Conan The Adventurer #2 Error Variant (Conan Classics #2 Interior)

Marvel Comics, published date: July 1994.

This issue was meant to contain the story "The Snow that slays", where Conan joins the Aesir against the Vanir, matching the "White Death" cover title. However, some copies contained the interior of Conan Classic #2 (shown below left):

So far, the error seems to have affected the Direct Edition (which was likely printed first, with Newsstand copies roughly estimated at less than 25% of the distribution by that time) hence it is unknown if the problem also affected the Newsstand variant above right (which has no "DIRECT EDITION" text and has a barcode suffix of 07, whereas the Direct Edition ends 00211).

Above is the interior seen on the Corrected Edition and below is the splash page from the Error edition (which is a reprint of "Lair of the Beast-Men!", a Roy Thomas, Barry Windsor-Smith and Sal Buscema story, from Conan The Barbarian #2).

On the Error Edition, the indicia clearly shows the CONAN CLASSIC Vol.1, No.2, July 1994 (instead of CONAN THE ADVENTURER Vol.1, No.2, July 1994).

As noted in the indicias, the comics were both produced in the same month and the corrected edition also notes this at the end of the letters page below:

As the corrected edition has different interior cover adverts, it doesn't look like this was simply an issue of placing a batch of covers on the incorrect interiors, this may have been a problem with the print set-up for the covers (multiple covers were usually printed together on one giant sheet then cut and collated to bind with the correct interiors). Given that it seems to be a printing plate set-up issue, and unlikely that the printing plates were duplicated for both comics, it is curious that other error issues (for different comics) have not surfaced but maybe the two Conan comics were produced at slightly different times and the problem was noted later when they printed the second Conan #2 (likely this is where the confusion came from with two Conan comics with the same issue number being printed for the same publication month).

At the time of writing, in late April 2022, there were no recorded gradings of the error variant on either the CGC Census or the CBCS Population Report.

Below is the original splash page of Conan The Barbarian #2 (1970), which was reprinted in Conan Classic #2, which was erroneously included in Conan The Adventurer #2: