Conan #2
Conan #2 (Artima Color Marvel Géant, Arédit-Artima, 1980) is a notable artifact of how Marvel's sword-and-sorcery line reached French-language readers in the early 1980s, gathering oversized full-colour reprints of material originally published in the prestige-format Marvel Super Special #9 (1978) under one cover. The album's inclusion of a Red Sonja story alongside Conan content reflects Arédit-Artima's editorial strategy of bundling Robert E. Howard–derived characters together to build a broader sword-and-sorcery audience in France. As part of the ten-issue Artima Color Marvel Géant Conan run (1980–1984), the series was a key vehicle for introducing Roy Thomas and John Buscema's Hyborian Age to a generation of French comics readers who had no easy access to American newsstand editions.
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Arédit-Artima had been reprinting Marvel material in France since the mid-1970s, first in black-and-white pocket formats and then, from 1980, in the upgraded Artima Color Marvel Géant line — large-format, full-colour albums aimed at a slightly older audience. Conan #2, titled 'Le Temple de l'Idole d'Or,' drew its content from Marvel Super Special #9 (1978), a prestige magazine that had itself collected Conan and Red Sonja stories by Roy Thomas (script), John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga (art on the Conan lead), and Howard Chaykin (art on the Red Sonja feature, co-scripted with Christy Marx). The GCD records Marie Severin as colourist on the Conan portion of the original Marvel Super Special source material.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published by Arédit-Artima in 1980 under the 'Artima Color Marvel Géant' brand imprint, a large-format full-colour album line.
- Reprints content from Marvel Super Special #9 (1978): a Conan story scripted by Roy Thomas with pencils and inks by John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga, coloured by Marie Severin.
- Also reprints a Red Sonja story from Marvel Super Special #9, scripted by Roy Thomas and Christy Marx with pencils and inks by Howard Chaykin.
- The album is the second issue of the Artima Color Marvel Géant Conan series, which ran to approximately ten issues between 1980 and 1984.
- The French title for this issue is 'Le Temple de l'Idole d'Or' (The Temple of the Golden Idol), per collector documentation.
- The 68-page page count and large géant format made these albums significantly more substantial than the earlier Arédit Comics Pocket black-and-white digests of the same era.
- Red Sonja — the Marvel Comics sword-wielding warrior created by Roy Thomas, adapted from Robert E. Howard's 'Red Sonya of Rogatino' — appears as a co-feature, consistent with Arédit-Artima's practice of pairing Conan with related Hyborian Age characters.
- FLAGGED: Jennifer Walters / She-Hulk (indexed in the catalog as 'Miss Hulk') does not appear to be present in this issue per Grand Comics Database records; her French debut was in the separate Arédit-Artima series 'Miss Hulk' #1 (4th quarter 1980), which reprinted Savage She-Hulk #1–2. No corroborating source places She-Hulk content inside the Artima Color Marvel Géant Conan album series.
Cast · 4 characters
Full credits
Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
Conan, debout et combattant un groupe de guerriers, tenant son épée vers le haut et derrière lui, prêt à frapper, tandis qu'en arrière-plan, une femme est sur un cheval sur une page et un crâne sur l'autre page.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).