I remember buying Atlas when it first came out on the stands (1975). I was only fifteen back then and I never put two and two together until just now listening to you guys explain it that this sounds like it influenced Oliver Stone and John Milius in writing their succession of screenplays that led to the development of the first Conan the Barbarian movie (1982). The Lizard sounds like a cult just like the snakes of the earth in the original Conan film. Unless this was already a thing in Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. I read a lot of those when I was a kid along with the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels because they reissued them as paperbacks with Frank Frazetta covers. But I don’t remember their being a specific snake cult and Thulsa Doom was actually a Kull villain. So, maybe Jack mined REH’s Conan stories to write this epic series - that I remember had a lot of promise but I was already disheartened at the time by his having had his other books at DC cancelled. This is the same year he returned to Marvel. And the whole plot of Atlas hunting down the guy who killed his parents and wiped out his village is alarmingly similar to what happens in Conan. That’s the hook for the whole film and Jack should’ve gotten credit for it. Oh well.
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Wonderful discussion, gents. I enjoyed the listen.
“I’m on top of the world, Ma!” Jimmy Cagney in White Heat (1949)
I remember buying Atlas when it first came out on the stands (1975). I was only fifteen back then and I never put two and two together until just now listening to you guys explain it that this sounds like it influenced Oliver Stone and John Milius in writing their succession of screenplays that led to the development of the first Conan the Barbarian movie (1982). The Lizard sounds like a cult just like the snakes of the earth in the original Conan film. Unless this was already a thing in Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. I read a lot of those when I was a kid along with the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels because they reissued them as paperbacks with Frank Frazetta covers. But I don’t remember their being a specific snake cult and Thulsa Doom was actually a Kull villain. So, maybe Jack mined REH’s Conan stories to write this epic series - that I remember had a lot of promise but I was already disheartened at the time by his having had his other books at DC cancelled. This is the same year he returned to Marvel. And the whole plot of Atlas hunting down the guy who killed his parents and wiped out his village is alarmingly similar to what happens in Conan. That’s the hook for the whole film and Jack should’ve gotten credit for it. Oh well.
I collected comics all my life and I never liked Jack Kirby's art. It didn't look realistic. I think Marvel's greatest artist is John Buscema.