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Conan 28

By Geoff Hoppe
January 15, 2007 - 23:32

1906 marked the hundredth anniversary of the man who created "the age undreamed of:" Robert E. Howard. The faithfulness Dark Horse's Conan title has shown its source led me to expect a lot from this centennial issue, and I was not disappointed. I can't count the number of times I've read and reread this issue since I bought it.

 

Howard’s personal life was as fascinating and moving as anything he ever wrote. Not to detract from his talent; he was, however, a profoundly tragic figure who felt himself constantly at odds with the age he lived in. A lover of adventure and independence, he also struggled with a mixture of parental loyalty and separation anxiety that compelled him to live at home into adulthood. The story Kurt Busiek adapts for this issue, “The Storyteller,” is a paean to Howard’s life and art. The protagonist’s similarity with the Robert E. Howard threatens to make this issue pure hagiography, but the emphasis Busiek puts on storytelling, and the faith in adventure and heroism it presupposes, lifts this story out of the fanboy basement and into the realm of worthwhile fiction.  

 

Eric Powell needs another Eisner award. Like, fifty of them. Given that his own series, The Goon, is heavy on black humor, I didn’t know how well he’d handle a Conan yarn. Powell is an enthusiastic interpreter of the weird and the fantastic; the monsters he cooks up in The Goon are some of the most deliciously eerie creations in comics nowadays. He draws the bizarre, violent, valiant Hyborian age with the same relish. When Howard created Conan, he created more than a throwaway, flavor-of-the-month pulp hero. He somehow dragged a dark and brooding archetype out of his subconscious, part Heathcliff, part Hektor, yet all American in his independence. Eric Powell combines these characteristics flawlessly. When Powell’s Conan steps from the shadows, you can rest assured that, somewhere, Robert Howard is smiling—or, as Howard might prefer to say, will be smiling the next time he’s reincarnated.

 

Worth the money? Heck yes. If you’re a fantasy nut, or a sword-and-sorcery junkie, or a Conan fan, or just someone who appreciates adventure, you owe it to yourself to get this single issue. The cover alone is worth the $3.25.  

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12