Comic review: Weirdworld #1- A Flabby Voice of Surrender.

Artist: Mike Del Mundo
Writer: Jason Aaron
Colours: Mike Del Mundo & Marco D’Alfonso
Publisher: Marvel (Disney)
Released: 10th June 2015


I didn’t find this ‘WeirdWorld’ to be particularly weird. The art portrayed weird, if weird is psychedelic trippy hippie 1960’s weird, but the narrative itself was just another mainstream comic book story of a lost Conan clone trying to get home, and fighting monsters.

I don’t think that it’s unfair to call Arkon (the protagonist in this book) a ‘Conan clone’ because, well, just look at him. He’s Conan, and it would be daft to pretend that he’s not. I read a lot of Conan books, and there’s no mistaking it. This guy is as close to being Conan as you can possibly get, at least visually speaking anyway.

Jason Aaron writes Arkon as a generic, indistinguishable 2015 era comic book protagonist. The narrative unfolds with Arkon as narrator, telling his own story as he waves his chopper at sharks and jumps off waterfalls. The actions are blood and guts toughness, but the voice of Arkon, unfortunately, is not in the least bit Conan. In place of the iron willed barbarian voice of defiance, courage and brutal integrity we get wet, limp and border line comedic.

‘How does one eviscerate despair? How do you strangle hopelessness?’

What a wuss. Is this Conan the Emo? I don’t think that it’s supposed to be. No, it’s just another limp comic book character written during very dire times for western masculinity. As I read this comic book, enjoying the beautifully painted artwork and lovingly crafted panels, I’m becoming painfully aware that this barbarian, this man of muscles and swords, isn’t really any different to any other whining ‘hero’ that I would read in a mainstream comic book of today.

Five pages in and he’s crying like a child lost in a supermarket. On page seven he is already done. A victim of despair, he’s ready to kill himself, not because of any great problem, not because he’s injured and about to be torn apart by a pack of dogs and unable to defend himself, but because he’s lost, and can’t be bothered to keep on trying to fight. I’m not joking. Seven pages in and this child-man is looking to jump off the nearest cliff. Now that’s a modern emo barbarian hero for you. Why continue to fight to the end when you can moan like a little girl and then do yourself in?

Before our hero takes the final leap into self indulgence, he’s forced into another fight, and the narrative goes into the usual ‘cool’ mode of story-telling that is so common in books (and movies) of today. You know how it goes, right?

Do you have nothing to say? Do you spend your entire life in a fantasy world where reality never peeks, thus making you incapable of saying anything about the world or what it means to have real human experiences? No problem, do something ‘cool’ instead. ‘Cool’ is God now, the comic book geeks live for ‘cool,’ so give it to them until they drown in the stuff.

The cool continues in Weirdworld #1 until the end of the book where the narrative POV switches to a sexy villainous, a girl for Conan the Emo Barbarian to have adventures with. Who knows? If he’s lucky he might even get a small peck on the cheek from her? No girl with anything at all going for her would want to give this drip a proper kiss, so friend-zone is the best that somebody like Arkon the weak could ever hope for.

Poor old Jason Aaron. He’s trying to write tough, and all he’s doing is writing another limp-wristed death of masculinity contemporary ‘hero.’

The artwork by Mike Del Mundo is great. I loved his swirls, his colours, and his artistic theme of harsh bloody, dirty reality mixing with the golden shine of magical fantasy. Mike Del Mundo is a new name to me, and I’ll be keeping an eye on him, but the writing, Aaron’s version of masculinity in particular, is embarrassing. There’s a sense of passive aggressive wetness about it all, and the supposition heavy, narrative voice of the protagonist reads about as well as the awfully stilted dialogue in a Stephen King novel.

It’s a shame. I loved the art, but the voice of the hero, the voice of everybody in the book actually, was just too much wet for me to take.

I really tried to like the book. It’s swords and sorcery, and I love swords and sorcery. It’s Conan (it is) and I love Conan, but it’s an old genre with a modern voice.

That modern voice is completely unbearable. It feels soft, bloated, unused to difficulty and unwilling or unable to endure empty days of useless toil for zero award. There was a feeling of entitlement to it, of expecting that life will be easy, that it will have meaning, that there will be rewards, when anybody who has actually lived a life knows that existence is usually just routine, pain, indifference, frustration, nothingness and toil, toil, toil.

I couldn’t help but take a dislike to the flabby tone of the book, and as much as I loved the artwork, that narrative voice of surrender ultimately stopped me from having the fun that I was desperately trying to have.


Rating: 5/10 (For the art alone)

Comic Review: Conan the Avenger #13 (Xuthal of the Dusk- Part One)-Lack of effort sinks updated version of a Conan classic

Writer: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Guiu Vilanova
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 29th April 2015

I’ve already read this Conan story, in one of my old comic books, and unfortunately for this version, the art and story telling in that old version is a lot better than in this one.

