by Vincent Darlage, PhD
Conan the Barbarian, Vol. 1: Bound in Black Stone
I enjoyed Bound in Black Stone. It is a good, solid Conan adventure, and more importantly, it actually feels like Conan to me. Jim Zub clearly understands the character and the kind of world in which he belongs. His Conan reminded me quite a bit of the Conan I grew up reading in the Marvel comics written by Roy Thomas, and since that remains one of my favorite interpretations of the character, that is very high praise.
I also appreciated the Black Stone storyline more than I expected to, partly because it finally supplied some context I had been missing. I had previously read a Conan novel involving the “Black Stone,” and I came away from that book wondering what exactly the Black Stone was supposed to be. I don’t remember the novel ever really giving me the background I needed. Here, Zub finally gave me enough context that I understood that this was part of something larger in the world surrounding Conan. I enjoy Conan as a wandering adventurer, but I also like being reminded that the Hyborian Age exists within Robert E. Howard’s much larger imagined prehistory.
Zub also gave Conan a very good companion in Brissa. In fact, she may have been my favorite new element in the book. She is capable enough to belong beside Conan without feeling as though the writer is diminishing Conan to make her impressive. She has her own history, knowledge, motivations, and personality, and I genuinely liked her. I would be quite happy to encounter Brissa again.
The real star of the volume, however, is Roberto De La Torre’s artwork. It is exceptional. There were pages where I found myself studying the artwork rather than simply moving on to the next panel. De La Torre’s Conan looks as though Frank Frazetta and John Buscema somehow met in the middle. More than anything, I see Buscema in his work, but it feels like a richer, rougher, more atmospheric version of Buscema—almost as though someone took the visual language of the classic Marvel Conan comics and enhanced it without losing what made those comics beautiful in the first place. This is exactly what I want Conan artwork to look like.
I was somewhat less enthusiastic about the conclusion. Once the story moved deeply into the supernatural mythology surrounding the Black Stone, I occasionally had trouble following exactly what was happening and why. Strangely, it began feeling less like a Conan story to me and more like a Kull story. That isn’t necessarily a criticism of the ideas themselves—I like Kull—but the cosmic and almost dreamlike elements seemed slightly out of place after the wonderfully physical Conan adventure that preceded them. Conan battling warriors, surviving impossible odds, wandering through hostile country, and encountering ancient horrors feels perfectly natural to me. Once the story begins reaching into stranger metaphysical territory, I become less certain that I am still standing on Conan’s particular patch of Robert E. Howard’s world.
I was also not entirely sold on the blonde Cimmerian warrior. Perhaps that is simply decades of Conan imagery conditioning me to associate Cimmerians with a particular appearance, but something about him didn’t quite work for me. It wasn’t enough to seriously damage the story, but it was one of those small details that kept pulling my attention away from it.
Still, those are relatively minor reservations about a book I enjoyed. Zub writes a Conan I recognize, Brissa is a character I genuinely came to like, and De La Torre’s artwork alone makes the volume worth seeing. It feels respectful of the older Conan comics without simply imitating them, and there is enough here to make me interested in continuing Titan’s series.
This didn’t reinvent Conan for me or make me reconsider the character in some profound new way. What it did was something considerably simpler: it gave me a good Conan adventure that reminded me why I enjoy Conan in the first place.
And sometimes that is exactly what I want.
Conan the Barbarian, Vol. 2: Thrice Marked for Death
I had mixed feelings about Conan the Barbarian Vol. 2: Thrice Marked for Death. There is quite a bit here that I liked, beginning once again with Jim Zub’s writing. Zub writes a Conan I recognize. His characterization continues to remind me of the Conan I loved in Roy Thomas’s Marvel comics, and I particularly enjoyed the connections to Conan’s time with Bêlit. That history matters here. Conan doesn’t simply move from one adventure to another as though everything that happened before has been forgotten; Bêlit remains part of him, and I appreciated seeing that period of his life treated as something that left a genuine mark.
Where the story began losing me was in its increasingly supernatural direction. Conan becoming possessed was already taking the character into territory that didn’t entirely feel like Conan to me, and the ending pushed that feeling considerably further. Conan ultimately kills himself.
