September and October 1933 in Weird Tales were a one-two punch of short Conan stories, with "The Pool of the Black One" coming just one month after "Xuthal of the Dusk." Both of them are a bit of a downturn from the highs of "The Tower of the Elephant" and "Black Colossus," but things would bounce back soon enough with "Rogues in the House" in January of '34. Unlike the last two stories explored in this series, "Pool" didn't make the cover and it wasn't the lead story in the October issue; instead, it appeared third.

"Pool" was the first pirate Conan story to be published, but it wouldn't be the last. It features one of the coolest entrances Conan ever makes, swimming up and onto a boat out of seeming nowhere.

Honestly, I think the thing that is most illustrative about the placement of this story along the timeline is Conan's characterization himself. He is so eminently controlled, so smooth and unbothered. He keeps his mouth shut and is content to just smile and leave comments unremarked upon. We see some of his fabled "gigantic mirth" when he's gambling with the rest of the sailors. It's a Conan much more similar to the King Conan of "The Phoenix on the Sword" and "The Scarlet Citadel" to the brutish outlander of "The Tower of the Elephant" or "Xuthal of the Dusk." He seems to be even more smooth than in his considerable growth shown in "Black Colossus."

​For now, I'm placing this before the King Conan stories.

I will stop short of saying that Robert E. Howard was obsessed with the idea of ancestral memory, but I will at least say that he was preoccupied by it. The concept of reincarnation, and the reincarnated being able to in some way perceive their past lives through the veil of time, should be familiar-enough to Conan fans. The very first Conan work, the poem "Cimmeria" begins with the words, "I remember," implying a truth in it passed down through the blood of generations.

Even earlier than that, ancestral memory was the key plot point in Howard's "People of the Dark," published in the June 1932 issue of Strange Tales. Even just on the Contents page, it advertises a tale ripped "out of the past." As would-be murderer John O'Brien of the present takes a blow to the head, he accesses a past life from hundreds of years ago. Now, this story's "Conan of the Reavers" is not considered by modern consensus to be entirely the same character as Conan of Cimmeria (despite Conan also being characterize as a "reaver" in the Nemedian Chronicles), but they bear great similarities. 

In addition to the above-mentioned poem and story, Howard would use the concept as the key plot conceit in his James Allison stories, which featured a somewhat fictionalized version of himself remembering his past lives. Of these past lives as a stint as Hunwulf, the Aesir raider living in Conan's Hyborian Age.

There are a handful of James Allison stories, but only those scant two were completed or published during Howard's lifetime. 

James Allison appears in the Conan comic event "Battle of the Black Stone" from last year, and is the framing device in the novel Conan: Cult of the Obsidian Moon, released about the same time. The framing device presents this Conan story as one of James Allison's remembered tales which is being submitted to the fictional magazine Anomalous Adventures, a fun little send-up to Weird Tales.

Both the comic event and the novel follow in the tradition of smashing Howard elements together, combining the characters into classic team-up. "Battle of the Black Stone" puts all of Howard's best-known characters into a type of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen across time: Solomon Kane, El Borak, Conrad and Kirowan, Dark Agnes de Chastillon, etc. Obsidian Moon, which is subtitled "A Black Stone Novel," has Conan encounter Hunwulf and Gudrun of "The Garden of Fear." It also postulates that the winged creature who stole Gudrun in her original story was also related to the creature that killed Belit in "Queen of the Black Coast."

Conan and the Aesir couple become fast friends and Conan is goaded into training their son in combat. Of course, it's not long before things go sideways and send the adults after a cadre of kidnapped village children, all taken mysteriously by winged men.

In the novel, Conan is recognized as a pirate, lately of the Black Coast, and is even named Amra by a character early on. Elsewhere Conan refers to the plots of "The Tower of the Elephant," "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," and "Rogues of the House," by mentioning an elephant god and a giant spider, a snowy woman who disappeared from under his hands, and an ape-man dressed as a priest. There are several places that this novel could go, chronologically. Many stories seem to be set some time in Conan's early-to-mid career as a mercenary, mostly in Shem. It fits in nicely alongside John C. Hocking's Conan work, so it probably belongs right before "Hawks Over Shem" and "Black Colossus."

