Saturday, April 10, 2010

Hagar The Horrible Silver Warrior!


Hagar the Horrible is of course a very successful and long running comic strip by Dik Browne from King Features.


Once upon a time, Charlton comics had the King license and put out material like the very successful Phantom, Blondie, Beetle Bailey and Popeye and less successful stuff like Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, Snuffy Smith, and Tiger. Apparently though they were all set to launch Hagar in his own comic but it never came off.

That material was scooped up with scuds of other stuff by Roger Broughton who then began using the vintage Charlton material in reprints under the "ACG" banner during the 90's and even into the current century.


So at long last Hagar the Horrible came to comics, and to top it off the cover is a swipe of Frank Frazetta's famous "Silver Warrior" painting.


I first saw this memorable image on the cover of a Michael Moorcock novel, but it was used again later on the debut issue of Frank Frazetta Fantasy Illustrated.


The Hagar homage is a pretty dang good one. According to GCD, the issue features some scripts by Dik Browne himself but the artwork is by Frank Roberge, at least on the main Hagar stories. I don't have that issue, but I sure wish I did to own another tiny bit of Charlton's offbeat history.

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