The Savage Sword Of Conan #8 Review

 

Writers: Dennis Culver, Fred Kennedy, Zack Davisson, John C Hocking, Jim Zub & Liam Sharp

Artists: Chris Burnham, Marco Rudy, Max von Fafner, Liam Sharp & Dan Panosian

Pin-Up Artists: Doug Braithwaite, Adam Gorham, Gabriel Rodriguez, Jonathan Wayshak, Tom Raney & Juan Alberto Hernández:

Cover Artists: Joe Jusko & Alex Horley:

Publisher: Titan Comics

Price: $6.99

Release Date: April 30, 2025

 

Conan has battled dinosaurs. Despite his distrust of magic, Conan has helped a witch confront someone intent on wiping out her sisterhood. He has befriended a child in a town populated by zombies. The Cimmerian has united with other heroes across space and time to confront the power of the black stone. What great evils will he face next? And how does Conan compare with other heroes in the Howardverse? Let’s grab our Atlantean swords, leap into The Savage Sword Of Conan #8, and find out!

 

Treasure Of The Vermin Queen: Story

Conan has partnered with a young thief to pillage the horde of the Ver-Men. When he and Fleek reach the temple, they observe a ceremony. Conan thinks this is the perfect time to search the temple. Instead, Fleek rushes in among the robed figures to prevent a human sacrifice.

 

In Dennis Culver’s story, the barbarian never suspected Fleek’s treachery. Still, the Cimmerian rushes to aid his fellow thief. Fleek justifies his lies by assuring Conan that any cult must have a treasure to fund their movement. In Treasure Of The Vermin Queen, Conan wonders how to punish the thief for leading him into a trap. But first, he must battle the priests of "Bug and Bone" and an outraged god.

 

Treasure Of The Vermin Queen: Art

Chris Burnham’s opening page evokes Conan, Subotai, and Valeria climbing the Tower of Serpents. But Conan and Fleek are climbing inside a vertical tunnel. When they reach the worship chamber, they find thick stone pillars decorated with diagonal caterpillar-shaped stripes. The lines, crosshatching, and shading illuminate the dark chamber filled with cloaked worshippers, stalagmites, and broken pillars. But the high priest's mask, along with the pillars and the design carved into the wall behind him, hint at the appearance of the god Conan must fight before he can decide on Fleek's future.

 

When I Was Young, I Met A King: Story

In the second story in The Savage Sword Of Conan #8, a woman remembers her childhood. A sorcerer's minions hunted her for her latent magical abilities. Hana’s father saved Conan’s life. Despite his distaste for magic, the Cimmerian promised to protect the healer's daughter. After Fleek's betrayal in Dennis Culver’s story, Fred Kennedy demonstrates how loyalty flows through Conan’s veins. He doesn’t know whether the girl will do good or ill with her gifts. Still, Conan won’t rest until he delivers Hana to safety. 

 

When I Was Young, I Met A King: Art

After Chris Burnham's traditional penciling and inking, Marco Rudy's mesmerizing images intertwine, and his characters overlay each other as in a collage. Memories blend with Hana's narrative, while camera angles demand the reader's attention. The visual effect is bracing, challenging, and open to interpretation.

 

Kinship Of The Fallen: Story

The first four paragraphs of Jim Zub’s war poem are three lines each. The last word of the second line rhymes with the first and second and the third with the fourth. Then, the final four-line three stanzas rhyme with an A, B, A, B sequence. (Apologies, ABBA fans). Jim Zub's poem commemorates a battle, celebrates life, honors the fallen, and pledges eternal brotherhood.

 

Kinship Of The Fallen: Art

In Dan Panosian's double-page image, Conan sits beside an adoring maiden. A wooden cask and bottles fill the tables. Candles glow while white sparkles rise toward the ceiling. In contrast to the poem, none of his fellow warriors linger in the tavern, suggesting they drank their fill before leaving to continue their celebrations elsewhere.

