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“THE TWISTED SPELL OF THE WIZARD THOTH-AMON! CONAN returns home to Cimmeria! But things aren’t exactly as he remembers them…Is he that out of touch…or is he falling right into the trap of the wizard THOTH-AMON?! “The Life & Death of Conan” continues!”
By BOB FREEMAN – PM Library Writer
I am bone weary. Truly. While the first few pages of Jason Aaron’s narrative had me excited, the feeling quickly evaporated like one’s icy breath on the chill wind.
Here we find Conan returned home to the village of his youth, seeking out his grandmother and bringing gifts for his clansmen, only to find the wizard Thoth Amon has reached out to mentally enslave these familiar faces as the Stygian plots his vengeance against the Cimmerian.
It is all pretty ridiculous, to be blunt about it.
It’s not serviced by the guest artwork of Gerardo Zaffino either. His blocky, muddy inks are mere sketches doing little to bring the Hyborian Age to life.
I am so tired of being negative about this book, but they’re not giving me anything to work with.
Matthew Wilson does an admirable job with the colors. He’s really good at setting mood with his color palette. And Travis Lanham’s lettering is not distracting in the slightest.
I am left to praising the colors and letters. Crom, preserve us.
There have been two consistent praise worthy aspects of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian relaunch — the first being Esad Ribic’s covers. This one is no different — the muted blue tones, the towering Thoth Amon looking ghostly and fearsome, and Conan surrounded by his kinsmen as he draws his blade is a ‘trapped in amber’ kinetic moment that is never duplicated in the inner pages.
The second item of consistency lies in John Hocking’s Black Starlight. While Hocking continues to write ‘rpg prose’, it’s still an entertaining sword and sorcery yarn and the only thing that keeps me coming back.
Well, that and a completest mentality that I’d really love to squash.
Anyway, enough rambling. This issue gets 3 skulls of my enemies. One for the cover. One for Hocking. And one because I’m feeling generous because I actually enjoyed the first two pages of the story…
—Alba Gu Brath,
Bob Freeman
occultdetective.com
You’re more generous than I would be, Bob. I thought the writing was worth a negative 8 skulls all on it’s own, the premise is not in any Conan-context I am familiar with, and the pacing really left a lot to be desired as well.
If this was your first encounter with Conan, would you be jonesin’ for the next one as soon as it ended? yeah, me neither.
Very disappointing. I keep telling myself “just four more issues and it’s done”.
Hopefully the next creative team is more respectful to Howard’s vision, and Thomas’ legacy.
I will say this, the current crop of Conan writers have given me a new appreciation for Roy Thomas’ writing. I used to consider him kind of a workman-like writer — adequate but not extraordinary — maybe because he was working in the deep shadows of Howard’s penumbra. It seems almost universally true, though, that others in the same situation do far worse.
Roy was able to adopt the framework, embellish it, and expand upon it, for the most part seamlessly. Just look at the dialog in the blue panel up above. Yikes!
Thankfully Roy (with Alan Davis!) has a run coming up on Savage Sword.