Chuck Dixon's Siege of the Black Citadel

 

   Over this holiday season I read Chuck Dixon's rather slim new Conan pastiche "Siege of the Black Citadel", about Conan  as a sword for hire, leading an army of Kothian rebels against their insane emperor, and his "Black Citadel", a fortress guarded not merely by the imperial army of Koth, but by dark sorcery. If you don't know who Dixon is, he had a long run was the regular writer of Savage Sword of Conan, Conan's black and white comic magazine, back in the day. He wrote many good and memorable Conan yarns, often tending toward the gruesome, back in the late eighties/early nineties after Micheal Fleisher's long run. He's most remembered by comic fans for his creation of the Batman villain Bane, for DC comics. 

   This whole novel just feels like it could fit into an issue of SSOC; I can imagine it as just such as story, illustrated by Gary Kwapisz, Dixon's offtime collaberator. That's no criticism; it's something of complement, given that there hasn't been anything like the richness of Savage Sword, with its often incredible art, backups, feature articles on REH, pinups, etc. On the other hand, this was only a fairly good story that would make a decent SSOC issue, nothing outstanding, and would likely be run-of-the mill as Dixon's stories go, not one of his best. In fact, many of his SSOC tales outdid this one. 

   There is, naturally, a climactic battle between Conan and a demonic creature summoned from an alien plane by the Citadel's mage at the climax of the tale, as there often is.

   The one issue I did have with the story was with a character I sympathized with that (I'm fairly certain) was not intended as sympathetic; namely Ozmeth, the puppet prince who was foolishly left in charge of Black Citadel. He was merely a teen or preteen, and was horrified when soldiers got cooked alive during the battle. Ozmeth is later driven mad when he foolishly looks upon the demonic entity after being sternly warned not to do so. I'll assume he was killed along with everyone else during the final destruction of the Citadel, but by that point, his death would be more or less a mercy. 

 

   So that's about all I have to say about this book. A better than average book on Dixon's part, but nothing really great as Conan pastiches go.