 

Live By The Sword: Story

In this story by Zach Davisson, another Robert E Howard hero ventures into the pages of The Savage Sword Of Conan #8. Cormac FitzGeoffrey is a stranger to this walled city. Sir William De Fontane rides up with a free horse after Cormac dispatches his combatants. The knight wishes Cormac had sworn homage to Lord Guillaume De Montfort. But Cormac doesn't want a patron.

 

Live By The Sword presents another Howardian hero with the question of loyalty. Cormac’s refusal to serve Lord Montfort highlights our relationships with authority: what bowing before our leaders gives us and what it takes away.

 

Live By The Sword: Art

After opening this new series with Conan battling dinosaurs, Max von Fafner returns to introduce Cormac FitzGeoffrey to modern readers. Cormac’s first opponent wears a turban, leather armor, and Persian boots. Cormac wears chainmail, while plate armor covers his shoulders, arms, and shins. He carries a large shield as he battles his enemies. A helmet adorns his head, and armor covers the head and neck of the horse he rides. Stone shards rise taller than the warriors who fight between them, while tent-covered buildings rise behind a stone wall.

 

The opening scenes evoke “The Shadow of the Vulture.” Robert E Howard’s historical tale introduces the world to Red Sonya. Roy Thomas would later reinvent the character and introduce Red Sonja to the pages of Marvel’s Conan The Barbarian. The upraised stone spikes also suggest that, in joining this battle, Cormac has unwittingly stepped into a serpent’s maw.

 

Coils of the Golden Empress: Story

Conan novelist John C Hocking follows the comic adventures and poem in The Savage Sword Of Conan #8 with a prose story. In Coils of the Golden Empress, Conan wanders through a jungle. While morose and mourning, Conan also feels a sense of pride, remembering how he sent the burning Tigress out to sea. As in recent issues of Conan The Barbarian, Bêlit’s death leaves him bereft. Yet, unlike Jim Zub’s story, Conan finds people who welcome him with a meal. They even invite him to join their company. If only the men didn’t profit off Human misery.

 

John C Hocking's story sparkles with an engineering triumph and a reminder of how well-traveled Conan is. And then there is the monster that dwells at the heart of this story of loyalty, betrayal, and grief. Tom Raney contributes a one-page illustration to enliven the two pages of prose.

 

The Wuthering: Story

Liam Sharp closes out The Savage Sword Of Conan #8 with a finely written and drawn tale of mercy. As Conan explores a Pictish wilderness, he comes across a giant of a man. The densely muscled warrior introduces himself as Tor Himdhul, a name that evokes British rock formations and Norse legend. Tor entertains Conan with a tale that evokes another classic Robert E Howard tale. While he taunts Conan with words of anger, he seeks kindness from the Cimmerian. Yet what Tor asks will test Conan's adherence to his moral code.

 

The Wuthering: Art

Conan descends a staircase through the jungle. Behind him, upraised stones surround a tree perched along a cliff, suggesting memorials to the fallen (in more ways than one). Tree trunks, limbs, and exposed roots congregate like jungle vines. Leaves flutter past Conan and onto Tor, leaving branches and twigs bare. While Conan exhibits youth and vitality, Tor’s light hair, beard, and features suggest a more mature outlook. In his tale, Tor rides a horse through the dramatic landscape. His mount's musculature suggests a draft horse trained not to work the field but to plow through an enemy’s cavalry.

 

Lettering

Richard Starkings and Tyler Smith fill the stories of The Savage Sword of Conan #8 with uppercase lettering in white narrative boxes and dialogue balloons. The words grow bold for intonation, swell for volume, and rarely shrink. The narrative in Liam Sharp’s tale floats unrestricted across panels. The balloons grow cloudy or spiky to convey extreme emotions. Sound effects announce cracking treasure, enraged elements, a person exploring her capabilities, and a hero’s sword breaking in the heat of battle. Thanks to Titan Comics and Heroic Signatures for providing a copy for review.

