'Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone’ – Zub, Scharf, Canola (Titan Comics, Heroic Signatures)

It’s starting to look like this could be the week where I make a half decent dent in my ‘Comics TBR Pile’, lets see how we do...

I’ve really been struggling with the ‘Savage Sword of Conan’ collection just recently (more than one reason but I want to finish the collection first before I talk about it) and I thought that I’d have to take a little step back from ‘Conan’ comics and come back when I was in a better mood for it. Until I realized that there was another ‘Conan’ comic lurking in the TBR pile and maybe I could give that a go instead. So that’s what I did.

I’ve caught little glimpses of the ‘Black Stone’ storyline, in other ‘Conan’ comics, but I can’t help but feel that the event has kind of passed me by a little. That’s on me though to be fair, I’ve got the attention span of a goldfish right now and there are so many books that I just haven’t been able to focus on; I suspect a couple of them talk about a Black Stone… Oh well, I’m here now. Where better a place to catch up on ‘Black Stone business’ than at a climactic battle…?

CONAN OF CIMMERIA is haunted by shadows, living nightmares connected to a mysterious eye symbol etched in BLACK STONE. The unspeakable evil foretold by THULSA DOOM looms over the Hyborian Age and every age connected to it... and it will take more than a lone barbarian to stop its relentless march upon time, space, and sanity.

Would I have got more out of ‘Battle of the Black Stone’ if I’d been organized enough to fill in the gaps that I’d missed? Undoubtedly but, at the same time, it was almost like the book saw me coming and decided to give me a little break. ‘Battle of the Black Stone’ is a very self-contained tale that didn’t punish me for not keeping up with the whole arc. As it stands, I’ll be going back to fill in those gaps anyway. ‘Battle of the Black Stone’ is a hell of a lot of fun and was well worth the decision to put everything to one side, last night, and just read.

The more I read Jim Zub’s ‘Conan’, the more I come away really feeling that Zub was literally born to write ‘Conan’ stories. Having read ‘Battle of the Black Stone’, I can’t help but think that Zub was born to write ‘Robert E. Howard’ stories. The ensemble cast don’t have a lot of room to interact but Zub clearly knows what makes them tick, focusing on those distinctive features and displaying a real happy knack for getting which of these bounce off others. The result is that sparks inevitably fly but you get a situation where people used to standing on their own are able to realise that they must work together to stand any chance of survival. I like that sense of progression in these characters, it was hard won and that makes it all the more impressive. And for the record, I would absolutely read a ‘Dark Agnes’ comic if Jim Zub wrote it, just saying.

Add an antagonist that is the Hyborian version of Freddy Krueger waiting in the middle of a ‘cursed to the gills’ Pictish nation and you have a story that flies along whilst hinting at the kind of eldritch evil that Howard was great at. It’s not just ‘hints’ either, the ending promises an even greater event to come. Scharf and Canola combine well to give the story exactly the backdrop that it deserves, it all looks amazing.

I feel like I say this every time I review a Titan/Heroic Signatures ‘Conan’ comic but the series remains in the safest hands it has been in for a long time. ‘Battle of the Black Stone’ delivers great things while promising more to come and I have no doubt that the series will continue to deliver.