Conan the Barbarian #4
Conan the Barbarian #4 is widely recognized as the creative turning point of the entire Marvel Conan run — the issue where writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith (then credited simply as Barry Smith) found their footing together, adapting Robert E. Howard's "The Tower of the Elephant" (originally published in Weird Tales, March 1933) in a way that captured both the pulp source material's escalating strangeness and its genuine emotional weight. The story introduced Conan not merely as a brawler but as a figure capable of moral complexity, preserving Howard's key passage about Conan feeling the "guilt of a whole race" upon encountering the tortured alien Yag-Kosha — a character depth rarely seen in 1971 action comics. The issue earned a nomination for Best Story (1972) from the Academy of Comic-Book Arts, peer recognition that helped legitimize the entire sword-and-sorcery genre at Marvel. Its influence extended across the medium: Windsor-Smith's visible leap in compositional sophistication here — richer backgrounds, more dynamic figure work, nearly all trace of Kirby imitation gone — helped forge the Romantic illustration approach that would inspire a generation of artists.
ComicBooks.com Value
Show all 19 grades ▾
This exact issue on ebay
Raw / ungraded ▾ $3.99–$160 8 listings
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
Roy Thomas had championed the Howard license at Marvel against publisher Martin Goodman's skepticism, and Windsor-Smith had been hired largely because his page rate was far below Thomas's first choice, John Buscema, whose fee Goodman considered too steep for an unproven genre title. Windsor-Smith moved to the United States in 1971, the same year this issue was produced, and his rapid in-person immersion in American art and reference showed immediately in his pages. According to Thomas's own retrospective notes (collected in the Dark Horse Chronicles of Conan Vol. 1 and later in his memoir Barbarian Life), Windsor-Smith had originally sequenced two panels on page two in a different order; Thomas's request to reverse them gave Conan a more dramatic first entrance into the tavern scene — a small editorial intervention Thomas later cited as the template for every tavern scene that followed in the series. The Comics Code imposed one significant change on the adaptation: Howard's original text requires Conan to physically cut out Yag-Kosha's heart and squeeze its blood over the gem, a detail Thomas and Windsor-Smith replaced with the crystal jewel simply turning blood-red after Yag-Kosha expires.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Title story: "The Tower of the Elephant!" — script by Roy Thomas, pencils by Barry Windsor-Smith (credited as Barry Smith), inks by Sal Buscema, colors by Mimi Gold, letters by Sam Rosen, edited by Stan Lee; cover date April 1971, on-sale date January 26, 1971.
- First comic-book adaptation of Robert E. Howard's original Conan prose story "The Tower of the Elephant" (Weird Tales, March 1933), making it the first issue in the Marvel run drawn directly from a genuine Howard Conan narrative rather than an original script or a retooled non-Conan tale.
- First appearances (all of whom die within the issue): Taurus of Nemedia (the "Prince of Thieves"), alien entity Yag-Kosha (also rendered as Yag-Kosha of Yag), and High Priest Yara.
- Nominated for "Best Story" (1972) by the Academy of Comic-Book Arts — the professional comics industry's peer award body — corroborating the issue's immediate critical standing.
- The story was re-adapted a second time by Marvel in Savage Sword of Conan #24, again scripted by Roy Thomas but drawn by John Buscema and inked by Alfredo Alcala; Thomas later said he adapted the same source story approximately four times across different formats because of his deep affection for it.
- The Howard source story also inspired a sequence in the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian (tower scaling, a giant snake, and theft of a jewel), and Episode 3 of the animated series Conan the Adventurer directly adapts the plot.
- The issue has been reprinted extensively across five decades: Conan Annual #1 (September 1973), Conan Saga #2 (June 1987), Conan Classic #4 (September 1994), the Dark Horse Chronicles of Conan Vol. 1 (2003), The Barry Windsor-Smith Conan Archives Vol. 1 (Dark Horse, 2010), the True Believers: Conan — The Tower of the Elephant one-shot (Marvel, March 2019), the Marvel Original Marvel Years Omnibus Vol. 1 (2018/2019), and the Titan Comics Original Comics Omnibus Vol. 1 (2024).
- Barry Windsor-Smith later acknowledged in Spectrum Super Special #3 (2005) the coloring credits for the issue, crediting Mimi Gold — a production detail long absent from the original printing.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Serie-nytt [delas?] #13/1971 (1971), Conan Annual #1 (1973), Eclipso #50 (1975), Conan #1 (1978), Conan #2 (11693) (1978), Conan #1 (1979), Conan de barbaar #1 (1979), Conan Pocket Book #2 (1980), Conan el Bárbaro #42 (1980), Conan de barbaar #2 (1981), Conan el Bárbaro #68 (1985), Conan el Bárbaro #69 (1985), Conan Saga #2 (1987), Magnum Spesial #2/1990 (1990), Conan Le Barbare #28 (1992), Conan Saga #1 (1993), Conan Classic #4 (1994), Conan el bárbaro #4 (1998), Essential Conan #1 (2000), The Chronicles of Conan #1 (2003), The Barry Windsor-Smith Conan Archives #1 (2010), Conan el Bárbaro. Edición 35 Aniversario #[nn] (2017), Conan the Barbarian: The Original Marvel Years Omnibus #1 (2018), True Believers: Conan - The Tower of the Elephant #1 (2019) + 7 more
Key issues in Conan the Barbarian
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.