 

Final Thoughts

In The Savage Sword of Conan #8, the barbarian hero battles monstrous gods, venomous beasts, a relentless sorcerer, and an aging Aesir. As the conflicts challenge his ethics, Conan also fights for and because of love. Another Robert E Howard hero, Cormac FitzGeoffrey, wrestles with his duties to monarchs and friends. The comics, prose, and poem celebrate the warrior’s heart and what tests his mettle.

 

Rating 9.5/10

 

To look inside see yesterday's preview.

The Savage Sword Of Conan: The Original Comics Omnibus Vol 5 Covers

 

DIRECT MARKET: JOE CHIODO

 

THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN: THE ORIGINAL COMICS OMNIBUS VOL. 5

(W) Michael Fleisher,

Roy Thomas and Bruce Jones

(A) John Buscema, Ernie Colon

HC, 7.25" x 10.875", 768pp, $125.00, On Sale April 2, 2025

 

FOR FANS OF THE GREATEST LITERARY WARRIOR OF ALL TIMES!  To topple a decadent royal, Conan must brave a moat of blood filled with gruesome monsters. The barbarian survives a ship capsizing in storm- tossed seas, only to awaken on the shores of an island filled with beautiful but deadly tiger-riding women warriors! Then, sadistic King Razak lures Conan into a death-filled maze.

 

Collecting: The Savage Sword of Conan (1974) #61-72.

 

 

REGULAR: JOE JUSKO

 

Thanks to Titan Comics for sharing this Hyborian news with us!

Jim Zub Interview Part 2: The Savage Sword Of Conan #1

 

Jim Zub (left) answering questions for an on-camera interviewer (not me).

 

While I've sporadically covered Titan Comics' new Conan The Barbarian series, I've reviewed all three issues of Savage Sword. So I thought I'd kick off my interview with author Jim Zub by asking him about his contribution to this year's The Savage Sword of Conan #1.

 

David: I enjoyed your first prose story in Savage Sword #1. The whole notion of the woman’s sense of responsibility to her family, her community, and her religion. Was that originally a comic script? 

 

Jim: No, that's an original short story. What happened was this. In the ‘70s Savage Sword magazine they would have a whole mixture. They would have essays. They would have poems. They would have short stories and then they would have comic stories. So we wanted the new Savage Sword to have that same kind of variety to it. 

 

Marvel Comics' Savage Sword #1 (August 1974)

 

As we were putting together the issues the editor Chris Butera [at Heroic Signatures] and I were talking and they said, “You know, Joe Jusko is doing his first Conan cover in over 20 years. It would be cool to do these too. Every so often they'd have a short story based on the cover image. You're our flagship Conan writer. Do you want to take this on? 

 

And of course you say yes and then you're terrified because you've taken on this. The original Conan stories from the 1930s are short prose stories and I'm being assigned a short prose story. So you’re not just adapting the character, you're adapting the format from weird tales, which is seminal literature in genre fiction. Do you really think you got one of those in you? 

 

Jim Zub & renowned Savage Sword artist Joe Jusko

 

You know that's a pretty…that’s kind of a little bit of ego I guess. I sweated over those 3000 words more than almost any other project I've ever done. I really felt the weight of that prose. That's [Robert E] Howard’s sandbox and I'm no longer just making sandcastles over to one side. I'm playing in that the same way he would, using the kind of verbiage he would use. I really wanted to do a potent kind of atmospheric punchy story the way he would, so I reread all the original Conan and a bunch of his other short stories. 

 

I've only got this limited window of words. How can I make it as visceral as possible and leave you with a feeling about that character, that she had made a sacrifice, and that Conan had sacrificed those lives to get her back. And that little twist at the end that she doesn't need to die because her family's already been saved. That stuff happened before that, so the story feels bigger than the container of those words: that the things that happened before will happen after. 

