Here’s two article from the Valdosta Daily Times sugarcoating Marvel’s continuing political correctness. In the first one, they describe the following about new Conan stories as published under Marvel’s banner, now that they’ve reacquired the license, and how veteran writer/illustrator P. Craig Russell’s interpreting Robert E. Howard’s adventuring creation:

Russell presents his own take of Howard’s character. Ever since artist Frank Frazetta on a legendary series of paperback covers and John Buscema in his famed run on the comic books, Conan has been a massively muscled barbarian that has the build of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger (which made him the perfect choice to play Conan in the 1980s movies).

But Russell’s Conan is a more tawny, lithe barbarian. No less strong but more like the character described in the Howard stories and more like what the world would produce from a character who is living a strenuous life but not one lifting weights several hours a day.

Readers aware of Russell’s style and history shouldn’t be surprised by a leaner, more graceful looking Conan. Russell worked on an early Marvel Conan comic with the equally legendary Barry Windsor-Smith back in the early 1970s. Smith was Marvel’s first Conan artist and he also drew a far leaner barbarian than the subsequent Buscema version that has since become the model for the character.

Depending how you view this, one could argue it’s an example of a male protagonist undergoing the same political correctness females have suffered of recent. And I do know this: in most of the Conan reprints I own, originally published by Dark Horse until recently, Conan may look muscular, but by no means a gigantic bodybuilder with almost balloon-like muscles, even if Arnold Schwarzenegger is famous for his portrayal of the character in the early 80s. So why does it sound like a huge exaggeration to say Conan often looked like a towering force in the past renditions? Or, why does this sound like a subtle putdown of Buscema’s work?

I do remember reading a history book over 2 decades ago where C.C. Beck and Bill Parker were said to have wanted to make Captain Marvel look not necessarily muscular, but more athletic, and so they went with it in the Golden Age. But if Frazetta’s renditions, coming as they did at least a few years before Marvel licensed Conan, are any confirmation, he certainly began the depictions of Howard’s creation with huge muscles, and leanness doesn’t contradict being muscular, recalling that I once read a Dune novel by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson where the Baron Harkonnen was described as being “lean and muscular”.