‘The Savage Sword of Conan: Volume 1’ – Arcudi, Fafner, Zircher, Zub, Pace, Tieri, Nord, Quah (Titan Comics, Heroic Signatures)

 


Page Count: 208 Pages

It’s that time of year where I find myself trying to finish off the books that I foolishly promised myself I would read before the New Year started. Books like ‘The Savage Sword of Conan: Volume 1’…

Now here’s a book that has been sat on the shelf for the best part of a year; every so often, I’d grab it for a read but never get more than a few pages in before swapping it for something else. I don’t think there was any specific reason why, it just never seemed to be the right time to get into it (which was the same for a lot of books, to be fair, so this was more about me I think). It’s ‘Conan’ though so it was always going to be read, eventually…

And ‘eventually’ ended up being last night, in a ‘now or never’ kind of way ;o)

The Savage Sword of Conan is back from Heroic Signatures and Titan Comics!

Featuring an epic new Conan epic from John Arcudi and Max Von Fafner, the rousing return of Solomon Kane written and drawn by Patch Zircher, an electric prose story from Jim Zub, spectacular art pin-ups, and more, the Savage Sword of Conan #1 heralds a new era of adrenaline-fueled adventure!

CONAN THE GENERAL: WARRIOR. THIEF. AND NOW, GENERAL… Promised riches beyond imagining, Conan finds himself bound for war at the head of an exiled Hyrkanian Prince’s army. But when ancient monsters are unleased and the Prince’s recklessness imperils all, Conan will be forced to choose: abandon wealth for safety or face danger head-on to prevent innocent blood from drenching the desert sands.

SOLOMON KANE: MASTER OF THE HUNT: All Hallow’s Eve. A night when the veil between the unseen worlds is thin… and something sinister has broken through. When an abomination from the blackest hells emerges to brutalize a small Welsh town, Solomon Kane is called to deliver God’s judgment in the only manner he knows: salvation by the sword.

This first volume collects issues 1-3 of ‘The Savage Sword of Conan’ and as you can see from the blurb, it’s not all ‘Conan’ focused. Solomon Kane gets his turn in the spotlight and there are also a couple of essays and poems to round things off. Conan’s tales are pretty much self-contained but poor old Solomon Kane has his tale spread out across the three issues, making it a bit of a ‘stop start’ affair here. I know the stories are collected as they appeared in the original issues but I think maybe they could have just bundled all the ‘Solomon Kane’ instalments together. I just wanted to get into this tale, not be pulled out of it every few pages.

The stories themselves were pretty good and I’ll go into that in a minute. The issue I had with the book, as a whole, was that none of the artwork really did it for me. It’s a personal preference for me but I prefer colour, over black and white art, and some of the black and white artwork here (I’m looking at you in particular, ‘The Dragon Horde’) felt a little bit sparse in terms of background detail. And talking about ‘The Dragon Horde’, I wasn’t too keen on what felt like a mixture of hand drawn and computer generated art; just go for one or the other.

‘Leaving The Garden’ was the other story that I had issues with ‘art-wise’; I got there in the end but to begin with, the art was a little too ‘messy’ for me. That’s just me though, your mileage will inevitably vary. And to balance things out a bit, Alan Quah’s ‘Lure of the Pit Creature’ is beautifully drawn so it’s not all bad.

The actual stories themselves? They were all decent tales actually, just a bit of a shame that the presentation didn’t work for me :o) The main stories, ‘The Dragon Horde’ and ‘Master of the Hunt’, are good introductions to Conan & Solomon Kane (that don’t require any real grounding in their respective settings) while the rest, all ‘Conan’, are quick, fun reads. Special mention goes to the humour of ‘Wolves of the Tundra’ and the way that ‘Lure of the Pit Creature’ sums Conan up in a nutshell.

Not a bad read, all in all, but certainly a read that I struggled with as far as the art went. It happens and it won’t stop me going on to read Vol.2. Hopefully I’ll be a bit quicker getting to that one, we’ll see…

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