Review: ‘Conan The Barbarian’ #5 Continues To Slay

Welcome to the table,

‘Oh man, listen,’ said the strange being. ‘I am foul and monstrous to you, am I not? Nay, do not answer; I know. But you would seem as strange to me, could I see you. There are many worlds besides this earth, and life takes many shapes. I am neither god nor demon, but flesh and blood like yourself, though the substance differ in part, and the form be cast in a different mold.

That is one of my favorite passages from a Conan story. It comes from The Tower of the Elephant published in Weird Tales magazine in March of 1933. There is a moody and foreboding throughline that carries through the story. A cold, vein of sorry and pensive grimness that emanates not only from Conan himself but from the great space-faring entity he encounters. A being who came to this world from a far-flung solar system grew old on our earth, taught those who wanted to learn secret lore, and then was tortured and imprisoned because mankind has, and seemingly always will be greedy and selfish.

Eventually, he is freed from the confines of life by being granted a merciful death, but even then that is such a sorrowful thing to grapple with as a small child reading a book about a grim sword-swinging adventurer who was grappling with his own disability and contemplating, yes even at the ripe old age of 9 years old, what it would be like to escape the confines of flesh and move on to the next place.

This feeling, this deep emotional weight, is what I associate with Conan stories. I’m harsh on them because I love them. They feel like they are part of the fabric that is woven to make me. Like Hellboy, D&D’s Sword Coast, stories of monsters, or the hidden earth the Sword & Sorcery stories of the Cimmerian are part of me.

Titan Comic‘s Conan the Barbarian harkens back to the golden age of adventurers and captures the spirit of the Sword & Sorcery genre so completely that I feel transported back to the days of reading pulp books under the covers well past my bedtime.

Conan The Barbarian #5 starts off with a moody flashback that hits so hard I could feel my heart breaking while reading it. This works brilliantly to frame the story giving us insight into Conan’s dark mood and seemingly self-destructive disposition.

Jim Zub continues to deliver a complex Conan who feels like I remember him. I know that seems so selfish coming from a journalist and I can’t honestly say if I would like this story more or less if Conan was written in another way. What I can say is that this is exactly the kind of Conan I want in a story. He’s driven, he is methodical, he never seems to have it easy but more importantly, maybe most importantly, he does not stop.

There is always this push to move forward, to overcome, to go to the next thing. There may not be joy or mirth laced into it, it may just be to get to the next coin, the next meal, the next death-like slumber, but there is always a push to move forward and that comes through in every page of this story.

These pages are beautiful, by the way. Doug Braithwaite joins the team on art duty along with Diego Rodriguez on colors and Richard Starking on letters. The artistic tonal shift from the first arc is for sure there but it is not diminished, just not the same.

The small nods to other stories and a larger world are also present in this book in ways that I do not want to spoil for those of you who have read this far. As a fan of the Howard stories, I will say that the greater world of Conan is not forgotten and so much is stuffed into the pages that I have returned to them multiple times and smiled at the things I have seen.

Until next time, I am hesitant after what has happened to Conan in recent years but if the Titan Conan stories continue to be this good going forward I think this could go down in history as one of the greatest runs of the Conan stories that have ever hit the logboxes.

Still here? The double-page spread has a hard-core nod to The Tower of the Elephant and is one of those comic pages that if I saw at a show I would snap up just so I could frame it and put it on the wall in my office.