There's quite a bit to enjoy in Cult of the Obsidian Moon. The couple of Hunwulf and Gudrun are really likeable, but would definitely qualify as a Gary Stu and a Mary Sue, respectively. The novel puts Conan in proximity to children, which is kind of unique for a Conan story, so we see how he interacts with Hunwulf and Gudrun's son, Bjorn. And I'm always down for a cult of zealots and a lost city.

There's a fair bit that I think will turn off longtime Conan readers, too. The Conan of Cult of the Obsidian Moon makes me think of the cover of Savage Sword #36's cover by Earl Norem: square-jawed and mostly clean-cut, this is Conan at his absolute most friendly and superheroic. He's perhaps a bit too good with kids, instantly winning young friends effortlessly as he goes. It's also much more of a fantasy novel than a sword-and-sorcery story. There's magic abound and it's noticeably less dark than some Conan fare.

I found it a little odd that the titular Obsidian Moon cult isn't even mentioned until 189 pages into a 286 page novel. It's not a deal-breaker, I was just sitting there wondering why it was called that for at least half of the book.

Additionally, I'm not trying to nitpick too much, but if James Allison's genetic memories are supposedly of the life of Hunwulf, why is Conan the point of view character? It makes less sense the more I think about it. The novel isn't strongly connected to the comic event at all; you could read both without ever knowing the other title exists and you'd lose nothing (which I think is a plus- complicated reading orders are a scam), but the connections basically make for little Easter eggs if you've read both.

I'm not trying to dissuade you from checking out Obsidian Moon. It was pretty decent. I'm left wondering if I found it at the right time- I spent a bunch of a weekend at a campground near Buford, Wyoming reading it while people drank ale and engaged in mock combat since my wife is a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism.

​Out of Titan Books' recent Conan novels (I'm starting to think of them as the "silhouette cover set"), it's easily the middle of the pack. It doesn't reach the excellent heights of John Hocking's City of the Dead work, but it easily clears the more recent Songs of the Slain. I wouldn't mind seeing more crossovers between Howard properties, which we may see soon enough with what's happening in the pages of Savage Sword these days!

★★★☆☆

It's Cimmerian September, so it's appropriate that the next story in publication order first appeared in the September 1933 issue of Weird Tales. Appearing a few months after "Black Colossus," "Xuthal of the Dusk" was published under the title "The Slithering Shadow." Most people that I know prefer to use Howard's original and (in my opinion, at least) more unique title. Like "Black Colossus," it was the cover story, with the Margaret Brundage illustration on the front showing the characters Natala and Thalis.

So far, our entries in this series have been pretty simple to order: Conan is very mature or very young, or right in between the two. "Xuthal" is going to require a lot more interpretation than the King Conan stories or some of his first.

Here are the contextual timeline clues we have.

