Overdrawn At The Memory Bank

Memory is a strange thing.

As of this writing, I’ve amassed 53 years’ worth of them.

Some are very clear and distinct, some are hazy, some are just gone completely. Some come to mind unbidden, others need to be prompted by something extetnal.

My earliest memory is standing in my crib in the dark calling out to my mother. After that, it’s just bits and pieces of vague impressions for a couple of years, with the clearest and most prominent being my eye surgery when I was four. More memories start to stick after that.

Throughout all the decades, though, the one constant mixed in with all of the memories is, of course, comics.

Much of what I remember is centered around comics. I have a lot of memories about where and when I acquired certain comics – as you’ve seen if you’ve read any of my posts, as those sorts of anecdotes take up a lot of digital ink – and of reading them, and sometimes what I was thinking and feeling as I did.

Not all of them, of course, and not with perfect clarity and not always unprompted.

I’ve been thinking about the nature of memory in part because of my birthday, but also because of a comic I just read that I remembered vaguely before reading and then more fully as I read it.

I’ve been making my way through the fourth volume of the Conan the Barbarian Omnibus, which collects the original Marvel run of the series, and I knew that I was getting close to the story featured in the oldest Conan comic I’d ever owned – though not the first – which I’d gotten years after publication in a mystery pack.

While the details of the issue were hazy in my mind, I knew I must be getting close to it because I remembered that it featured Bêlit, the Queen of the Black Coast, and Conan’s one true love, and I also knew that – spoiler – I was coming up on the issue in which she dies.

(As an aside, for a long time in advance Roy Thomas was telling people that she would die in #100. Spoilers weren’t really a thing that people worried about as much in those days, and beyond that, it wasn’t much of a spoiler for any fan of the sullen-eyed Cimmerian who knew from the original stories that Bêlit was doomed. Indeed, there were a lot of letters throughout her appearance in the comics asking, “When is she going to die already?”)

The issue in question turned out to be #99, the issue right before her death.

I had no memory of the cover, as I’d never actually seen it, but as soon as I saw it, I knew it was the one based on the memories the images and title drew up from the depths of my memory.

It wasn’t the opening splash page, though you’d think something that distinctive would have burned itself into my brain.

What looked most familar to me was this:

And this:

And this:

Still, I didn’t really remember the story, just those images, though other images resonated with me as I read it, and the story felt familiar.

But if you’d asked me to describe what was in that comic before I reread it, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you anything about it beyond the fact that it featured Bêlit.

As for the details of the acquisition of it, those aren’t particularly clear either. I know that I got it sometime in the early 1980s – maybe even as late as 1985 – even though it was released in 1979, and I’m certain that I got it after I’d already started semi-regularly reading Conan comics.

The flood of incomplete memories that reading this issue brought back just struck me as odd. Why do we remember some things but not others? Why are some memories right there to be plucked at your convenience while others need to be pulled forcefully up from the depths, requiring the strength of an iron-thewed barbarian like Conan?

I don’t know, and I’m not sure I’m actually looking for answers anyway. It was just interesting to think about, and because it’s my birthday, and this is my site, I wrote this self-indulgent and ultimately pointless post about memory.

The earliest issue of Conan the Barbarian that I remember having – also acquired via mystery pack -comes a bit after this one (and I know it’s in this volume as I looked ahead), and I got that issue years before I got this one, much closer to its original publication date.

Of course, I didn’t actually buy the main Conan the Barbarian series that often. I preferred the Savage Sword of Conan black-and-white magazine. I also went through a period in which I bought King Conan/Conan the King with a bit more regularity. I probably had more mystery pack issues of Conan the Barbarian than I did new.

Those last two points are likely why I do still have a few issues of King Conan/Conan the King but have no issues of Conan the Barbarian left in my collection.

Why did I prefer those other two titles to the main series? Well, with Savage, it felt like I was getting a bit more for my money despite the lack of color, as it was larger and had extra features like backup stories, pin-up pages, and prose stories. Plus, it wasn’t Code-approved – as a magazine, it didn’t have to be – and while that didn’t mean much in the way of nudity by the time I started buying it, it did feature more graphic content than the main title.

King Conan/Conan the King was Code-approved, but the stories felt more mature and sophisticated to me – I was in my teens by the time I started reading it – and beyond that, it was a double-sized dollar comic, so again, more for my money.

At some point in the late ’80s I stopped buying any kind of Conan comics, though I did keep reading Conan novels for a bit after that.

Why did I stop?

I can’t remember.

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