Now, I am reasonably certain that Conan has not permanently committed suicide in the second volume of an ongoing Conan the Barbarian series. Presumably Volume 3 will explain exactly what has happened and put things right. Nevertheless, it struck me as a very strange direction for a Conan story. Once again, as I occasionally felt during Bound in Black Stone, Zub’s Conan seems to be wandering into territory that feels more appropriate for Kull—or perhaps even one of Robert E. Howard’s James Allison stories. Conan certainly belongs in a world of ghosts, demons, sorcery, ancient evils, and things humanity was better off not discovering, but possession and metaphysical questions about death and identity move somewhat farther away from what I personally want from him.
My larger problem with this volume, however, was Doug Braithwaite’s artwork. I simply did not like it.
Obviously, Braithwaite can draw infinitely better than I can, and there are things he does well. In fact, I thought his style worked particularly well for the ghosts. His heavy lines and somewhat gaunt figures give supernatural creatures an appropriately disturbing quality. Unfortunately, those same qualities frequently worked against the living characters, particularly Conan.
The faces distracted me constantly. Braithwaite uses a great many lines, and in comic-book artwork excessive facial lines can quickly make a character appear much older than intended. Conan sometimes looks aged, weathered beyond reason, or even parched. This is particularly noticeable around his mouth. I really don’t like the way Braithwaite draws male lips, and Conan’s lips are often so heavily lined that I found myself looking at them instead of paying attention to what Conan was doing.
Then there are the eyebrows. They seem to come and go. Sometimes Conan has prominent eyebrows; sometimes they appear to have disappeared entirely. When they are present, Braithwaite repeatedly gives Conan an expression in which the inner ends shoot upward at the glabella. It reminded me strangely of those youthful publicity photographs of Luke Perry and Jason Priestley where that particular expression seemed to be everywhere. Once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop noticing it.
I had the same problem with Braithwaite’s fondness for drawing Conan from below. I have now seen considerably more of Conan’s nostrils than I ever expected or particularly wanted to see. There is nothing inherently wrong with a low viewing angle, of course, but Braithwaite uses it repeatedly while, to my eye, not drawing the underside of the chin especially convincingly. It is therefore an odd angle to return to so often.
Even the nudity, which I ordinarily appreciate in sword-and-sorcery artwork, didn’t particularly work for me here. There is nothing wrong with depicting Conan’s world as an adult world containing adult bodies, and nudity can fit the primal physicality of sword-and-sorcery perfectly well. But Braithwaite’s nude figures often look gaunt and emaciated rather than sensual or physically vital. Instead of beautiful, dangerous, or sexy people inhabiting Conan’s world, I sometimes felt as though I were looking at particularly healthy-looking corpses. Again, that aesthetic works wonderfully for the ghosts. It is less successful when everyone is still alive.
All of this mattered because the artwork repeatedly pulled me out of the story. I could forgive an occasional strange face or inconsistent detail, but eventually I was looking for the disappearing eyebrows, the oddly lined lips, the upward glances and the nostrils. The visual storytelling had become a distraction from Zub’s writing rather than a complement to it.
That’s especially unfortunate after Roberto De La Torre’s exceptional work in Bound in Black Stone. His combination of something resembling John Buscema and Frank Frazetta felt almost ideal for Conan, so the change in artists was particularly noticeable to me.
There is still a good deal that I liked in Thrice Marked for Death. Zub continues to write Conan extremely well, and I appreciated the way the story reached back into Conan’s history with Bêlit rather than treating his adventures as completely disposable episodes. I’m interested enough in what Zub is doing that I certainly want to read Volume 3 and discover where this very strange ending is going.
But the increasingly metaphysical direction of the story wasn’t quite what I wanted from Conan, and the artwork actively diminished my enjoyment of a story I otherwise liked. Without that distraction, I probably would have rated the book three stars.
Conan the Barbarian, Vol. 3: The Age Unconquered
I knew I was in for something good almost as soon as I saw the name Roberto De La Torre on the cover.