• Conan is primarily acting as a mercenary. "He and the girl were, so far as he knew, the sole survivors of Prince Almuric's army."
  • Conan is enlisted in Prince Almuric's army, of which he and his companion Natala are the last survivors. Almuric sounds very similar to Amalric, the general in the previous story. I had to wonder if Almuric and Amalric were intended to be the same person- after all, the former king of Aquilonia is known as both Numedides and Namedides, and the capitol of Aquilonia changes names from Tamar to Tarantia, so he's made similar spelling and name changes. However, because Amalric is stated in "Black Colossus" to be a general and Almuric is a prince, they're likely different men.
  • It's never stated exactly who Conan is fighting for in this story. Almuric's army is stated to be fighting the "defeated rebel prince of Koth," and sweeps through Shem and then the outskirts of Stygia, but we're not exactly sure where they're coming from. Ophir? Khoraja? 
  • Conan and Natala are have been pursued by Stygian horsemen, but managed to shake off the pursuit and Conan isn't recognized by anybody or implied to be in any special position in the army. If Conan was a highly-ranked commander in Almuric's army like he is in "Black Colossus," I don't think he would've abandoned the rest of the army.
• Conan is clad very simply. "Though his only garment was a silk loin-cloth, girdled by a wide gold-buckled belt from which hung a saber and a broad-bladed poniard." With only a loin-cloth (though a silk one! A gentrified loin-cloth!) and gold-buckled belt, Conan is lacking the more elaborate outfits he has in some stories. He does seem to be much better outfitted than in "The Tower of the Elephant," though.
• Conan has learned Stygian. "On a venture Conan replied in Stygian, and the stranger answered in the same tongue." In "Black Colossus," Conan had learned Kothic, spoken in a "barbarous" accent. While Natala's limited Stygian language skills are noted, Conan's are not, suggesting perhaps a proficiency at the language. 
• Conan is always a competent fighter and survivalist, but Conan doesn't seem as confident or sophisticated in this story to me as he does in "Black Colossus." He's a little more brutish. The fact that he seems like just a regular enlister in the military leads me to believe that this story probably take place prior to "Black Colossus." 
• The black lotus is seen again after making its first appearance in "The Tower of the Elephant." Natala asks Conan if he recognizes it, but doesn't wait for an answer. Perhaps it's clear to her that he does recognize it, though this lotus is a different strain than regular lotus powder, which apparently causes instant death, as Taurus of Nemedia has said. "You have heard of the black lotus? In certain pits of the city it grows. Through the ages they have cultivated it, until, instead of death, its juice induces dreams, gorgeous and fantastic. In these dreams they spend most of their time."

This is my first sort of big shakeup to my original chronology. I originally had "Xuthal" much later, based on what I would now consider a misreading of the original story. A year or so ago, I called Conan an officer in Shem's military, but I was making assumptions there that aren't really that supported by the text. It never explicitly says he's an officer. I'll be placing this one earlier in Conan's mercenary days and prior to "Black Colossus."

A lot of stories put this one much further on in Conan's life, usually just before his pirate period with the Barachans as seen in "Red Nails." I wonder if there's something I'm missing. Shoot me a comment if you think there is!

"Black Colossus" is the fourth Conan story to reach publication, hitting magazine racks in the July 1933 issue of Weird Tales. Howard earned $130 from Farnsworth Wright and came three months after the previous publication, "The Tower of the Elephant." As a first for Howard, the story graced the cover and was the first story in the issue's contents.

"Black Colossus" features one of the best openings in any Robert E. Howard story but Conan isn't even seen until well into chapter 2, at which point, his physical description is made clear immediately.

• Conan is clad as a captain of mercenaries, including a scarlet cloak: "He stood facing her, his hand on the long hilt that jutted forward from beneath the scarlet cloak which flowed carelessly from his mailed shoulders. The torchlight glinted dully on the polished blue steel of his greaves and basinet. A more baleful fire glittered bluely in his eyes. At first glance she saw he was no Kothian; when he spoke she knew he was no Hyborian. He was clad like a captain of the mercenaries, and in that desperate command there were men of many lands, barbarians as well as civilized foreigners. There was a wolfishness about this warrior that marked the barbarian."
  • In "The Tower of the Elephant," Conan was a young wanderer with just a worn tunic and a hand-me-down scabbard, so he has clearly made lots of progress in his career. 
  • The scarlet cloak Conan wears in this story is sometimes considered a chronological marker for Conan readers as he is noted as wearing a scarlet cloak in other stories, possibly placing them next to one another. However, they could be different red cloaks.
• Conan now understands not only social conventions of taverns, but local politics as well: "I've but come from the last wine-shop open. Ishtar's curse on these white-livered reformers who close the grog-houses! 'Let men sleep rather than guzzle,' they say—aye, so they can work and fight better for their masters! Soft-gutted eunuchs, I call them."
  • In "The Tower of the Elephant," Conan failed to understand several social cues in his interactions with others. He apparently now has a grasp of reform politics. He also understands the diplomatic relations between Ophir, Koth, and Khoraja, mentioned later in the story.
• Conan mentions having served with mercenaries of Corinthia: "When I served with the mercenaries of Corinthia, we swilled and wenched all night and fought all day; aye, blood ran down the channels of our swords." This time period in Conan's life is never explicitly shown in Howard stories.
• Conan identifies himself as a captain of mercenaries: "'Who are you?' she asked abruptly. 'Conan, a captain of the mercenary spearmen,' he answered, emptying the wine-cup at a gulp and holding it out for more. 'I was born in Cimmeria.'" He has evidently had enough time to rise in the ranks for the Khorajan army.
• Conan's kingship is previewed: "'By my fingerbones, Conan, I have seen kings who wore their harness less regally than you!' Conan was silent. A vague shadow crossed his mind like a prophecy. In years to come he was to remember Amalric's words, when the dream became the reality." 
  • "Black Colossus" must obviously take place prior to Conan's kingship in "The Phoenix on the Sword" and "The Scarlet Citadel."
• Conan's Zamorian thieving days are mentioned by a Shemite thief as a thing of the past: "By Derketo, Conan, I am a prince of liars, but I do not lie to an old comrade. I swear by the days when we were thieves together in the land of Zamora, before you donned hauberk!" This obviously places "Black Colossus" after "The Tower of the Elephant."

