Conan, Hercules, and Kung Fu Fighters: DC Comics Muscle

When I was a kid, I hated DC and Marvel comics.  Every time you bought one, you stumbled upon part 10 of a 20-part story, extending over several titles, and referencing things that happened a hundred issues ago. Infuriating!

Besides, those costumed superheroes never took their shirts off.

Besides, they all had girlfriends.

In 1975, comic books were getting harder to find.  Schneider's Drugstore stopped stocking them.  You had to go all the way to Readmore Book World downtown, where the clerk leered at you and said "Got some heavy reading to do tonight, huh?"

I avoided going there.

But suddenly, in the summer of 1975, a new assortment of DC non-superhero comics made the trip and the leers worthwhile.  They were musclemen, with bare chests and shoulders displayed.

Hercules Unbound, from Greek mythology, here incongruously fighting the Loch Ness Monster.



Kong the Untamed, a prehistoric mama's boy who interacted with dinosaurs and savages.













Tor, another prehistoric boy, except this one lived 1,000,000 years ago, and there were no dinosaurs.

Kamandi, a prehistoric boy in the post-apocalptic future.

An adaption of Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan.



Marvel was doing a Conan the Barbarian book, so DC tried to get a piece of the action with Claw the Unconquered, (complete with the Frank Franzetta image of  lady supine between his legs).  Except he had a clawed hand.










The only significant gay subtext came in Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter, an attempt to capitalize on the Kung Fu craze.  Richard fought for G.O.O.D. (The Global Organization of Organized Defense) along with his best buddy Ben Turner.

Both fought with their shirts off.

All of these muscleman comics faded away within a few issues.  But they provided substantial beefcake during the waning years of the comic book industry.

See also: The Comic Book Jungle; and The Last Boy on Earth