Review by C.J. Bunce
A few years ago I called this black and white series the best drawn Conan comic in years. Now fantasy fans have the third volume of Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures’ magazine-sized anthology comic featuring Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian in one of the most popular titles in the hero’s history. The Savage Sword of Conan (available now here at Amazon) reprints Issues #7-9 in a trade paperback edition that will take long-time readers back to their favorite 1970s stories and art. This volume begins with a “lost” tale from Marvel Comics legend Roy Thomas, a story called “Mark of the Beast” that he’d intended to include between Issue #28 and Issue #29 in the original Conan the Barbarian series back in 1973. The story alone is worth grabbing this book, especially with the vintage style artwork of Roberto de la Torre.
How do you like your Conan stories? I tend to favor those stories that incorporate a modern trope, like the heist in Howard’s Tower of the Elephant or the unlikely team-up as in John C. Hocking’s novel Conan and the Emerald Lotus. This volume of The Savage Sword of Conan is purely for readers who love Conan at his most primitive and fierce. These stories all have in common lust and bloodlust–it’s Conan and beautiful, scantilly-clad or partially nude women and Conan battling giant animals and even monstrous monstrosities. But not every story is a Conan story. If you’re not familiar with this title and may have subscribed to magazines like Star Wars Weekly years ago, you’ll recall how the main story featured the title story but unrelated shorter adventures filled out the magazine pages. These unrelated stories have a similar fantasy flare. It’s also a bit like Heavy Metal magazine, which also compiled a variety of stories from several creators.
As with the Conan magazines fans have been reading and collecting for decades, the pages are all pencil and ink drawings without any color, except that great cover by the late Neal Adams.
In addition to the Thomas/de la Torre story, look forward to Patch Zircher and Juan Alberto Hernández’s “The Twelfth Labor of Breckenridge Elkins,” Dennis Culver and Chris Burnham’s “Treasure of the Vermin Queen,” Fred Kennedy and Marco Rudy’s “When I was Young, I Met a King,” a poem by Jim Zub with art by Dan Panosian, a Zack Davisson and Max von Fafner story, ” The Wuthering,” by Liam Sharp, a Valeria story by Patrick Zircher, a Fabian Nicieza and Sean Chen story, plus lots of pin-ups and cover art from the series.
What is the overall vibe of these adventures? Mix the characters from the Marx Toys historical figures of the 1960s and 1970s with the Theoden King thread of The Lord of the Rings and you’ll arrive somewhere near The Savage Sword of Conan.
For fans of savage Conan with a capital “S,” don’t miss The Savage Sword of Conan Volume 3. Add it to your pull list at Elite Comics or your local comic shop or order a copy here at Amazon.
