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= Conan: The Ravagers Out of Time (Vol. 1) =

Conan: The Ravagers Out of Time is a standalone graphic novel published in April 1992 as publication number #73 in the Conan universe. It fits into Conan’s timeline in the Hyborian Age, which is the era that comes after Thor’s Early Tales of Asgard and Kull’s Turian Age.

History of Conan
Conan is a character created by Robert E. Howard and was adapted into comics in 1952 in Mexico. In 1970, Marvel Comics published Conan the Barbarian, written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Barry Windsor-Smith. It was a success and Marvel decided to publish Savage Sword of Conan in 1974, a black and white version of the comics, written by John Buscema and illustrated by Alfredo Alcala. It was also a success as it was considered one of the most popular comic book series published in the 70s. Conan was also adapted into comic strips which was published daily in newspaper from 1978-1981. The strips was originally written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by John Buscema but it changed to different writers and illustrators throughout the years. The right to publish Conan was acquired by Dark Horse Comics in 2013 but Marvel reacquired the rights in 2018.

Competition
When published, Conan The Ravager Out of Time was head to head with one of Marvel’s most iconic superheroes. The Amazing Spider-Man #361 was also published at that time and it happened to be a significant publication in the series because it was when Carnage had a full appearance in the Spider-Man universe. International Seattle Comic Convention was also held during that time.

Marvel did some reprints on The Barbarian series, but never to any of the graphic novels, thus The Ravager Out of Time was never reprinted. It was also due the fact that Marvel had some fallouts in the following years, which had a big impact on its following publications at that time.

Marvel Fallouts
Comic books were booming in the early 90s. The main reason being the rise of a new distribution channel, which was comic book specialty stores. Those specialty stores generated more than 70 percent of sales at that time. Furthermore, comic book publishers sold their comics on a nonreturnable basis, leaving the stores to absorb the losses if the comics don’t sell. The risk mitigated by this method was in favor to the publishers, as 3 of every five comic books distributed to the traditional bookstores were returned to the publishers.

Realizing the potential, Marvel –who controlled the market share of comic books by 51% percent, two times greater than its competitor, DC Comics– increased their comic books price from 75 cents to $1 in 1989, to $1.25 in 1990. For their hardcover comics, Marvel charged as high as $34 at that time. Conan The Ravager Out of Time, which was priced at $9.95 in 1992, was considered one of the graphic novels and standalone, thus was priced higher than the regular 3 to 6 dollars comics.

Higher price and steady demand could only mean higher sales figure. Marvel's comics sold an average of 8.7 million copies a month in the last half of 1990, up 31.2 percent from 6.6 million in the corresponding period in 1989 and sales were 6.3 million a month in early 1990 (Audit Bureau of Circulation 72).

Then in early 1992, Marvel had a big fallout. Seven of their artists – Erik Larsen (the artist for The Amazing Spider-Man), Todd McFarlane (Spider-Man), Marc Silvestri (Wolverine), Jim Lee (X-Men), Rob Liefeld (X-Force), Jim Valentino (Guardians of the Galaxy), and Whilce Pontacio (Uncanny X-Men)– left Marvel to form a new company called Image Comics. Desperate, Marvel tried another way to thrive, by controlling their own distribution. Marvel acquired Heroes World Distribution in 1994. This was then a trend with other comic book publishers as well, resulted in the survival of only one other major distributor in North America: Diamond Comic Distributors Inc. By mid 1995, the industry was dying and Marvel’s stock value collapsed; from $35.75 in 1993 to $2.3 in three years time. in December 1996, Marvel filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection.

This event was not unpredictable. During the peak of the comic books industry in 1991, Neil Gaiman warned comic book publishers that their success was a bubble, generated from buyers buying several editions to collect, hoping that it would sell for a great amount of money in the future. The ‘bubble’ had begun even before that, right when buyers decided that comic books were no longer a read-then-dispose publication, but more to a publication that they can collect and hopefully, sell with higher price in the future. The publishers saw that as an opportunity. They began supplying the market by printing comics with different variety of covers, sometimes with special printing techqnique like foil embossing, or printing on a thick glossy paper, and other fancy printing techqniques. Of course those publishers, especially Marvel, was selling their ‘collectibles’ at much higher price.

This was akin to tulip mania - a strange period in the 17th century when the value of tulip bulbs suddenly exploded, only for the market to collapse again (Neil Gaiman 91). This tulip effects also affected the costumer buying behavior.

Gaiman was right. Although Marvel managed to rise up into multi-billion dollars company by expanding their reach to the movie industries, the event in 1996 was too big to forget. Some of their comics published in the 90s were collectible now, but not necessarily considered as one of rare finds, Conan The Ravager Out of Time being one. It is still available online as a secondhand book for a median price of $47.