*Review: Conan the Barbarian (2019) #5*

By BOB FREEMAN – Paint Monk’s Library Writer

I am growing weary of this book. Five issues in, not even halfway, and I am desperately trying to maintain my objectivity.

I don’t want to dislike Conan the Barbarian. I have loved the character for 40 some years. Marvel’s original run is my all-time favorite comic. I thoroughly enjoyed the majority of Dark Horse’s work on Conan. I am not asking for the singular vision of Roy Thomas from a bygone era. All I’m asking for is a comic that stays true to the character that Robert E. Howard breathed life into.

Dozens of comic creators have accomplished this in the past, many of them in recent memory. I expected the same from Marvel’s relaunch.

You can say that I’m out of touch, that I’m old and curmudgeonly because I do not like what I’ve seen so far from the House of Ideas. My time has passed and comics are different now. You can say that, sure, but maybe, just maybe, Marvel (and the whole comic book industry) is on a downward spiral, hemorrhaging readers because they’ve forgotten how to tell all-ages comic book stories…

Synopsis: Conan the Barbarian #5 (2019)

Conan is alone at sea, trapped on a ship of the dead. Having stolen a wooden idol, Conan booked passage on a ship so he could deliver it to a buyer in Messantia. Pirates, however, attacked, with the sole purpose of stealing the idol.

Conan makes short work of them, but once the idol tasted blood, bad things happened, and the Cimmerian awoke, alone, and was forced to sail the ship as best he could, fighting off mutated monsters from the deep and from the charnel house below decks. Eventually, another pirate ship appears and Conan kills a third of their crew before being named captain.

They set fire to the battered ship and it and the idol sink to the depths of the ocean. As the Cimmerian recants his tale, he realizes that, although he views most men as fools, he is drawn to their company. He was not meant to be alone.

CAPSULE REVIEW: Jason Aaron is an accomplished name-dropper. Here we have the mention of Messantia, the capital of Argos, as well as the characters of Belit and Thoth-Amon. But there’s no weight to it. No emotional resonance. Why? Because this character is simply not Conan.

The writing is just not good. I continue to think the plot is solid enough. It’s salvageable, but the actual words on paper just are not working for me. None of it rings true, largely because Conan’s characterization is off.

I was more enamored with Mahmud Asrar’s artwork in this issue. There were certain panels that were absolutely stunning, and the splash-page in which Conan boards the pirate ship should go down as one of the most iconic interpretations of the character in comic book history, but he continues to be inconsistent.

The colorist, Matt Wilson, delivers some beautiful work that really elevates Asrar’s inked pages.

This run could have been really special. No one is more surprised than me, a Jason Aaron fan, that it is ultimately on his shoulders that the book has so consistently missed the mark.

Black Starlight by John Hocking, the companion serializtion, continues to be the book’s brightest spot.

Conan and his companions fight off another supernatural threat attempting to steal the emerald lotus from Zelandra, this time in the form of a leech like creature with wings and arms, and speaking in crude R’lyehian.

This was the weakest chapter thus far, though I suspect it would have faired better had I been reading the novella in its completed form rather than as a sliver of the whole.

Hocking has some skills as a writer, but his stories always seem a little too “Dungeons & Dragons” for me, and that’s speaking as someone who is a huge D&D fan. What I mean is, Hocking gets Conan as a character, but he puts him in situations that seem out of place. more akin to an adventuring party facing an rpg module than a story culled up from the annals of prehistory as Howard’s tales cam across.

Still, all in all, an entertaining read.

As for the comic itself, on a scale of 1-10 skulls of my enemies, I would rate this issue worthy of 6, mainly because, at least Conan isn’t dressed up like a medieval Punisher.

Alba Gu Brath – Bob Freeeman (aka The Occult Detective)