The old version I’m talking about here is ‘The Slithering Shadow,’ by artist John Buscema and writer Roy Thomas. Released back in 1977’s ‘The Savage Sword of Conan’ that older version of the story was absolutely amazing. This new version by writer Fred Van Lente and artist Guiu Vilanova is okay, but when the older version is absolutely stunning, just being okay isn’t really doing anything for me.

The script in this new version is almost identical to the older one, it’s just that it’s not as good, the art isn’t as detailed, and all I get here is a comic book that doesn’t really bring anything new to the story. It’s a shame, because I love just about every Conan story, but what I have here is a noticeably inferior version of an old comic book, and it would be dishonest of me not to acknowledge that in my review.

So how to grade it? If the 1977 version didn’t exist then it would be easy. I would say that the art looked a bit static, and that the script felt a bit different than usual, old fashioned even. I would say that the story was intriguing, but the art wasn’t really doing it for me, and I would have given it a 7/10 rating.

Of course the reason for it seeming a bit old fashioned is because it’s the identical script to the 1977 version, even down to the bit where Conan pats his girl on the backside to show her that she’s not a disembodied spirit. The problem though is that the original butt pat was a lot funnier, and a lot more obviously over the top 1970’s sexist. In this version it is done in a couple of small panels and the impact is minimal. It’s almost like writer Fred Van Lente has taken that old script, copied it panel by panel, and handed it in to artist Guiu Vilanova to do something new with it. His art isn’t bad, but it’s not particularly great either, and all he has done here is remind me of just how good an artist John Buscema really was.

What else can I say? I love Conan stories, but this one isn’t really trying very hard, and because of that lack of effort I have to give it a rare bad rating for a Conan comic book. I hate to do so, but a slightly below average rating is what this comic book actually deserves, so that is what it will get.


Rating: 4/10 (Get the 1977 version instead)

For a better version of Robert E. Howard's 'Xuthal of the Dusk' tale get your hands on a copy of The Savage Sword of Conan #20 from July 1977. You should be able to get a copy on ebay. Here's what the cover looks like:

Review: Robert E. Howard’s Savage Sword #10 (Featuring ‘Demon In a Silvered Glass’)- Drugs Come Out of Boredom Babe

Main story: Demon in A Silvered Glass, by Doug Moench & art by John Bolton. 

Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Released: April 1st 2015

Note- The images in this review are of the 1981 black and white version of the story. The 2015 version in Savage Sword #10 has been beautifully coloured by Jim Campbell, so to enjoy the coloured version please buy the book.

Savage Sword #10 was a reminder of quite a few things, of feelings, of moments in my life. It triggered a recollection of boredom, and of what can (or will, to be more precise) happen to you when you let the hooks of inertia dig deep within your psyche. Boredom will kill you, it will leave you open to the Reptilian part of your nature, that old demon that lurks, waiting for an opening, before pouncing at your moment of weakness, taking you over, killing your body and rotting your soul.

The book also reminded me of being a kid. Of being a young boy in love with comic books where brave heroes battled against evil sorcerers and their seductive, yet equally as dangerous daughters. It reminded me of that boyish suspicion of all things ‘girl’ related, that there is something alluring there, but be careful son, that beauty has a heck of a bite on it as well.

The story I’m talking about in Savage Word #10 is the old one, the story about a bored King and what happens to him when he gives into adult boredom, and the boyish fear of all things girlie is ignored. It’s the longest story in Savage Sword #10, and by far the best. The title of the story is ‘Demon In A Silvered Glass,’ written by Doug Moench, and with art by John Bolton. The story was first released in 1981, and it really stands out because you don’t get anything like this anymore. It’s too good, too clever, too intelligent, too insightful about the nature of power, boredom and human nature. It’s brilliant, and you don’t get that many brilliant comic books in 2015.

I hadn’t read the story as a kid. How I missed it I do not know, but I did, so reading it here for the first time is pure pleasure, a mix of nostalgia not only because the story (and art) is in a different league to anything available today, but also because it brings me back to my boyhood of reading cool American comic books with manly heroes who you could really look up to as being the personification of the man you want to grow up and become when the lazy days of boyhood fights and tree-house adventures sadly comes to an end.

Like I previously mentioned, the story is about a bored King. He gives in to the animal side of his nature, and becomes something akin to the neo-liberal democratically selected leaders that we have in the morally bankrupt west today. The spiritual, moral side of his nature, the very thing that makes him a man slowly ebbs away as he lives a life of authoritarian pleasure. He reverts to the Reptilian side of his nature, and by doing so he leaves not only himself open, but his entire Kingdom open for take-over as well.

This is a book that could have been written by David Icke himself. What this is about is the leaders of humanity being taken over by Reptilian outsiders who have hacked into the DNA of our species, implanting their evil into our brains in order to corrupt the species and eventually take it over and use it for their own ends.

