper copy

A problem with reading all of the Marvel comic books from 1978 is that, after a few hundred books, I sometimes forget which books I’ve read. When I saw the cover of this issue, hyping “The Thing in the Crypt” and featuring an illustration of Conan fighting a giant skeleton, I was thinking, “didn’t I read this one already?”

I checked my Marvel Time Warp spreadsheet (like I said, it’s a big reading list I’m keeping up with) and did a web search of my old articles and didn’t find any specific listing for “thing in the crypt.” But I did find “Cavern of the Giant-Kings,” and, sure enough, that was the story I was thinking about. It was featured in Conan the Barbarian issue no. 90, which was only a published a couple months before this issue, but I read that story over a year ago, because I’m not reading these books nearly quickly enough.

The stories are similar. Both feature Conan encountering a zombie-type creature in a cave. The main difference between the two is Conan issue no. 90 features a then-current Conan tale, and this issue features a flashback story of Conan’s younger days. (Specifically, an editor’s note explains “Thing in the Crypt” occurs between issues no. 2 and no. 3 of Conan the Barbarian.)

This is a fill-in issue. A planned one, apparently. It features the usual Conan the Barbarian writer (Roy Thomas) and inker (Ernie Chan). The guest penciler is the great Sal Buscema, filling in for regular Conan penciler John Buscema. John is, of course, Sal’s brother.

Both of the Buscema boys are top-tier Bronze Age artists, so it’s no surprise that Sal is up to the task of filling in for John. Style-wise, John and Sal are pretty similar — if I had to describe the difference between the two, I’d say that Sal’s work is slightly more cartoony, and John’s is a little more realistic. Ernie Chan is, of course, Ernie Chan, so the look of this issue is very much in line with that of a regular, non-fill-in issue.

There is a hype note at the end of this book that promises the next issue will return us to the intrigue of the then-current Conan the Barbarian storyline, and I can already tell I’m gonna have to skim Conan no. 91 before I read that one. Because I can’t really remember what’s going on in the then-current Conan storyline, except that it also features Conan’s cool pals Bêlit and Zula.

Next time — The X-Men in the Savage Land!