"Black Colossus" is not just very easy to place in our timeline so far, but it may be the most geographically-focused of all Howard's stories. Perhaps the "Hyborian Age" essay was helping him keep things straight, because the geography of the central Hyborian Age kingdoms is extremely well-crafted.

Also, Conan's birth on a battlefield is mentioned for the first time, an oft-cited characteristic of his youth. 

"The Tower of the Elephant" was the third Conan story published, appearing in the March 1933 issue of Weird Tales, which followed two months after "The Scarlet Citadel's" publication in January. According to biographers like Willard Oliver, it was not the third story written. By the time Howard banged out "The Tower of the Elephant," sitting at his computer late at night and reading his words aloud as he typed them, he had already written "The Phoenix on the Sword," "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," "The God in the Bowl," and his "The Hyborian Age" essay. Unfortunately, two of those would be rejected by Farnsworth Wright at Weird Tales and the essay wasn't intended for publication. 

Though Howard sent WT "The Tower of the Elephant" before "The Scarlet Citadel," it would ultimately be published third, netting Howard $95 and the votes from the readership as the best story of the issue. If you put a gun to my head and told me to pick a favorite Conan story, it would probably be this one.

Whereas the first two published stories are at the end of Conan's life during his kingship, "Tower" zooms way back to the start, when Conan is a penniless thief who's new to civilization. Most of the chronological clues happen at the very beginning of the story.

