Conan the Barbarian.

Conan the Barbarian— The Complete Comic King Guide

Conan is not a comics character. He is a pulp-magazine character from the 1930s who has been licensed to comics publishers for fifty-five years, and that one fact explains almost everything that confuses people about collecting him.

It explains why there are four different Conan comics all numbered one. It explains why half the good material is magazine-sized and filed somewhere else in the store. And it explains why a long, cheap-looking run of licensed sword-and-sorcery comics quietly contains some of the most valuable Bronze Age books Marvel published in that decade.

This page is the map. What the eras are, which issues actually matter, what is worth money and what is honestly just a good read, and the two or three places where people get it wrong and it costs them.

Quick Facts

Story: A wandering Cimmerian mercenary who becomes a king. Robert E. Howard invented him in 1930s pulp magazines; the comics have been adapting and extending that body of work ever since.
Length: In comics since October 1970 — but across four different publishers, each of which started over at number one.
Status: Currently published by Titan Comics with Heroic Signatures, and unusually busy: an ongoing series, a black-and-white magazine, a colourised reprint line, crossover events and a widening line of other Howard characters.
Publisher: Titan Comics (2023 to now). Previously Marvel (1970 to 2000), Dark Horse (2003 to 2018) and Marvel again (2019 to 2022).
Age guide: Sword-and-sorcery for teens and up in the colour comics. The black-and-white magazines were deliberately published outside the Comics Code and run considerably more violent and more adult — check before handing one to a younger reader.
Formats: Bronze Age back issues · black-and-white magazines · omnibuses and collected editions · the current Titan run · and the original Howard prose, which we shelve beside the comics
At Comic King: A real Marvel Bronze run in the boxes, the magazines given their own defined home rather than being lost in a general magazine bin, and the prose on the shelf next to it.

Everyone Checks for Issue 23 — But the Screen Engine Points at Issue 58

If a Conan collector knows one issue number, it is 23. Conan the Barbarian #23, on sale 14 November 1972, is the first appearance of Red Sonja, and it has a reputation as the expensive book hiding in the cheap box. That reputation is real, and it has also quietly become the most misleading thing about this franchise.

Two corrections, and they point the same way.

The first is about grade. Issue 23 commands serious money in top graded condition, and that is where its reputation comes from — but there are only about a hundred copies on the entire CGC census in the highest grade. The copies that actually come through a shop door are read copies, and a read copy of #23 sits in the same broad price band as plenty of other Bronze Age Marvel books. It is a good book. It is not a lottery ticket, and anyone who has been told to treat every #23 as a small fortune will pay too much for a well-loved one.

The second correction is about what moves the price. The received wisdom is that Red Sonja is the lever — that any Red Sonja project lifts issues 23 and 24. That was a reasonable theory until it got tested. A Red Sonja film reached screens in August 2025, and it did not lift them. Over the year that followed, graded sales of both issues came in below where they had been before the film, sales volume fell rather than rose, and the ordinary Conan the Barbarian #1 — same publisher, same era, same collectors, no Red Sonja in it at all — went the other way and set its high in the same window. Whatever is holding this franchise up, it is not the Red Sonja lever.

Which brings us to the issue nobody puts on the list.

There are two Conan screen projects in motion right now, and one of them is specific. The animated series in development at Prime Video is adapting Queen of the Black Coast — the Belit story. Belit is the pirate queen; the saga is the emotional high point of the entire Marvel run; and her first appearance, with her on the cover, is Conan the Barbarian #58 from January 1976.

Issue 58 is not a famous book. It is not on most Conan key lists. It sells for ordinary Bronze Age money and it turns over steadily, which means you can actually find one. And it is the single issue most directly connected to the only Conan adaptation currently in production with a named source story.

That is the honest shape of this franchise today: the famous key is famous for a grade almost nobody owns, the lever everyone quotes has already been pulled and did nothing, and the interesting book is an unremarkable-looking issue from 1976 with a woman in a horned headdress on the cover.

None of which means stop looking for #23. Keep looking for #23. It is a real key, it sells steadily, and the habit of checking every Conan run for it is the most valuable habit anyone can have with this franchise, because a long licensed sword-and-sorcery run genuinely does look like bin material from the outside. Just check for the right reasons, and know what a read copy is actually worth before you agree a price on one.

The Run, Era by Era

Four publishers, four sets of number ones. Before quoting anything to anyone, establish which publisher and which year — it is the first question, every time.

The Keys — Issues Everyone Hunts

Conan the Barbarian #23 is the headline. First appearance of Red Sonja, and worth saying clearly: it is a full appearance, not a cameo. She is named, she speaks, she fights across more than twenty panels and she saves Conan twice. The cameo story is wrong and it has been repeated for years.

Conan the Barbarian #24 is the companion. This is her first cover appearance, drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith, and it is a genuinely beautiful piece of design — Conan and Sonja the only two figures in colour inside a flat gold mob of attackers. One caution for anyone selling it: this is not the chainmail bikini. On this cover she wears a long-sleeved mail shirt and red trunks. The bikini was designed later, by Esteban Maroto, and reached print in 1973.

Conan the Barbarian #1, October 1970, fifteen cents. The franchise start, the Windsor-Smith association, and in high grade it is the most valuable Conan comic there is — comfortably ahead of #23. If you only remember one price relationship on this page, make it that one, because it is the opposite of what most people assume.

Savage Tales #1, May 1971, fifty cents. This is the one that gets missed, and it is the most expensive miss on the list. It is the first Conan magazine, and inside it is the first appearance of Man-Thing. In raw condition it is worth more than Conan #23 — but because it is magazine-sized it does not get filed with the Conan comics, so it ends up in a magazine bin priced as a magazine. Check the magazines. Always.

