[1] Marvel Comics reacquired the publishing rights in 2018 and started a new run of Conan the Barbarian in January 2019,[2] at first with the creative team of writer Jason Aaron and artist Mahmud A.

Interim writers included J. M. DeMatteis, Bruce Jones, Michael Fleisher, Doug Moench, Jim Owsley, Alan Zelenetz, Chuck Dixon, and Don Kraar.

Thomas, Marvel's associate editor at the time, had obtained the licensed property from the estate of its creator, Robert E. Howard, after finding Conan chief among readers' requests for literary properties to be adapted to comics, which also included the pulp magazine character Doc Savage, The Lord of the Rings oeuvre of writer J. R. R. Tolkien, and Edgar Rice Burroughs' characters Tarzan and John Carter of Mars.

I knew Lin Carter slightly, who had authored a character called Thongor, who was half Conan and half John Carter of Mars.... Lin was great, but his agent kept wanting us to offer more money than the $150 per issue that Martin Goodman had magnanimously said we could pay for rights.

Later, following on the success of the Conan series, Lin Carter allowed Marvel to publish a Thongor comic, which appeared as a miniseries in Creatures on the Loose.

I decided I'd have to write the first issue or so, so that if Goodman objected I could knock a couple pages off my rate to even things out.

"[6] The extra cost meant, however, that Marvel could not budget for Buscema, Thomas' first choice, serendipitously opening the door to Smith.

[A]t the time, Marvel was owned by Martin Goodman, and he felt that my rate was too high to take a gamble [with] on some new kind of [project].

The series contained the usual elements of action and fantasy, to be sure, but it was set in a past that had no relation to the Marvel Universe, and it featured a hero who possessed no magical powers, little humor and comparatively few moral principles.

The comics were written by Thomas and illustrated by Windsor-Smith, based on a story plotted by Michael Moorcock and Cawthorn, James.

[13] In 2010, Comics Bulletin ranked Thomas' work on Conan the Barbarian with Smith and Buscema seventh on its list of the "Top 10 1970s Marvels".