• Conan is described as a tall, "strongly made" youth in a cheap tunic: "He saw a tall, strongly made youth standing beside him. This person was as much out of place in that den as a gray wolf among mangy rats of the gutters. His cheap tunic could not conceal the hard, rangy lines of his powerful frame, the broad heavy shoulders, the massive chest, lean waist and heavy arms. His skin was brown from outland suns, his eyes blue and smoldering; a shock of tousled black hair crowned his broad forehead." He's clearly lived his whole life outside of civilization, like a wild predator compared to city bottom-feeders.
• His equipment is sub-par: "From his girdle hung a sword in a worn leather scabbard." Seeing as Conan is just a "youth," this scabbard is likely not of worn leather because Conan has used it so much, but because it's either a hand-me-down or something scavenged. He evidently hasn't had the time, money, or ability to replace it.
• Conan can speak the local Zamorian language, but he does so with the accent of a foreigner: "'You spoke of the Elephant Tower,' said the stranger, speaking Zamorian with an alien accent. 'I've heard much of this tower; what is its secret?'" He must have been in Zamora for enough time to pick up the language. Future Conan stories will imply that Conan has an innate gift for language.
• Conan is too much of an outsider to understand the social trappings of the tavern in the Maul, and becomes embarrassed about it: "The Cimmerian glared about, embarrassed at the roar of mocking laughter that greeted this remark. He saw no particular humor in it, and was too new to civilization to understand its discourtesies. Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. He was bewildered and chagrined, and doubtless would have slunk away, abashed, but the Kothian chose to goad him further." Not only does this contain one of the most famous lines in the Conan canon (the head-splitting part) but it shows that Conan is really young and really green. He simply doesn't understand why he's being laughed at.
• The Black Lotus powder is mentioned for the first time: "'They died without a sound!' muttered the Cimmerian. 'Taurus, what was that powder?' 'It was made from the black lotus, whose blossoms wave in the lost jungles of Khitai, where only the yellow-skulled priests of Yun dwell. Those blossoms strike dead any who smell of them.'" For chronologizers like myself, the Black Lotus is a bit of a conundrum, as we'll get to in later entries. While he comes across it here, it's not entirely clear if he recognizes it in "Xuthal of the Dusk," where it is a central plot point. Perhaps it's because the lotus he encounters in "Xuthal" is a different, cultivated strain.
• Yag-Kosha hints at Conan's Atlantean ancestry: "I know your people from of old, whom I knew by another name in the long, long ago when another world lifted its jeweled spires to the stars." This is likely referring to the city of Valusia, where Kull was king in the pre-Cataclysmic Thurian Age. In Jim Zub's Conan the Barbarian run, an older Conan travels back to Valusia where he meets Yag-Kosha again.

On April 16th, 2015, I did something that I never thought that I would do. I stopped the class I was teaching to show the kids a new YouTube video. I was teaching a science fiction literature class to middle school students and with a glance at my iPhone realized I had about five texts asking some version of, "Did you see the video yet?" There was a new Star Wars movie trailer.

I stopped what the kids were doing, pulled up the trailer for the newly titled Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens and we all watched together. I'm not kidding you- a tear welled up in my eye as the fanfare blasted out of my sub-par public school computer speakers and the Millennium Falcon ripped through the sky once again. An 8th grader muttered "hoooly shit." I let it go.

I marked this moment with my students (hilariously, thinking about it now) with the same gravity that I had marked the Queen dying a few years ago. It seemed so far away from the night we all went to our local mall movie theaters and cheered wildly during the opening of The Revenge of the Sith, because, after all, that was supposed to be the last Star Wars movie. The second "long gap" was over and we were now primed to enjoy what was the true end to the Star Wars story... right?

I wonder if sword-and-sorcery fans had that same feeling as they loped past their local book store in 1955 to see Tales of Conan, a brand new Conan the Cimmerian hardcover, sitting in the display window (I wasn't around in 1955, so I don't actually know if a Conan book would've ever made the display window. Pulp's always been pretty frowned upon, right?). They'd seen the posthumous publication of two old stories, sure, but a whole new book? Robert E. Howard had been dead for nearly twenty years, but somehow, like Xaltotun from the crypt, he had been resurrected to contribute to four new Conan stories.

​Well, not really.

After Howard's suicide in 1936, most of his unpublished stories and fragments sat in some for or another in a trunk that, in 1951, was shared with science fiction and fantasy writer L. Sprague de Camp. Trunk steward Marty Greenberg gave de Camp the manuscripts in '51 and two years later suggested that de Camp revise some of the stories to add Conan to them. de Camp has always maintained that it was an easy-enough job: change the names of the settings, a few of the characters, and add something supernatural. The stories in published in Tales of Conan are now 70 years old as of 2025, and they would certainly not be the last.

L. Sprague de Camp is wildly controversial amongst heroic fantasy readers; if you drop into any blog comment section or Reddit thread about him, you'll see the argument. And it gets heated from time to time. Some folks call him a vulture: a moderate talent who happened to strike gold just by being in the right place at the right time. They'll say he mined Howard's work for his own glory and benefit. The other side will say that he's an accomplished science fiction writer in his own right who stewarded Conan between Howard's death and his resurgence in the 1960s. Honestly, I think they're both kind of right. 