The only difference between this book and our real world is that in this book the Reptilian outsiders are eventually defeated and the spiritual, eternal soul of man wins over the grounded, animal part of our nature. In our world the Reptilian elements have yet to be defeated. They haven’t yet won, but they are largely in charge of the world and are currently running it for their own benefit through the use of their Reptilian (influenced at least) front-men in the political sphere. Look at the world, look at what is happening, look at who is running it, and then ask yourself this question:

Is the world being run for the benefit of the human race, or is it being run for the benefit of something else?

I know how it looks to me. It looks like a world being controlled by the kind of woman/man who has given in to boredom, the kind of human who has completely given in to the animal side of their nature who want to kill, to destroy, to rape and pillage and indulge their baser instincts. If there is a God, he is not in charge of this planet. What is in charge is an animal/reptilian man who sits on a throne of boredom and decadence. He looks at the world and hating humanity, bored with it all, wants to set it all on fire, and warm his toes as he watches it all burn.

‘Demon In A Silvered Glass’ then is not just a silly boyish nostalgia tale from the early 1980’s bought back to life for a new generation of comic book readers. It’s much more than that. To me it is a warning of what happens when you give in to boredom and see yourself as nothing more than just another beast in the field. But more than that it’s a warning about what happens when you allow that kind of mindset to be the dominant mindset of the leaders you allow to control your world. That is the mindset of the neo-liberal consensus leaders who are controlling our lives today. We stupidly vote for them every four years or so and expect ‘change,’ then when we get none we are confused and angry. That is stupid, really stupid. We get what we deserve. We vote for the reptilian, the animal, so that is what we get.

This 1980’s comic book gets to the heart of the matter. It is telling us not just what is wrong with society, but what is wrong with each and every one of us. We are potentially independent, powerful and self-governing human beings, but we have become inert, lazy, and are ruled by the worse of us because we have allowed ourselves to be ruled.

We would rather be bored, owned animals than the strong, powerful, self-determined heroes that we should be. The comic book heroes that we read as children had important moral, ethical, societal and spiritual messages to impart to our young minds. These lessons have gone unheeded, and what we have today on this enslaved, chaotic, archon infested planet is just the natural result of what happens when a lazy species allows itself to be enslaved.  This is what is always going to happen to a bored, decadent, indifferent, lazy, selfish, animalistic race of beings who refuse to learn and insist on repeating every single mistake of the past.

When a King gets bored and lazy his Kingdom decays, the people revolt, outsiders capitalise on the disorder, and eventually it collapses. So what happens when an entire species is suffering from the same disorder? I ask that question because that is what is happening to the human race right now.

We are bored, lazy and ruled by those with a Reptilian mind-set. Collapse is inevitable. It’s not if, it’s when. That is the warning that is contained within this comic book. Whether or not we act on this warning and start doing something to stop the decline, well as always, that’s up to us. We have been too decadent, too indolent, and too indifferent for too long. The Reptiles are in charge now, we let them get in charge, and the only question left is whether or not we are too far-gone to do anything about it.



Overall Rating: 8/10 (Best of the rest was ‘The Sea Dog’s Tale’ by Ron Marz. A very good parable about evil, false religion and mind-control)

Demon In a Silvered Glass: 10/10 (Perfect)


Note about the heading, 'Drugs Come Out of Boredom Babe'
The quote comes from a Manic Street Preachers Song called 'Another Invented Disease.' Click link to have a listen: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PK133q19lg

Comic review: Conan the Avenger #9- Have a Happy Conan Christmas

Writer: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Brian Ching
Publisher: Dark Horse comics
Released: 24th December 2014


On this cold Christmas morning of 2014 what better way to spend my time than reviewing the latest Conan the Avenger book? Is that a bit sad? Probably, but hey, I’m a comic book reader, so sad is what I am.

Don’t worry, I’ll keep the review short. It’s Christmas day and I have a bucket load of calorie intensive food to eat and bad television to watch, just like everybody else.

So, the book is pretty bloody good. Conan is young in this one. He is scheming, helping an invading army, but with his eyes set not on conquest, but a ‘fabled treasure.’ Throw in some gorgeous blonde sisters for him to rescue and impress and you have a pretty good Conan book.

The one thing that was missing from the book was a devious wizard. Without spoilers, the last panel of this book delivers big time, and it left me punching the air in delight as the final panel reveal unfolded before my delighted, geeky Conan fanboy eyes.

Conan the Avenger #9 is a very welcome addition to the mythos. The art is a bit too cutesy for some, but I like it. Conan has a snarl and youthful arrogance about him, and it’s just as I envision the ambitious, cocky, cunning, yet still learning from practical experience young Conan to be. The narrative can be a little complex, difficult to follow, but a couple of reads clarify the events, and as its such an enjoyable book, reading it two or three times over is pure pleasure anyway.

So, finally to end the review. Have a happy Conan Christmas, now lets eat some food, drink some ale and have a bloody good time.

Rating: 8/10