I recently finished reading THE BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH ARCHIVES: CONAN 1. Comparisons to THE CHRONICLES OF CONAN 1 & 2 reveal that while the colors are the same, the chroma levels on all the stories have been lightened up a notch or 2 for this book(whether it was done on purpose or accidentally is anyone's guess). This makes the colors less dark and less overpowering. It's a subtle change, but it gives the colors a greater naturalism and puts more emphasis on Barry's linework.

Actually issue 1-8 look quite handsome, but issues 9-11 which are rendered in ugly, muddy tonalities(I hesitate to call them "colors") by a totally different recoloring team remain problematic. Especially bad is ROGUES IN THE HOUSE which receives the worst recoloring job of the lot and suffers from highly degraded line reproduction. Simply put, much of Barry's detailed line drawing is missing here. Which is a bloody shame since this story looked great in it's original comic book printing in CONAN THE BARBARIAN 11(1971).

To my eyes the cover scans look pretty faithful to the printed comic book covers(with the small exception of the cover from CTB 9 which is slightly out of focus). They are very welcome additions.

Note to deejayway: all the captions and dialogue balloons have the original Sam Rosen lettering. There's no relettering(and therefore no typos).