Conan: Issue #1 (2019) "The Weird of the Crimson Witch"

January 2nd 2019! I trust everyone had an excellent holiday season! Today will be back to work for a lot of us, myself included. At least today there is a bright point.


That's right! Today MARVEL publishes there first title of the newly re-acquired Conan license from Dark Horse. I have been excited for this since it was announced, not because I dislike Dark Horse, but because Marvel and the History of the Barbarian in this modern age go hand in hand. I have been waiting to see what the company that gave us the Savage Sword of Conan would give us.

So I got up this morning, made coffee and eggs and fired up Comixology and had a read.

Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Mahmud Asrar
Colorist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: VC's Travis Lanham
Cover Artist: Esar Ribic

I've seen the cover and I've seen some of Asrar's work over on Instagram, which I encourage you to go and check out.

I enjoyed all of the art in the book; the cover is great and the interior art is excellent. I have seen some reviewers make comment about weird arm angles and such, but I didn't have anything jump out at me. I even went back through looking for it and couldn't find anything seriously bad that jumped out at me.

I had a moment of doubt early on, that perhaps these guys didn't know their stuff. During a fight Conan says he prays to Crom. I thought to myself, "Yes Conan says Crom quite a bit in the comics, but as a curse more than praying. We all know Crom doesn't listen and it's better to not call his gaze upon you. So having a panel where Conan says he prays to Crom, left me uncertain. It is quickly followed by this panel:

YES! I am in. One of my favorite panels from the book. Great. As much as the cover and interior art are important for a comic book, without a story it isn't going to be much of a comic. There has been fear by a certain subset of the community that believe Marvel will be politically correct in their new iterations of Conan, so far this is absolutely not the case. This is a good Conan yarn, complete with fighting, women, wine and sorcery. I won't go into great detail about the actual story because I don't want to ruin it for you.

What I will say is that I liked it. The story has lots of action and I feel it moved pretty well. There are several nods to the '82 film, even if they were unintentional, and it ended with a cliff hanger and left me wanting more.

Art:
Story:
Cover:
Sword & Sorcery:

4.5 out of 5 Skulls of My Enemies!

Bring on Issue #2!

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Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!