I would argue that the stories in Tales of Conan, "The Blood-Stained God," "Hawks Over Shem," "The Road of the Eagles," and "The Flame-Knife," are actually pretty good. "Eagles" and "Flame-Knife" especially are killer reads. They've got the adventuresome Howard flash that good Conan stories have. I know those statements are going to ruffle some feathers, but if you read those stories with only a focus on the text, they're pretty solid sword-and-sorcery tales. Of course, most of the credit for that probably goes to Howard himself, who wrote the meat of those tales.

Just two years after Tales, those same readers might have been once again loping past their local bookshop only to have the misfortune of coming across The Return of Conan, the first wholly original pastiche starring Conan to be published. Of the more than 70 Conan prose stories I've read, it's one of the absolute worst. Swedish writer and Conan fan Bjorn Nyberg teamed with L. Sprague de Camp to produce some seriously inessential fantasy dreck. At its best, it just re-heats Howard's nachos. At worst, it fundamentally misunderstands what makes Conan good. Two books in and the batting average of the Conan pastiche ballclub was down to .500.

de Camp and his protégé Lin Carter returned throughout the sixties and seventies to continue adding their own spin on the Conan library. I honestly think a lot of them are good. "The Thing in the Crypt," Conan and the Spider God, "The Star of Khorala," and several more are definitely worth a try, at least.

Bantam Books published a few more (I'd say four of them are worth reading). Tor then tagged in to publish an eye-watering forty-three new Conan novels, very few of which feel much like Howard's world at all. I've read two of those, but they go down like seltzer waters: just not a lot of flavor of any kind. I've never blogged about them because, even worse than the Conan pastiches I hate (Conan the Liberator, all of the Conan of Aquilonia stories), they don't make me feel anything at all.

For the last three years, Titan Books has taken over and given the pen to exciting fantasy and sci-fi authors, publishing some really good short stories in ebook form and some pretty decent novels.

This is all completely ignoring fifty years of comics and movies, too. 

It seems like the best course of action with Conan pastiche today is to read some online reviews from reviewers you trust. You take some, you leave some.

As I look at the media landscape, I can't help but feel like the spirit of Conan pastiche is all over the place in 2025. The Star Wars franchise finished that aforementioned trilogy, but the stuff keeps coming. They dragged Ewan McGregor back, they produced roughly one and a half good TV shows, and they seem to be really confused as to whether or not Daisy Ridley should return as Rey. Some way, somehow, they even got the grumpiest man in Hollywood and the biggest Han Solo hater of all time, Harrison Ford, to bring his growly voice back to a galaxy far, far away.

Elsewhere in Hollywood, the corpse of the Jurassic Park series continues to shamble through summer cinemas every couple of years, each one more pointless than the last. 

But weirdly enough, narrative in film and print are not the only places where it feels like those in charge of your media are "pulling a de Camp." Johnny Cash died over twenty years ago, but we've gotten a couple of polished, re-worked albums from out of his catalogue (I guess he was right- ain't no grave really can hold his body down). Producers have re-arranged his work to produce records like Songwriter, an almost-ghoulishly titled record in which Cash's vocals have been nestled into entirely new recordings written thirty years after the original sessions. Cash might be the songwriter, but he sure didn't get to have a say in anything else on the album. The Beatles did the same thing in 2023, using AI to isolate John Lennon's vocal parts to "Now and Then" to churn out a "new" Beatles song featuring performances by John and George, both dead for decades.

You may have even noticed what hilarious Youtuber and musician Pat Finnerty has dubbed "The Fuckin' Songs," a collection of pop hits that absolutely refuse to die. The charts have been filled with interpolations of well-worn classics like "Isn't She Lovely?" and "Take Me Home, Country Roads" in soulless, cash-grabby bullshit.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's hard to not feel a little cynical as you look around and see that today's risk-averse media companies want to just endlessly recycle the old hits. They slap a quick coat of paint on them, be they your favorite childhood movies, the songs you liked it high school, or the books you read in the back of the library. It's happened enough times that it feels like we're just Weekend-At-Bernie's-ing our own youth.

