Conan The Barbarian #21 - A Review

Anticlimactic is the most succinct way to describe Conan The Barbarian #21  I can say little more than that without spoiling the whole book.  I can say that little is made of last issue's cliffhanger, which saw Belit possessed by some spirit/deity and declaring her love for the evil sorceress whose cult has been hounding Conan and Belit for the past two issues.  Brian Wood's script tries to inspire the unknown horror of a Lovecraftian mystery cult but fails to provide enough details to evoke the proper mood.


Another problem with this issue is its' treatment of Belit, reducing her to a damsel in distress role and only allowing her true personality to emerge in the final pages.  Even then she has no dialogue!  The only sequence that truly works depicts Conan escaping his pursers by showcasing the Cimmerian's hereunto seen ability to make friends with wolves.


The artwork of Paul Azaceta and Dave Stewart continues to be this book's weakest point.  The sequences in the wolf caves are quite effective and Azaceta's tendency to over-ink and Stewart's dark palette work well in this context.  The rest of the book, however, looks dark, dull, drab and lifeless. 

Conan The Barbarian #20 - A Review

As in last month's issue, Conan The Barbarian #20 proves to be a lackluster affair.  The best moments are the quiet ones between Belit and Conan at the start of the issue.  Brian Wood has done a fine job of developing the relationship that Robert E. Howard - by virtue of the format he had to write in - was barely able to hint at. 

The love between the two warrior thieves is obvious but not perfect.  We see this when Belit fails to find amusement in the Cimmerian children's tale Conan tells when she asks for a story to ease her worried mind.  True to form, she notes with dark sarcasm - given their current problem with being hunted in a dark forest by crazed cultists - that Conan seems to have failed to learn the lesson of his own story. 


It is once we move past these quiet moments and into the action of the issue that things fall apart.  Paul Azaceta is a good penciler but his work seems too stiff and posed for a high-action series like Conan.  Dave Stewart's dull palette doesn't help matters, with most of the colors being muted greys and off-whites.


Wood's story almost makes this worth reading but the book still struggles against its' own static artwork  As it is, this series can only be tolerated by the most devout of sword-and-sorcery readers.  Go read Red Sonja if you seek gigantic mirth to go with your gigantic melancholies.   

Conan The Barbarian #19 - A Review

If I had to pick one word to describe Conan The Barbarian #19, it would be uninspired.  The story, centering around Conan and Belit's efforts to ransom a stolen holy object back to its' owners, is as uninspired and lifeless as the book's artwork.  Paul Azaceta's artwork is far too static and posed for what is mean to be an action & adventure book.


The script by Brain Wood seems more like an H.P. Lovecraft story than a Robert E. Howard one.  There's precious little action and far more weird babbling by strange priests about dark secrets than there is honest bloodshed.  Hell, the most exciting moment of the comic comes when Belit stabs a man who asks Conan about buying her.



Dave Stewart's muted coloring is another strike against this book.  His muted palette made sense in the issues set in the gloomy land of Cimmeria but it seems dull and drab here.  There are splashes of color here and there, primarily in the few moments of action.  While it's an interesting stylistic choice, it would have been far more effective for the artist to make the action scenes exciting rather than trusting the colorist to define everything.