After absolutely loving his artwork in the first volume, I was delighted to see him return, and he did not disappoint. Once again, his artwork is exceptional. This is the Conan I see in my head when I think of Conan. De La Torre’s work somehow evokes both Frank Frazetta and John Buscema without simply imitating either of them. There is the muscular, savage atmosphere of Frazetta and the classical comic-book storytelling of Buscema, but De La Torre brings enough of his own style that the result belongs to him.
It is brilliant.
In fact, this is some of the best comic-book artwork I have seen in years. His fight scenes are particularly impressive. They have weight, motion, violence and clarity. I never have difficulty understanding what is happening, but the panels still convey the chaos and physical brutality of combat. After finding the artwork in Volume 2 actively distracting, returning to De La Torre reminded me just how important the artist is to my enjoyment of a Conan comic. I don’t merely tolerate his artwork while enjoying Jim Zub’s story. I stop and admire it.
Fortunately, this time Zub’s writing came very close to matching it.
The Age Unconquered resolves the strange ending of Thrice Marked for Death quite satisfactorily. I had struggled with Conan becoming possessed and ultimately killing himself in that volume. I assumed, obviously, that Conan’s death wasn’t going to stick, but it had seemed like a peculiar direction for a Conan story—something I would have expected more readily from a Kull or James Allison story. Here, Zub makes that decision pay off. What had seemed strange in isolation makes considerably more sense as part of the larger story.
And then Zub started throwing things at me that seemed almost specifically designed to make me happy.
Yag-Kosha!
Kull!
The sword from the 1982 Conan the Barbarian movie!
And then—Thulsa Doom.
That was where this book began verging on four-star territory for me.
Zub does something with Thulsa Doom that I have wanted someone to do for years. Rather than treating the various incarnations of the character as entirely separate things, he begins bringing them together. There is the Thulsa Doom associated with Kull. There are elements recalling the Thulsa Doom of the Conan the Barbarian movie. And then Zub brings Kathulos from Robert E. Howard’s “Skull-Face” into the equation.
Yes.
Absolutely yes.
I have suggested for years that Kathulos and Thulsa Doom could be the same person. The connections seemed too tantalizing not to explore: ancient, seemingly deathless sorcerous figures whose identities stretch backward through forgotten ages of human history. It seemed like exactly the sort of connection someone could make within Howard’s sprawling prehistoric mythology.
And Jim Zub actually did it.
There is a peculiar satisfaction in encountering an idea in a published story and realizing that the writer has made manifest something you have been wanting someone to do for years. It isn’t merely an Easter egg or a reference included to make knowledgeable Howard readers smile. Zub takes material from different corners of the larger Howard mythology—and even from the cinematic Conan tradition—and finds a way of weaving it together into something that feels purposeful.
That is also why the inclusion of Kull works so well for me. I complained in the previous volumes that portions of this storyline sometimes felt more like Kull stories than Conan stories. This time Zub essentially answers that objection by bringing Kull himself into the larger mythology he is constructing. Instead of Conan simply wandering into territory that feels as though it belongs to another Howard hero, Zub begins revealing the connections among those different ages.
The story also has genuine stakes. There is a cost to what happens here. That matters enormously in an adventure story because victory becomes much less interesting when nothing meaningful can be lost. Conan survives—of course he does—but survival isn’t the same thing as escaping untouched.
And throughout all of it, Zub continues writing a Conan that I recognize. That may be the highest compliment I can give him. He can incorporate cosmic horror, ancient mythology, Kull, Yag-Kosha, Thulsa Doom, Kathulos and even imagery from the Schwarzenegger movie without losing Conan himself beneath all those references. Conan remains Conan.
There is a danger in this sort of continuity-building. A writer can become so delighted by references and connections that the story turns into little more than a catalogue of things the audience recognizes. I don’t think Zub crosses that line. These things aren’t merely appearing so that I can point at them. He is attempting to build something out of them.
And, good grief, I want to see where he goes with it.
This doesn’t quite reach four stars for me. But it came surprisingly close. It is considerably stronger than the previous volume, it retroactively makes some of the stranger decisions in that book work better, and it takes Jim Zub’s larger Conan story in a direction that I find genuinely exciting.
And Roberto De La Torre’s artwork?
Give this man as much Conan as he wants to draw.
