Conan the Avenger #18- Conan the Barbarian, and the legion of strong independent feminist warriors

Writer: Fred Van Lente
Art: Brian Ching
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 30th September 2015



There was something very mainstream about this book. It didn’t read like a traditional ‘Conan’ comic book to me at all. Instead it read like a Gail Simone book, or any other feminist tinged contemporary comic book coming out of the US comic book industry today.

I couldn’t envision Robert. E Howard writing a story like the one I had just read, and so I checked, and no, he didn’t write it. The story in Conan the Avenger #18 comes directly from the mind of writer Fred Van Lente, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the original stories.

I don’t insist on writers endlessly recycling the original stories, but Howard’s tales are all about rugged, independent, heroic masculinity, and when you strip that from a new ‘Conan’ story what do you have left?

Conan the Avenger #18 reads like a dime a dozen modern pro-feminist narrative. It has Conan on the cover, but the book is more concerned with empowering women than doing anything with the Conan character.

Having a pretty young girl matching Conan in one on one combat is not very believable, but it’s very PC, and that’s exactly what you get in this book. It’s also what you get in Marvel books and DC books, this wilfully stupid idea that women are the equals of men when it comes to physical strength and sporting/fighting prowess. It’s stupid because it’s not true. You don’t have males versus females in competitive sports. If you did it would be a mismatch, and that is why you will never see men versus women in a MMA fight or on the football field. Sorry feminists, but men and women are different, and although political correctness can’t get with that truth, that doesn’t make it any less true.

There’s nothing in Conan the Avenger #18 that differentiates it from the Avengers, BatGirl, Red Sonja, Spider Woman, Wonder Woman, or any of the other comic books on the market place today that are in faithful PC obedience to the insanity that is the modern feminist movement.

I read Conan books as a brief respite, as an escape from the lies of the modern feminist movement. So when I read a book like Conan the Avenger #18, a book that is identical to all of the other mainstream comic books in 2015, it’s disappointing.

I want my Conan books to be Conan books, and what I have read in Conan the Avenger #18, whilst not bad, is not a Conan book. It’s just another average, contemporary mass-market, mainstream comic book with a six packed bloke, and some warrior kick ass women matching him blow for blow. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I expect something different from my Conan books.

What I want from Conan is old school damsel in distress action. I want brave manly men and gratefully rescued girls. I want men to act like men, and women to act like women. I want Conan to be a testosterone fuelled, over-sexed, super aggressive, male chauvinist pig, not a pretty boy that spar/flirts with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’m well aware that I sound like a misogynist old fossil in saying that, but that’s what I want from Conan the Barbarian. He’s a ‘Barbarian’ for Crom’s sake, not a metrosexual hipster.

Conan is a simple character. He has wonderfully sexist adventures using his mightily phallic sword to rescue pretty young girls from evil sorcerers and their pet monsters. It’s a bit ridiculous, but that’s what he does, that’s what makes him Conan, and if he’s not even allowed to do that anymore, well, he’s not really Conan, is he?

Rating: 6/10 (A decent comic book, but there’s no trace of Howard here)