 

We don't know if they make it out of the desert but we can assume they do because it's Conan and he's going to do it and so we don't even need to show that part. We just show the end of the conflict and then he's going to carry her on. It was a fun challenge honestly. 

 

Joe Jusko's cover for Titan Comics' Savage Sword #1 (February 2024)

 

David: It was a nice rescue plot. 

 

Jim: Thanks. Yeah, simple and direct but also in the writing of the action scene and trying to sum it up. You know, when you're writing comics, you're relying so much on the artist to convey the violence, the excitement, the dynamicism. Now I’ve got to paint it in your mind with the words, and you're like, well, I can't rest on my laurels and hope the artist does it. I’ve got to do it all. So, it was cool. 

 

David: Yeah, I could tell. What with the tonality of the flow of the words, it was much more in the older pulp style. 

 

Jim: Absolutely! By design, for sure. It was a cool challenge for me, and I was really happy on the other side of that. I was really sweating it--you know, doing it--but when it was all done you're like, "Yeah!" It was cool to kind of summon up that kind of energy and put it on the page. 

For more on Titan's debut issue, see my review of The Savage Sword Of Conan #1.

 

Thanks again to Titan Comics for arranging my interview with Jim Zub, and the press office at Comic-Con International for granting me the opportunity to speak with the author bringing Conan back to comic readers! I'll share more of this interview soon!

 

Savage Sword Of Conan #1 Review

 

Writer: John Arcudi, Jim Zub, Patch Zircher

Artist: Max von Fafner, Joe Jusko, Patch Zircher

Letterers: Richard Starkings & Jimmy Betancourt

Cover Artists: Joe Jusko, Gerardo Zaffino, Max Von Fafner,

Publisher: Titan

Price: $6.99

Release Date: February 28, 2024

 

Story

Legendary Hyborian scribe Roy Thomas opens Savage Sword Of Conan #1 with an essay on how Stan Lee’s experimental foray into mature titles with Savage Tales evolved into the legendary Black & White magazine.

 

Conan And The Dragon Horde

Prince Zaahid raises an army to retake the city that exiled him. Conan is his general, and Ineah builds and maintains his war engines. Despite Zaahid’s orders not to consort with Ineah, Conan develops a relationship with her. The prince keeps his plans close to his chest, revealing his wisdom only after danger threatens. His secrecy costs Conan's soldiers their lives. Angered by these unnecessary losses, Conan refrains from engaging Prince Zaahid’s guards, Sussein and Saham.

 

Despite Zaahid’s lack of concern for his men, his preparations propel the army across the Hyrkanian steeps. But after they lay siege to Ul-Dalkhana and Ineah’s engines of war mercilessly pound the city, the army begins to drift away. After several months, Conan's remaining forces number less than sixty. When Conan reports the desertions and requests leave to recruit replacements, Zaahid assures him that their numbers are adequate and his home city will soon fall. At this point, Conan decides to defy the Zaahid’s wishes and discover what the prince is hiding.

 

An air of mystery pervades Conan And The Dragon Horde. Unlike Prince Zaahid, you never know what to expect next. John Arcudi doesn’t lace his dialogue with traditional Conanisms, such as dog, cur, and wench. Conan’s relationship with Ineah proves an equal partnership, as each respects the other’s abilities and outlook. Those seeking the otherworldly dangers that threaten Robert E. Howard's Hyborian world will enjoy John Arcudi’s contribution to Savage Sword Of Conan #1.

 

Sacrifice in the Sand

In his short prose story Sacrifice in the Sand, Conan The Barbarian chronicler Jim Zub introduces readers to a young woman adorned with fine linen and sparkling jewelry. Captain Nkosi and his guards escort Khepri to her date with Destiny. Even more than the women who served Thulsa Doom's snake cult in John Milius' Conan movie, Khepri's sacrifice will honor her people and enhance Set's power. Yet on this dark (and stormy) night, a man will threaten to devalue her sacrifice and risk her family's security. Jim Zub’s contribution to Savage Sword Of Conan #1 portrays our Hyborian hero as a patient man who chooses his battles and recognizes that beliefs often serve temporal authorities more than the divine.