Conan the Barbarian #58, January 1976. Belit arrives, on the cover. Ordinary Bronze Age pricing, steady turnover, and the live adaptation connection described above.

Chamber of Darkness #4, April 1970. Not a Conan comic at all — a Thomas and Windsor-Smith barbarian story called Starr the Slayer, six cover-dated months before Conan #1. Marvel reprints it inside its own Conan omnibus and Epic Collection, which settles the argument about whether it counts. Cheap, findable, and the best story on this whole page to tell across a counter.

Savage Sword of Conan #1, August 1974. The magazine line proper. A dollar, eighty-four pages, Boris Vallejo cover, and it contains Red Sonja in the chainmail bikini in a full story for the first time. Worth knowing that this book has softened noticeably over the last year in ungraded condition, so price it to today rather than to memory.

Conan the Barbarian #100 is the death of Belit and an emotional landmark for anyone who read the run. It is not a money key — it was heavily saved and survives in high grade in large numbers. One quirk worth catching: this is the one issue in the franchise where newsstand copies are tracked separately and carry a real premium over the direct-market ones. If a #100 has a barcode rather than a Marvel corner box, look twice.

Beyond the numbered keys there is a stretch rather than an issue. Barry Windsor-Smith drew roughly the first two dozen issues, and over that short run you can watch an artist turn from a competent Kirby imitator into something entirely his own — the ornament, the linework, the strange stillness that people still copy fifty years later. Collectors buy that stretch as a block, not as individual keys, and it is the reason mid-grade early Conan holds its value better than the issue numbers alone would suggest. If someone asks what is special about old Conan comics, the answer is not a first appearance. It is those two dozen issues.

And then there is the rest of it, which we will be straight about: outside the named keys and that early stretch, most Conan issues are affordable reader comics. The run went on for nearly three hundred issues. That is not a criticism — it is the appeal. It is long, it is cheap, it is satisfying to complete, and a want list for a Conan run is one of the more achievable projects in the store. We price the middle of the run to move, because that is what it is.

Every Format You Can Buy

Screen & Series Status

Updated August 2026: for the first time in a long while, Conan has two screen projects moving at once, and they point at different books.

King Conan is a film with Arnold Schwarzenegger returning to the role, written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. It was announced in March 2026 and is set up as a direct sequel to the 1982 film, skipping the 1984 one entirely. Schwarzenegger has said filming should begin before the end of 2026. Treat that as a stated intention rather than a locked date, but it is considerably further along than the decades of King Conan rumours that preceded it.

The animated series is the one that matters more for the back-issue boxes. Genndy Tartakovsky, who made Primal and Samurai Jack, is developing a Conan animated series for Prime Video, announced in June 2026. At San Diego Comic-Con on 23 July 2026 he appeared by video and read a passage from Queen of the Black Coast aloud, and said the whole thing was already animated in his head. Outlines and scripts are in progress and there is no release window. Queen of the Black Coast is the Belit story, which is what makes Conan the Barbarian #58 the book to have.

The Red Sonja film released in August 2025 and did not move the Conan market, as covered further up this page. It found a much larger audience on streaming in 2026 than it did in cinemas, which is worth watching but has not shown up in comic prices.

The publishing engine is the reliable one either way. Titan and Heroic Signatures are running the busiest Conan line in decades: the ongoing series, the revived Savage Sword magazine, the recoloured Reforged line, a crossover with the Italian publisher Sergio Bonelli Editore, an expanding Solomon Kane line, a Kull series announced for early 2027 from John Arcudi and Mark Buckingham, and an Edgar Rice Burroughs line beginning in summer 2027. If you want to know what is happening with Conan, the comics rack is currently a better guide than the trade press.

Collector's Corner — Grading, Care & We Buy

The condition reality on Conan is unforgiving and worth stating plainly. These were newsstand comics on cheap Bronze Age paper, bought by people who read them, and the covers had large flat areas of colour that show every crease. Sharp copies are genuinely scarce. That is not a sales line; it is why the grade curve on these books is so steep, and why an honest mid-grade copy is the normal outcome rather than a disappointing one. This is a reader’s franchise, mid-grade sells, and we price it that way.

The reprint problem here is real and easy to solve once you know it. Conan the Barbarian #1 has been reprinted repeatedly with its original cover art: as a facsimile edition in December 2021 at $3.99, which then went to a second printing in March 2022 at the same price; as a True Believers reprint at one dollar in January 2019; and in black-and-white magazine form back in 1987. Issue 23 has never had a facsimile, but it does have a True Believers reprint from January 2019 carrying the identical Gil Kane cover, and that is the one people mistake for the real thing.

The test is the price box, and on Conan it is about as clean as it gets. The originals are fifteen cents for #1 and twenty cents for #23 and #24, and they carry no barcode at all — Marvel did not start putting them on until the later 1970s. Anything with a modern cover price, a barcode, a rectangular red Marvel logo or a black True Believers banner across the top is a reprint, whatever the cover art says. Our full guide to spotting a first printing goes into this in more detail.

One period trap that is not a modern reprint at all: Conan the Barbarian #22, from January 1973, reprints the entire contents of issue 1 under a brand new cover. It happened because the artwork for issue 23 was lost in the mail and Marvel had a contract to ship something. It is a genuine 1973 comic at twenty cents, and it fools people constantly.

We buy Conan, and we buy it properly. The specific ask when a collection comes in is this: are there magazines as well? Sellers routinely do not think of Savage Tales and Savage Sword as part of the Conan run, so they get left in a different box in a different room, and that is exactly where the most valuable book in the line tends to be sitting. Bring the magazines.