Comic book review: King Conan Conqueror #6- A Kingdom of Dust

Writer: Timothy Truman
Artist: Tomas Giorello
Colours: Jose Villarrubia
Publisher: Dark Horse Comic
Released: 30th July 2014


‘But of what worth are power and the treasures it brings…if there’s no one to give them to?’

So says an elderly King Conan as he concludes his tale of the glory days of battle and how he re-gained his kingdom, and his Queen.

After the glorious battle, after the mighty sweep of his sword and vengeance gained, the defeat of his enemies and the destruction of the wizard Xaltotun, the book ends not with a celebration, but with a melancholy lamentation.

It’s that feeling of melancholy that I will remember the most from this latest take on Robert E. Howard’s Hour of the Dragon story. This final edition celebrates Conan’s victory with gloriously illustrated panels that depict the key moments of battle.

The standout panels are the destruction of the wizard himself, in a swash of blood and furious, aggressive muscular vengeance. It’s the colouring that does it here, but in the quieter panels there is a look in the eye of the elderly King Conan. Still mighty, still a towering colossus of coiled muscularity, but the eye, surrounded by scars, it is sad, very sad.

The good news is that this creative team is going to return. There are no details as of yet, but as soon as I hear about them I’ll put it up on my blog. I don’t usually announce comic book news here, but with this creative team working again on Conan; I’ll make a happy exception.

King Conan The Conqueror Part 6 of 6 is a book of blood, battle and glorious vengeance for our eponymous hero. It was a great victory, but now as an elderly King Conan re-tells the tale of his most glorious hour, there is no joy there, no celebration, no boastful elevation of his own legend. No, there is only sadness as he surveys the life he is now living, and how everybody he knew, admired, loved or hated are no longer of the world.

All that remains is a melancholy old King with a kingdom of material riches but with nobody to share them with. Worse still, he has no heir apparent to the Kingdom he spent his life’s energies and passions to secure, and as he looks over the body of his dead wife the past is all he has. The present is numb, and the future offers nothing but dust.


Rating: 10/10

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