Those who weren't there might have a hard time understanding what it was like. Thomas had left Conan and Marvel (quite possibly due, in part, to Jim Shooter). All the Conan comics had gone directly down the toilet. Mike Grell was losing interest in The Warlord (and it was starting to show).
However, in that summer of '81, amazingly, DC was putting out the two best S&S comics on the market.
The wiki article (not bad overall) does make some silly points. Most are in this paragraph:
"Arak (Bright-Sky-After-Storm) is depicted very much as a Conan knock-off in early appearances. Later, after encountering the Moirai, who explain his destiny to him, he takes on a more Native American appearance, including leather-fringed pants and a Mohawk hairstyle. Unlike Conan (a character Roy Thomas also wrote during his tenure at Marvel Comics), who usually fought against H. P. Lovecraftian monsters and entities, Arak encounters figures and creatures from real-world myth and legends, including Greek, Norse, Judeo-Christian, Muslim, Oriental, and others. Arak was surprisingly culturally sensitive for the time when it debuted. Unlike other Native American heroes, like Apache Chief, who took a cartoonish view of Native Americans similar to the old western movie Indians, Arak did not have broken speech or other stereotypical "Indian" traits. Also, the Vikings looked more like real Vikings and were not illustrated wearing the stereotypical horned helmets and fur clothing."
First thing, we could only hope to see Conan in anything but a "furkini" at Marvel during the '80s. Arak rocked pretty stylin' (and practical) leggings/breeches. The fact that Arak had long black hair and "barbarian pink" skin shouldn't be held against him. The four-color limitations (then) of comics seem to have dictated that Conan would be "barbarian pink". REH's own bronzed swarthiness (he claimed to have been mistaken for a Mexican more than once) would be a much better guideline (something Dave Stewart corrected when he did the DHC Conan
).So, Arak really had much better claim to "redness" than the comic Conan. I love how the wiki guy claims that Arak "later" took on a "more Native American appearance".
Sort of like saying that all "Europeans" of 700AD sported the same apparel or hairstyles, let alone all "Asians" or "Africans". "Native Americans" encompasses two continents, fer Crom's sake. The wiki writer betrays his own parochial knowledge and biases. IMO, Thomas was nowhere out of line in how he first envisioned Arak, especially since Arak was raised amongst VIKINGS. In that context, Arak's appearance made perfect sense (and would've been fine in a "Native American" sense as well).Regarding Maliszewski's post,..
He mentions that Arak was from a "fictitious" tribe. Not sure if this was a subtle dig or not. Suffice to say that RT threw out plenty of clues early on that Arak's tribe were some sort of "proto-Iroquois/Haudenosaunee". Also, Mal talks about the "historical implausibility" of the series. I'll give 'im that, to an extent. However, I don't see most of the early issues being more implausible than, say, the Solomon Kane yarns. Where I see the "implausibility" is RT using Orlando Furioso as a source of plot points. IMO, all of that is simply an indicator of Thomas' scholarship and is also a very Howardian touch.
Go pick up those first 15-20 issues. They're damned good.
