CONAN THE BARBARIAN #9 (2023)
TITAN COMICS/Heroic Signatures
STORY: Jim Zub
ART: Roberto de la Torre
COLORS: Dean White
LETTERS: Richard Starkings of Comicraft
EDITOR: Chris Butera
COVER: Mike Deodato with Jão Canola
VARIANT COVER ARTISTS: E.M. Gist; Mike Deodato; Ickpot, Roberto de la Torre; Chris Moreno; Francesca Baerald
32pp, Color, $3.99 U.S. (April 2024)
Suggested for mature readers
“The Age Unconquered” Part I: “Suffer Not the King of Wonders”
Conan the Cimmerian was born in the pulp fiction of Robert E. Howard (REH), first appearing in the magazine, Weird Tales (1932). In 1970, Marvel Comics brought Conan to the world of comic books via the title, Conan the Barbarian. With only a few pauses, Conan comic books have been published for the better part of five decades.
Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures are the new producers of Conan comic books, and they launched a new Conan the Barbarian series in 2023. The current story arc is written by Jim Zub; drawn by Roberto de la Torre; colored by Dean White; and lettered by Richard Starkings. Entitled “The Age Unconquered,” this arc finds Conan's body and/or soul transported 80,000 years into the past
Conan the Barbarian #9 (“Suffer Not the King of Wonders”) opens in the wake of the incidents related to Conan's involvement in the theft of the artifact known as “Tarim's Touch.” Conan recognized the artifact as a shard of the cursed “Black Stone,” which he'd once broken with the help of a Pict blade. The theft led to the death of Conan's cohorts, the “Gloryhounds”...
… and left Conan apparently transported eighty thousand years into the past, to the time of Kull of Atlantis, also known as “Kull the Conqueror.” Conan also meets the legendary figure, Brule the Spear-slayer, a Pict. After proving his mettle, Conan is allowed to travel with Brule and his men to Valusia, “the City of Wonders.” There, Conan will meet King Kull, but it will be like nothing he expects.
THE LOWDOWN: Titan Comics has been providing me with PDF copies of their publications for review for several years now. Conan the Barbarian #9 is one of them.
Writer Jim Zub has moved the Conan the Barbarian comic book series in a new direction. Conan has been transported from “the Hyborean Age,” the age in which Conan's creator, Robert E. Howard, set his adventures, to “the Thurian Age,” the time in which Howard sets the adventures of Conan's precursor, Kull of Atlantis.
It is a big change, but it allows Zub to make Conan a stranger in a strange land, and that itself presents new opportunities for conflict and tension. This ninth issue delivers on that potential with a showdown between Conan and Kull.
What really makes this story work is Roberto de la Torre's haunted storytelling. Mixing elements and graphical styles of Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, and John Buscema, de la Torre guides this first chapter from the mists of lost time to the brutal death match between the two beasts of Howard's oeuvre. It is nice to see de la Torre recall the Conan comic books of yesteryear in telling this fantastic story, and it is nice that Dean White's colors amplify the mystery rather than brighten it. Richard Starking's stark lettering is the pounding audio track to this fine opening chapter.
“The Age Unconquered” may end up conquering us, dear readers, as it carries us to a new direction for Conan the Barbarian.
I READS YOU RECOMMENDS: Fans of Conan comic books will want to try Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures' Conan the Barbarian.
[This comic book includes the essay, “Shining Cities and Stone Age Kingdoms: Robert E. Howard's Thurian Age” the ninth installment of Conan/Howard essays by Jeffrey Shanks.]
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Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"
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