With the way intellectual property rights work, it's probably only going to get worse. Creative industries, comics especially, do everything they can to make sure the rights to your favorite stories are owned by media conglomerates instead of their writers. 

Am I happy that we now have 70 years of additional stories featuring my favorite barbarian? Honestly? Yeah, I am. I'll go on as many adventures as I can with the big guy. Am I going to buy new Titan books and comic series? A bunch of them, most assuredly. I'm part of the problem.

But when I see that nearly all of the entertainment industry is following de Camp's model where they take what works and put it on the assembly line, I feel cynical. It makes me want to side with the de Camp naysayers: maybe Conan should've stayed in the Depression. I guess Conan pastiche would've happened by now if it hadn't started in 1955.

L. Sprague de Camp and Conan pastiche aren't really unique, they just happened to get started early.

Don Kraar is something of a mystery when it comes to the history of Conan comics. He's not a well-loved mover-shaker type like Roy Thomas or Kurt Busiek. He's not exactly one of the architects of Savage Sword's flop era like the Saturday morning cartoon weirdness of Michael Fleisher or the paint-by-numbers adventures by Chuck Dixon. In total, he wrote 21 stories for Savage Sword, which is actually quite a few compared to how many issues of Savage Sword you and I have written. But none of them are remembered particularly well, though he had some good installments in there (SSOC #112 "The Blossoms of the Black Lotus," anyone else...?). He contributed some issues to Conan the King and a few DC titles.

There seems to be one picture of Don that exists in total on the entire internet. I couldn't find any interviews.

So I wasn't exactly sure what I'd get when the Marvel Graphic Novel Conan the Reaver arrived at my door, complete with a noticeable coffee stain on the back cover. The previous two that I read- The Horn of Azoth and The Witch Queen of Acheron- weren't great. And Don write the latter.

Conan has enmeshed himself with the thieves guild in the Turanian capital and is helping them get information out of the city guards in a spectacular fashion. Forcing the captain of the guard to walk a tightrope above a pit of flames, Conan strikes up a deal to get the keys to the great treasure room under King Yildiz's castle. Posing as a new member of the castle guard, he quickly proves his sword to be a valuable addition to Turan's militias and is shown the treasure room. His general decency, in fact, pretty quickly endears Conan to everyone as he gets to know Aghrapur, but the secret assassins of the Red Mist are threatening not only the king's plans, but his as well. Everyone in the civilized city has their own machinations, but our barbarian hero just wants some loot, and he's okay with killing a few corrupt guards or nobles to get there.

Kraar does an excellent job of weaving together solid suspense into a thieving sword and sorcery story. Though you might not be completely surprised at a twist or two, the plotting is really fun.

I've read descriptions of John Severin's art describe him with phrases like "a master at work," and I don't know if I agree entirely at this juncture. He has very serviceable panel layouts and paces the action well (something that those other two MGNs completely failed at) but his art, especially his character designs, strike me much more as Prince Valiant than they do as gritty Conan the Barbarian. He renders faces strongly and his close-ups are excellently detailed. However, a lot of his backgrounds are empty, solid colors, and he clothes everyone to look like an ancient Roman.

Chronologically, this graphic novel seems to fall after the rest of Conan's thieving stories and before his service to the Turanian army that pretty much begins with "The Hand of Nergal." I suppose this implies that Conan goes way further south and east from Shadizar than many of us originally pictured, seeing as Aghrapur sits on the coast of the Vilayet Sea, nearly to Hyrkania. But this story also works as a bridge between the thief stories and the first set of mercenary stories.

If you read my other posts about these MGNs, I did some complaining about the cash I had to drop to get them. Conan the Reaver was the cheapest of all three so far, so I'm finally getting my money's worth! I really wish I had a half-star icon to rate it a three-and-a-half out of five.

Now, if only I could find anything else out about Don Kraar...

★★★☆☆