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)

Review: Conan the Avenger #12- Dreaming of pretty girls, wizards and monsters

Writer: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Brian Ching
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 25th March 2015


Dreams of pretty girls, of wizards, monsters, and far away lands of legend, myth and adventure give you a reason to live, a reason to battle through the hangovers, a reason to keep on writing, to keep on dreaming, to keep on living.

For if there cannot be anything better in this world, write it, and live it in your mind.

I can sense that feeling of silent desperation and loneliness when I read Robert E. Howard. It’s a feeling of disconnection from his world, and a longing to go back, to be somebody else who could be brave, strong, fearless, a leader with passion in his life, a passion that drives him, that makes living not a chore, but a pleasure.

Reading ‘The Adventures of Two-Gun Bob’ by Jim & Ruth Keegan (the excellent short at the end of Conan the Avenger #12) I get a sad sense of who Conan author Robert E. Howard actually was. It’s not a happy tale. Dreaming of being somebody else, of a beautiful woman, of a ship, a monster, a beach, he wakes to reality with a hangover:

‘Dreams, and dreams and the ghosts of dreams. Last night I was drunk but there seems to be no especial hangover this morning.’ (Robert E. Howard)

Looking on the bright side, at least his head doesn’t hurt from the wasteful nothingness of the night before. He can write again, make something happen in a world that he feels no connection to.

Conan is essentially a boyish dream, a fantasy character that allows you to experience a life you want to live, but without the difficulty that real life contains. You get the muscles, the cool hair, the exotic locations, the monsters, the wizards and the pretty girls, and you don’t even have to put your pants on and leave the house to get it all.

But live there for too long and you will start to rot from the inside. You cannot hide from the real world forever. You can try, for a while, but reality has a way of getting to you, and of bringing you kicking and screaming back to that dull grey place that you don’t want to be.

Reality can be awful disappointing, and people are never as interesting or courageous, as you want them to be. If people were like the characters in Conan comic books then I would be surrounded by heroic, honest, strong, morally upright, beautiful, monstrous, interesting, passionate, deceitful, mendacious, scheming, mysterious, fascinating people. Guess what? I’m not surrounded by those kinds of people.

I’m surrounded by the bored, the lonely, the stupid, the uninteresting, the cowardly, the trapped, the dreary, the suspicious, the petty, the angry, the spiteful, the lost, the indifferent and those just stuck in an endless routine of keeping their heads down until the day that they die. That’s real life, and it’s hard to square it with what you read in a Robert E. Howard story about Conan. You end up asking, where are the heroes? Where are the villains? Where are the interesting characters? You find none, and it’s bloody depressing, so here’s my solution to the problem. If you cannot find somebody who interests you, then be the person who interests you.

Set a goal, go for it, be good at something, achieve something, increase your social status and have adventures.  You don’t have to stay indoors, and you don’t have to create worlds in your head. The real world is big enough, and although the people might seem a bit dull and predictable compared to the wonderful characters of fiction, there are real adventures waiting for you in reality.

Take the masculine essence of Conan if you want to be Conan, and achieve, achieve, achieve, and if you don’t achieve, well sod it, a good failure can be just as much fun as well. There are a million ways to do this, all you have to do is set your mind on a goal, and go for it. Having something to strive for, to get out of bed for, to live for, will be enough, and don’t worry; there will be plenty of wizards, monsters and pretty girls along the way.

Robert E. Howard wrote a lot, probably too much. He created so much, but lived too little, and when life kept kicking him in the guts there was nothing left to anchor him to the reality that he didn’t really care much for anyway.

You have to force yourself to care. Fantasy is enjoyable, but fantasy is not reality. Take the metaphors, the analogies and the moral lessons, and use them to navigate the real, but don’t get the two confused, and don’t spend too much time in a world that doesn’t exist. Fantasy can lead to unhappiness, to self-delusion, it can lead you into voting to be a slave, and reality is a lot more interesting than you might think.



Rating: 8/10 (A happy ending to the arc with some enjoyable moments of humour from a delirious Conan)

Comic review: Conan the Avenger #11- Developing a passion for knowledge, and desire for truth

Writer: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Brian Ching
Colourist: Michael Atiyeh
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 25th February 2015


Reading a good Conan book always cheers me up, and this was an excellent one, with a devious wizard, a beautiful girl, treachery, bravery, cunning and revenge.

