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Conan le Barbare #[1]
Conan le Barbare #[1] — Les Clous Rouges — is the first French album-format publication of Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith's adaptation of Robert E. Howard's final Conan novella, "Red Nails," bringing a seminal Bronze Age American comics story to the Franco-Belgian bande dessinée market in an oversized prestige format that showcased Windsor-Smith's art far beyond what the original Marvel magazine pages allowed. Its release by Les Humanoïdes Associés — the avant-garde Paris house behind Métal Hurlant and Arzach — was a deliberate act of transatlantic cross-pollination, placing American sword-and-sorcery comics alongside European auteur works at a moment when the two traditions were beginning to influence each other profoundly. The "Red Nails" story itself holds a distinguished place in Conan history as Howard's last-written Conan tale, adapted by arguably the definitive creative team for the character in the comics medium. Presented in a grand format of roughly 240 × 350 mm, the album gave French readers a reading experience closer to fine-art reproduction than a standard comic book, reinforcing the prestige with which the publisher treated its American acquisitions.
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Les Humanoïdes Associés, founded in December 1974 by Moebius, Philippe Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, and Bernard Farkas to publish the science-fiction magazine Métal Hurlant, quickly expanded into graphic novel publishing — releasing ten albums in 1976 alone — and deliberately acquired American genre classics including Conan the Barbarian alongside European auteur titles. The French text adaptation of "Red Nails" was handled by Philippe Manoeuvre, a French rock journalist and cultural critic who was closely associated with the Humanoïdes circle. The source material — Thomas and Windsor-Smith's three-part adaptation of Howard's story — had originally appeared in black and white in Marvel's Savage Tales #2 and #3 (1973–74), with Windsor-Smith later re-inking and coloring portions of the story for a Marvel Treasury Edition reprint; the Humanoïdes album drew on this celebrated version of the work. The series ran to two volumes, with the second album, Les Faucons des mers, following in April 1977.
Trivia · 9 facts
- Title of the story: 'Les Clous Rouges' (French translation of 'Red Nails'), an adaptation of Robert E. Howard's final Conan novella.
- Published October 1976 by Les Humanoïdes Associés, Paris (ISBN 2902123019); first volume of a two-album series.
- Script by Roy Thomas; art by Barry Windsor-Smith; French adaptation/translation by Philippe Manoeuvre.
- Presented in an oversized grand format of approximately 240 × 350 mm (sources give dimensions between 240×350 and 340×250 mm — see flagged), approximately 58–61 pages.
- Source material originally published in black and white in Marvel's Savage Tales #2–3 (1973); Windsor-Smith re-inked and colored portions of the story for later reprints.
- Les Humanoïdes Associés was founded in December 1974 by Moebius, Philippe Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, and Bernard Farkas; the publisher released American classics such as Conan the Barbarian and The Spirit alongside avant-garde European works.
- The Thomas/Windsor-Smith 'Red Nails' adaptation was nominated for the 1974 Academy of Comic Book Arts Award for Best Individual Story (Dramatic category).
- A French reprint of Les Clous Rouges was later published by Arédit/Artima as Conan hors-série #1 (1983), confirming the story's ongoing demand in the French market.
- The second volume in the Humanoïdes series, Les Faucons des mers (adapting the 'Hawks from the Sea' storyline), appeared in April 1977.
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↩ Reprints Marvel Treasury Edition #4 (1975)
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