 

Master Of The Hunt Part One

As the rain falls in sheets, Patch Zircher welcomes us inside the Ox Knuckle Inn. Inside this Welsh pub in the Vale of Glamorgan, the aging patron, Gruffud, reminds us that this is All Hallows Eve. Yet before Christianity redubbed the holiday, locals called it Samhain. The barrier between our world and the Tylwyth Teg, or fair folk, thins on this sacred pagan holiday.

 

In Master Of The Hunt Part One, Gruffud regales us with a tale of Solomon Kane. The righter of wrongs has ridden from Devonshire on his steed Nicodemus. Solomon follows the tracks of a giant beast to a farm, where he meets Gwenllyan Maddocks and her son Roland. Gwenllyan tells him that an animal attacked her flock. While her husband Edmund tracks the beast, Soloman helps her hired hand Wilkin shear and butcher the dead sheep. But the following morning, Roland disappears, and Wilkin never returns from the Ox Knuckle Inn.

 

Patch Zircher portrays Solomon Kane as an even-tempered, approachable figure in Savage Sword Of Conan #1. Solomon seems akin to Tolkien's Aragorn, wise in the ways of the temporal and spiritual world, not judgmental or quick to anger. Wily old Gruffud inserts himself and a dissenting patron into this intoxicating brew of pagan beliefs, Welsh mythology, and a humble, brave hero who lives by a strict—but not cruel--moral code.

 

Men Shall Die For This: Robert E. Howard And The Vengeance Of Solomon Kane

Jeffrey Shanks' essay covers Solomon Kane's origin as Howard's earliest recurring hero. Soloman Kane began as a manifestation of righteous justice. As Howard matured as a person and a writer, Solomon Kane's worldview grew more complex. Shanks compares Howard's Solomon Kane stories with tales by Alexandre Dumas, Edgard Rice Burroughs, H. P. Lovecraft, and H. Rider Haggard. Of those listed, it’s worth noting that Haggard's hero, Allan Quartermain, first appears in King Solomon's Mines. 

 

 

 

Art

Max von Fafner’s art in Conan And The Dragon Horde honors the best traditions of the fabled magazine. His photorealistic art conveys the majestic sight of cavalry, infantry, and wheeled engines that hurl boulders and explosives at a walled city. Zaahid looks stately, Conan determined, Ineah self-assured. Sussein and Saham’s glee in dispatching anyone who disobeys their leader suggests they know more than they're telling. Fafner's detailed panels convey mood, drama, and action while not skimping on small details, such as tall grasses or stony ground.

 

Patch Zircher’s art in Master Of The Hunt Part One has an elegant and historic appeal. While Soloman Kane wears the hat and cloak of a Puritan, the penciling evokes Prince Valiant. Detailed sketches of people and settings convey a lighter, less masculine tone than Fafner’s. Zircher's Black & White images show a varied use of gray for shading akin to ink wash in Savage Sword Of Conan #1. Yet scenes of the beast appearing at night, Solomon Kane entering a pub unbidden or reaching for his sword utilize heavy inking.

 

Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt lay siege to panels with uppercase and lowercase words in dialogue balloons and narrative boxes. Word size ranges through entertaining stories and informative essays. Thanks to Titan Comics for providing a copy of this sword and sorcery magazine for review.

 

 

 

Final Thoughts

After Conan battles monsters, lays siege to a doomed city, and pursues a woman promised to Set, Soloman Kane tracks a creature terrorizing a remote Welsh community in Savage Sword Of Conan #1.

 

Rating 9.8/10

 

To preview interior art see my review at Comic Book Dispatch.