All of this is beautifully portrayed with large (I have to put that one on my wall) panels of excellent artwork from artist Brian Ching. The art, from the pencilling, to the colouring, to the panel layout and size is uniformly excellent, and it puts a fruity, ripe scrumptious cherry on top of what is already an extremely delicious comic book cake.

Am I not a hypocrite though for railing against ‘Dominators’ as I did in my previous review of Sinestro #10, and then heaping praise on this Conan book? Surely Conan himself is just another dominator? No, he is not. Conan has never been about domination. To me, and when he is written as he should be, he is a moral man, brave, cocky, adventure seeking, but also (as Robert E. Howard himself describes) deeply melancholic.

At the end of his adventures Conan becomes a reluctant King. It is something that he never wanted to be, but in the twilight of his life all of the battles have been won, and so almost by default the crown goes to him, and unhappy is the man who wears it.

That Conan, that melancholic Conan, is not on display in Conan the Avenger #11. In this book Conan is the young, happy, adventure seeking Conan. He is arrogant, funny, brave, sharp as a blade and full of enthusiasm for life. This is the Conan before the victory, doing what he lives for, fighting, conniving, struggling and spitting in the faces of those who would rule over him. He is carefree, bleeding, in pain, but having the time of his life. That is the true essence of Conan. That is who he is supposed to be.

Conan isn’t the only character in this book that is fighting against those who would dominate, there is a girl as well, and it is her story that is the backbone to this issue. She fights for revenge, for the memory of her husband who fought not for gold, for power, but for knowledge.

Imagine what the world would be like today if everybody had the same mindset, where money was not as important as the search for truth? We can have that world, but it has to start on an individual level. It’s up to each and every one of us personally to learn to fall in love with the search for knowledge, the search for truth.

Or we can keep living for money, and the world can continue as it does today. Our choice, we make it every day.

I’m in a fantastic mood now, my spirits have been lifted and I feel more optimistic about the human race than I did before. That’s quite an achievement for a comic book don’t you think? So that’s why I still read Conan comic books, because when they are average they are good, when they are good they are excellent, and when they are excellent, as Conan the Avenger #11 certainly is, they transcend superlatives, showing what it is to be a human being, what it is that we should be living for. To live with passion, with strength, with courage, with determination and a burning, burning, burning desire for knowledge and that elusive yet essential spiritual Holy Grail called TRUTH.

Ratinmg: 10/10

Comic review: Conan the Avenger #10- Sit-up, stand-up, don’t be a slave

Writer: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Brian Ching
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 28th January 2015


Writer Fred Van Lente gives us some good old fashioned manly action in this month’s Conan the Avenger, and it continues to have everything that you could ask for in a Conan story.

Issue #10 features a pretty girl on the back of Conan’s horse, Conan himself having a far from friendly cuddle with a giant reptile, and a devious wizard doing what devious wizard’s do.

It features superb panel construction from artist Brian Ching, who builds up the narrative tension before giving the reader superb full page panels of artwork when the action or narrative development peaks in terms of excitement/peril for our brave hero.

Two panels stand-out, but I won’t spoil them. Get the book for yourself and I guarantee that you’ll have just as much fun with them as I did.

The book is a lot of fun, but it’s not perfect. It has a weak ending, and some of the dialogue is a bit too cute, a bit too self-aware and a bit too annoying in a way that you’ll find in a lot of mainstream comic books today.

You know how it goes? Everything is a joke, and the exchanges read more like a writer trying to be clever rather than two believable people having a genuine conversation. Some people like that, but it gets on my nerves. Lets get away from Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarrantino and move on to more realistic dialogue. I like realism, not cleverness.

Apart from that point on the ‘too cool for school’ nature of some of the dialogue I have no hesitation in recommending this exciting, well drawn, expertly constructed slice of good old fashioned swords and scorcery, damsel in distress, lizards and wizards action.

Conan the Avenger #10 is an enjoyable book, there’s no Police state worshipping about it, and Conan himself is an archetype, a hero who still resonates strongly today. In these collectivised, authority
worshipping times Conan reminds us that we have to be responsible for ourselves, and if we rely on authority to protect us we’ll end up living in a prison of our own design.

Don’t sit down, don’t watch, and don’t give away your power to those who would control you. If you want something, then do it for yourself. Be like Conan. Sit-up, stand-up, and don’t be a slave.


Rating: 8/10