Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8
Edited by Donald A. Wollheim
Avon Publishing Company, Inc.
1948
1st Printing
Bet you didn't know that Conan could double for Prince Valiant? Well, in the early years of Conan, the Cimmerian was most often pictured as a slim, and armored character, not at all like the picture of the character we hold today after years of Frazetta inspired Conan covers.
The lead feature of this issue is "Queen of the Black Coast"* and mention must be made again of Howard's popularity. When the Conan stories originally appeared in Weird Tales, they drew tremendous acclaim and were one of the most popular series to run in the magazine. My guess is that by 1948, the stories would have attained a legendary status among fans of genre fiction and the reprinting of one of them, especially one that had been out of print for nearly 15 years, would have been a major coup for any magazine, hence the cover feature and the hoped for rise in sales.
The rest of the issue is the usual mix, with no new stories. The Blackwood, Bradbury, and Lovecraft (mixing a U-Boat with Atlantis?) stories are excellent. A few new names also appear for the first time: Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Francis Flagg, John Michel and Everil Worrell. The Michel story is of 1942 vintage, but the others date back to the 1920s, a period that Wollheim had some knowledge of and they all have a sort of dreamy fantasy quality to them, sort of like viewing a movie through a piece of gauze.
Rounding out the issue is atale by Frank Belknap Long, Jr. and the (again dreamy and gauzy) fantasy, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa", by Ambrose Bierce, which has been considered by many to be a Cthulhu Mythos tale written before the Mythos were started.
*NOTE: In "Queen of the Black Coast", Conan becomes involved with the pirate Belit, they adventure around, fall in love, she dies and at the end of the story he moves on. That's it. One story. No sequels. In the Conan comic, however, Marvel was able to take this one story and make Conan a pirate for nearly 50 issues. Go figure!