‘Conan the Barbarian: Thrice Marked for Death’ – Zub, Braithwaite, Rodriguez (Heroic Signatures/Titan Comics)

If I’d got my act together, this would have been the final entry for #CimmerianSeptember but, well… I clearly didn’t :o) Last month was crazy (again) and something had to give. I wasn’t that far off though! If you squint your eyes and think really hard… You can still pretend it’s September? Nope, forget all that, lets talk some Conan.

I read ‘Bound in Black Stone’ back in February, this year, and the final two sentences of my review read,

You won’t see me collecting single issues but I will definitely be around for the next trade. Conan is in safe hands here and I’m excited to see where his story goes next.

Reader, I’m back on the single issues (couldn’t help myself) but I’m still just as excited as I was about where Conan is headed under Jim Zub, probably even more excited now that I’ve read ‘Thrice Marked for Death’, here’s the blurb…

Now 27 and mourning the death of his beloved Bêlit, when Conan is approached by the Thieves Guild to act as muscle for a heist in Shadizar they’re planning, Conan agrees, hoping that some mindless wanton violence will drown the pain he’s feeling. Despite the mission being a success, the gang inadvertently unleash a trio of vengeful, dark and deadly spirits who guarded the treasure. Now freed the spirits proceed to possess each member of the group leaving Conan as the last man standing and forced to find a way to stop them or suffer the same fate. It is a fight unlike any he has ever faced before and one that will take him to a place of legend and myth.

‘Thrice Marked for Death’ was a quick read that left me a little bit in awe of how much it was able to pack into not a lot of space. On the surface, we have what at first looks like the standard Sword & Sorcery tale of of ‘Raid on a Temple Gone Wrong’. It’s not doing an awful lot that’s new but it’s engaging and a lot of fun. Plus, any Sword & Sorcery tale is instantly elevated by having Conan appear in it and that is very much the case here. Conan is meant to carry the tale and under Zub’s pen, he does just that. We’re very lucky to be living in a time where there’s a number of writers who can pull off a Conan tale and Zub is definitely amongst those ranks. It’s just so clear that he gets Conan’s world and Conan himself as well. And it’s all the better when you’ve got Doug Braithwaite on art duty. He gets it as well, it shows. So maybe not an original plot then but I was having too much fun to hold that against it.

Have a look beneath that surface though and there’s a lot more going on. We’re actually at a key moment in Conan’s life and Zub weaves a commentary on Conan’s grief into the tale, so well that it blends seamlessly and ends up playing a direct role in the aftermath of the raid/heist. You know I just said that Zub gets Conan? He really shows it here and it’s a really touching strand of the plot that stays true to who Conan is. Of course he gets drunk but there’s a lot more to him than just that and we get to see it play out.

And ‘Thrice Marked for Death’ isn’t just an exploration of grief either. We’re seeing a lot of foundations being built for what I’m going to call the ‘Black Stone Event’ (at least until I find out what it should really be called). A villain is named although right now, I’m here for his servants and what they are able to do to Conan, some of it is creepy… But yeah, our villain is named although he hasn’t arrived just yet. What we get then is tension building and what I liked here is how ‘Thrice Marked for Death’ still remains its own thing, even under the shadow of the ‘Black Stone Event’, I always appreciate a story that stays in the now rather than just sacrificing itself to be part of something bigger. Conan would approve of it as well ;o)

‘Thrice Marked for Death’ ended up being the gift that just kept on giving then and I loved going on that journey. Now, lets wait and see what happens next...