Published Feb 19, 2026, 1:05 PM EST
CBR senior staff writer Brian Cronin has been writing professionally about comic books for over fifteen years now at CBR (primarily with his “Comics Should Be Good” series of columns, including Comic Book Legends Revealed). He has written two books about comics for Penguin-Random House – Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed and Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? And Other Amazing Comic Book Trivia! and one book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books. His writing has been featured at ESPN.com, the Los Angeles Times, About.com, the Huffington Post, Vulture and Gizmodo. He features legends about entertainment and sports at his website, Legends Revealed and other pop culture features at Pop Culture References. Follow him on Twitter at @Brian_Cronin and feel free to e-mail him suggestions for stories about comic books that you'd like to see featured at brianc@cbr.com!
In 1985, Larry Hama launched a new volume of Savage Tales for Marvel, in which it would spotlight men's adventure stories. They were mostly war stories, but there were also some crime adventures, as well. The series ran for just eight issues, but they were an acclaimed collection of issues, and one story, in particular, helped launch the iconic Marvel Vietnam War series, The 'Nam.
Fantagraphics is now collecting the entire series in Lost Marvels No. 3: Savage Tales of the 1980, the first time that these stories have seen print in FORTY YEARs, and CBR has been allowed to share an exclusive preview of one of the hard-boiled crime stories that Denny O'Neil contributed ot the magazine, with art by Malcolm Davis.
What was the inspiration for Savage Tales?
Image via FantagraphicsIn the 1960s, the mainstream comic book companies were all jealous of Warren Publishing's black and white horror magazines, Eerie and Creepy. Edited and mostly written by the great Archie Goodwin, those series, by virtue of being black and white magazines rather than traditional comic books, were able to avoid falling prey to the Comics Code Authority.
Stan Lee, in particular, really wanted Marvel to do their own versions of Warren's more "adult" black and white magazines, and after a brief foray into magazines with 1968's Spectacular Spider-Man (which ran just two issues), Lee finally got his wish in 1971 with the release of Savage Tales, a black and white magazine spotlighted by a new Conan the Barbarian story by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith. The magazine only ran a single issue. However, a few years later, when Lee took over as Marvel publisher, he brought Savage Tales back for another ten issues.
With the name now established, Hama brought it back in 1985, with the style of the book moving to specifically men's adventure stories. Some of the creators involved in the series included artists like John Severin, John Buscema, Sam Glanzman, Val Mayerik, Ron Wagner, Gray Morrow, Wayne Vansant, Herb Trimpe, Michael Golden, Joe Jusko, Mary Wilshire, Arthur Suydam, Will Jungkuntz, Vincent Waller, and Ken Steacy, and writers like Chuck Dixon, Bill Wray, Don Kraar, Robert Kanigher, Denny O’Neil, Doug Murray, and Archie Goodwin
What is the exclusive excerpt about?
“Jake Lime in STICK IT TO ME!” is a hard-boiled private detective story by Denny O'Neil and Malcolm Davis that has a man named Jake Lime serving as a bouncer at an art gallery in SoHo. He is throwing out what appears to be a drunk when one of the owners of the art gallery is murdered, and a priceless artifact is stolen.
Jake takes on the case, not because he was hired to protect the owner, but because he feels like it is his duty to avenge a guy killed on his watch, as it were. We then see a fascinating look through New York City circa 1985, courtesy of O'Neil, who lived in the City for years. There is a bit of Vic Sage in Jake Lime.
In the end, Jake avenges the murder of his boss, but in the process, he breaks the priceless artifact (that the killers didn't even know they had stolen)!
Lost Marvels No. 3: Savage Tales of the 1980 is on sale now.
Source: Fantagraphics
English (US) · 