‘Conan the Barbarian #22’ – Zub, Dagnino, Rodriguez (Titan/Heroic Signatures)

 

Please excuse the ‘slightly shorter than normal’ post. Not only is it my first day back in the office, after a week off (spoiler alert, I’m not enjoying it…), I’m also coming off the back of a weekend that involved a lot of watching ‘The Walking Dead’, with my eldest daughter, and not a lot of reading at all. Despite all my best ‘reading intentions’, that’s the way it went and I’ve got no regrets :o)

I did manage to get a little reading done though, just a little… We were in Forbidden Planet the other day and while the girls were off looking for Manga, I pored over the shelves and found a lonely looking copy of ‘Conan the Barbarian #22’. I wasn’t expecting to find a copy quite so soon, after enjoying ‘Conan #21’, but there it was so I made sure that it came home with me.

Lets talk about it a bit…

The cage may be beautifully gilded but Conan is still a slave and his barbarian soul chafes under this imprisonment. Conan is patient though and knows that if he bides his time, a chance to escape will present itself. Has Conan underestimated his captor though? And who is the hooded figure lurking in the shadows…?

I’ve had a good week off but it’s been a pretty hectic one so it felt like a bit of a treat to round things off by sitting in the comfy chair and catching up with some ‘Conan’, especially given how we left him on the last page of #21…

One of the potential pitfalls of any ‘Conan’ tale is knowing that whatever obstacle Conan faces, he is always going to beat it. Therefore, the ‘journey’ has to be brilliant straight off the bat, to balance out the foregone conclusion. So as much as I love a good bout in the arena then, I was a little concerned about how it would play out… I shouldn’t have worried though. You know how it will turn out but Zub does brilliantly to inject enough doubt into the bout (sorry…) to make you wonder how Conan will turn it around. Krum-Va is massive and it’s refreshing to see Conan have to get a little creative as a result of basically being outmatched physically.

This comic is almost brimming over with Stygian sorcerers so it was a little surprising to see the politicking take a back seat but when the focus is on Conan, the story was never going to suffer for it. We get to see Conan brood his way to an escape attempt and another sorcerous confrontation that I thought Dagnino captured superbly with the whole ‘loads happening, even if it looks like there isn’t’ approach. I’m hoping that we haven’t seen the last of Athyr-Bast.

What really got me though was the other gladiatorial bout, the one that you don’t really see but is somehow even more hard hitting than the main event with Krum-Va. I don’t want to give too much away, you should see it for yourself, but Conan’s ‘motivational speech’ was a real punch to the gut and one that will stay with me for a while.

A thoroughly absorbing read then, with plenty to say and drawn beautifully. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where this one goes next.

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