But the downsizing of Conan (along with the rest of Marvel’s line) two months later left King Kull once again with nowhere to hang his crown. Thomas figured that an extra-length Conan the Barbarian would have room for Kull as a semi-regular back-up feature and when the first issue of Conan to be published in this format (#10) appeared in July, 1971, it did indeed include a five-page adaptation by Thomas and the Severins of a Kull poem by Howard, “The King and the Oak”. Whatever the motivation, Thomas’ first attempt at keeping the Kull franchise alive was made in the context of Marvel’s short-lived experiment with a more expensive, giant-sized standard format. Howard fantasy hero in the wake of Conan the Barbarian‘s success (as relatively modest as that was, so far) was evidently determined to keep Conan’s literary forbear in the public eye - perhaps in hopes of eventually resuscitating the cancelled Kull title, or maybe just because he liked the hero and his milieu and/or was enjoying his collaboration (as the series’ writer) with sister-and-brother art team Marie and John Severin, who’d both come aboard Kull with issue #2.

Marvel’s associate editor Roy Thomas, who in 1971 had launched this second series based on a Robert E. Of course, as folks who’ve been regular readers of this blog for a while already know, while Kull, the comic book, had been absent for almost a year, the same could not be said of Kull, the character.

In April, 1972, the third issue of Marvel Comics’ Kull the Conqueror arrived on stands - a full eleven months after the release of issue #2.

Kull the shadow kingdom