Review: King Conan The Conqueror Part 5 of 6: Masculinity fight-back

Artist: Tomas Giorello
Writer: Timothy Truman
Colourist: Jose Villarrubia
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 25th June 2014

The work produced by the creative team of Truman, Giorello and Villarrubia on this latest re-telling of Robert E. Howard’s Hour of the Dragon has been amazing, there’s no other word for it. This story has been told over and over again, and I have read it many, many times. Yet when the latest issue comes out, as it did this week, it’s still the one comic book that I’m most looking forward to reading, even though I know the story inside out by now. That’s the biggest compliment that I can pay to it, that something so familiar is not in the least bit worn out, and is still as fresh as anything released today.

This issue is nearing the end of Howard’s tale now, and it follows on from the previous issue's cliff-hanger, with a Hammer Horror style Mummy walking menacingly towards our eponymous hero. You have to love the dialogue here, with the testosterone and masculine strength that pulsates through the artwork being perfectly realised in the actual words coming from Conan’s mouth. Without spoilers, (for those lucky few not yet familiar with the tale) the Mummy gives Conan a gift. Here’s how the subsequent conversation between Conan and said Mummy goes-

Conan- “Who are you?”
Mummy- “ I was Thoth-Mekhi. I am dead.”
Conan- “ Well, since you’re feeling so damned helpful, show me out of this cursed temple will you?”

Is that not beautiful? How Conan, completely unintimidated by any man, living or dead talks to the Mummy like it’s some kind of random bloke in the street who’s giving him directions. Conan really is a man from a lost past. A past where men acted like men, and politically correctness and the curse that is liberal feminism had yet to blight the body politic.

This is further confirmed in the next few pages where scantily clad temple prostitutes get drunk with a corrupt and decedent king. This is not portrayed as a good thing by the way. It’s portrayed as a bad thing, as something that weak cowardly men do rather than engage with life and taking charge of their own destinies. This is no dedication to licentiousness, drunkenness and abusing your ill-deserved social status (for all of you celebrity worshippers out there), no this is a warning about what happens when you act like a fool and not like a man.

The artwork throughout this book is of the highest possible calibre, and together with the colouring it creates an impression that you simply will not see in your average Wolverine or Batman book. Just look at the panels I’ve included alongside this review, and get the bloody book immediately. If you like good art then you’ll want to get this book. Put the feminist liberal guilt trip nonsense aside for a second and be a real bloody man, or a real bloody woman, and just buy the bloody book.

This series ends next month, but if you haven’t been following it don’t worry. There will be two trade paperbacks coming out very soon that collect all twelve issues of the run. If you haven’t been following this run you need to get those two books as soon as they are released, and if you have been following this run, you need to pick them up as well, but you already know that.

This has been good. No, it’s been more than good. This is Conan being told as Conan should be told, and in this cultural wasteland of 2014 we should be immensely grateful that Darkhorse comics is still putting out books that don’t pander to the bullshit feminist liberal agenda that is poisoning all of the younger generations of comic book fans, heads full as they are with Rockefeller nonsense from their years of incarceration, mind-control indoctrination at school, college and university.

This is a book with red blood and a strong anti-authoritarian, masculine heartbeat. Do you realise how rare that is today? There are hints that the creative team will continue to work on more Conan stories past this run, and we’ll get more news on that next month. I’m sure they’ll continue. They have to continue. I can hear Conan himself roaring his demand through this generation of defeated male comic-com attending, emasculated guilt-tripping, soft dullards. ‘Oh you shall continue. By Crom I demand that you do.’ Do not ignore Conan, it would be unwise to do so.
Rating: 10/10

Review: King Conan The Conqueror Part 4 of 6- Akivasha the Temptress

Writer: Timothy Truman
Artist: Tomas Giorello
Colourist: Jose Villarrubia
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 28th May 2014

For long time fans of all things Conan related this story (an adaptation of Howard’s Hour of the Dragon) will be extremely familiar. This issue follows the part of the tale where Conan meets the vampire Akivasha, makes a run for it, witnesses the priests doing their ceremony with the heart of Ahriman, is startled by the intrusion of a third party and ends up joining the fight himself. So what is new? That’s the question here as the story is already well known, and I don’t want to go through it all over again. Firstly, the art is gorgeous. Akivasha is drawn extremely seductively, and there’s an air of menace to her, an alluring sense of danger like a siren calling a ship onto the rocks. Conan resists, but few men would, and the framing device of an older King Conan explaining how he resisted is something new.

‘That day I saw the hideous reality of immortality. The foul perversion of everlasting life. Perhaps it was the memory of Zenobia’s warm hand which put the lie to Akivasha’s cold, dead touch and kept me free of her spell.’

That is the main difference in this re-telling and others I’ve previously read, but the final panel is also particularly worth mentioning, using a cliff hanging device of Conan being in peril from what appears to be a Mummy creature that you would normally find in a Hammer horror movie. It’s a great way to end the issue, making up for what often comes across as a bit of a weak climax where the main villain Thutothmes is rather easily dispatched, and not even by Conan but by an interloper on the final, climactic scene where the power of the heart of Ahriman is revealed.

Get this book for the art, even if you’ve got dozens of other comic book variations on the Hour of the Dragon tale. Akivasha has never looked so seductively evil, and it’s a lot of fun to see Conan escaping her alluring caresses, even if you know exactly what is going to happen next. Rating 9/10