Titan's New Conan Comics (In General)

 

In general, as most other people are saying, Titan's new Conan the Barbarian is a return to the Conan comic's glory days, or at least as near as possible. Jim Zub is a solid writer, and Robert de la Torre, though a Buscema riff, is actually better, if anything, than the style he's riffing on. Doug Braithwaite has his own style, but is as good as most of the Old Masters of the 80s and 90s Conan comics. The first story arc, where Conan teams up with a Pictish female warrior named Brissa to defeat an army of Pict-zombies was pretty much excellent, but the Kull vs. Conan via sorcery tale that followed was even better. I believe it happened before back in the day--yes, at least once in a graphic novel. But here we get links to Conan's past (future?), notably the re-encounter with Yag Kosha, the emerald-skinned elephant headed extratrrestrial, who "remembers" what Conan did/will do for him in that future age.

Now when I first saw de la Torre's depiction of Kosha on one of the alternate covers, I suspected that they were either doing a new adaptation of that story (would have been fine by me), or just wanted to do a scene from that tale as cover, but with no connection to the Zub's current story. But now, the cover actually ties on with the story. Then, of course there is the revival of Thalsa Doom, a villain technically created by Howard, who Conan will later battle in the Hyborian Age. Note: the first Conan movie barrowed the name for the main villain played by James Earl Jones, but the original version was not the same. 

I'm not quite so sure about the new companion Savage Sword of Conan. Generally, yes, I'd say it's a return to the good old days; who would have thought B&W Conans would really be available in the old format, complete with pin-ups, editorials and all? The first issue story though, seemed just okay, as barbarian comics go. Not bad, just okay--nothing to compare the old yarns spun by Roy Thomas and Micheal Fleisher. The art looked too computery, and some readers had issues with the grayscale (I didn't so much).  Like I said it's okay, but its the back-up story Solomon Kane, that has really excellent art and story, a bit like a reverse of the old Savage Sword, where the lead stories were the ones with the better art. The quality lasted throughout the Kane story, but the second issues lead Conan tale had art that again was okay, but seemed a bit sketchy. The werewolf story in the third was drawn by Dark Horse comics; great Cary Nord, who probably qualifies as one one of the New Masters of Conan art, but his more painterly techniques he used with the Dark Horse Conan's would have been better. 

    As for the Black Stone series, its a treat to see Howard's other lesser seen heroes like Steve Allison and El Borak get the comic book treatment. But the story and art I just don't care for so far. So basically, much as enjoy the return of Conan to comic form, I'm still a bit lukewarm on the latter two. 

    

The Early Adventures of El Borak

The new collection of Robert E. Howard's El Borak tales features a T-rex-like dinosaur on its cover. Initially i supposed that this might be just a gimmick to sell the book, as non-Howard tale, as I have one El Borak collection and I was not aware of any dinosaurs anywhere in the pages.

Turns out I was wrong.

The El Borak stories are not ones I've read as extensively as the Conan ones, mainly for the reason that there's very little in the way of fantastic (not necessarily supernatural) elements in the stories, the one exception being El Borak's encounter with a carnivorous gray ape, not unlike the ones that tend to turn up in the Conan stories.

I was surprised a bit to find that the vast majority of tales here were fragments and unfinished. The cover picture is from "The Land of Mystery", a tale that pays homage to H. Rider Haggard's tales of lost realms in the heart of Africa. Now I really haven't read Haggard, because from what I know of them, they're basically lost world tales without dinosaurs. (Yes, there was that proposed movie that was a crossover with Sherlock Holmes and Quartermain, who encountered prehistoric beasts kept alive by the Flame of Irridar from Haggard's She, as I've written elsewhere--but that's not canon).

Howard, however, does not make the same mistake here. The story starts in a drawing room, wherein El Borak and some friends, including Howard's other hero James Allison, are sitting around, listening to El Borak tell of this adventure. While exploring a remote region in the Congolese Africa, El Borak enters a land inhabited by two feuding tribes, one friendly, the other hostile. He penetrates a forbidden land, and first encounters tree-living gorillas far more aggressive than ordinary ones, something like the gray killer apes of Michael Critchton's Congo. He enters a strange, eerily silent forest that all humans and even the savage gorillas shun. This is where he comes face to face with a living theropod dinosaur. The scene has an air of fantastic unreality, even for El Borak, who has experienced many strange sights. There is a certain spookiness to the encounter, something that is a signature of Robert E. Howard. He feels as though he has been transported back to a primitive era, and that the rile he carries is now a stone-age ax.

The theropod bounds toward him like an enormous kangaroo, a method of locomotion once believed to have been true of giant theropods, but is now known to be incorrect--the same was true for the allosaurus in Burroughs' The Land that Time Forgot. He manages to fell the beast with two slugs from his rifle and ventures on. He catches glimpses of the other dinosaurs in the weird forest, but none other attacks him. He makes it of the forest, across a vast swamp and plain and into an unknown range of mountains. There he encounters a lost city of strange architecture that at first appears to be abandoned. It turns out there are remnants of what must be the builders still living there, a strange white race that might be the descendents of a lost colony of--what? Atlantis? Lemuria? Mu? Howard doesn't tell us, because the story stops after the hero rescues a blonde, violet-eyed girl from large men who seem to be soldiers of some sort. Where the story would have gone after that is anyone's guess. As its merely a fragment, though a fairly lengthy one, it would doubtless have been submitted to Weird Tales. Still, it's a major find on my part and wonderful to read and own this vintage Howard Tale after I thought I'd already consumed all of his weird fiction.

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