Conan The Slayer #11 - Dark Horse Comics

CONAN THE SLAYER No. 11, July 2017

There’s undoubtedly plenty for fans of Robert E. Howard’s creation to enjoy within the covers of Issue Eleven of “Conan The Slayer”, for whilst Cullen Bunn’s adaption of “The Devil In Iron” contains the usual mix of ferocious swordplay and murderous bloodlust, the script also provides the Cimmerian with an opportunity to demonstrate his shrewd, sound-thinking too. In fact, both the lives of “the new Kozaki hetman” and “the beautiful Nemedian princess Octavia” entirely rest upon the so-called barbarian using his intelligence to discover the location of a secret door and rationalising that “a knife that fell from the heavens” is probably the only weapon capable of hurting Khosatral Khel.

Similarly engrossing, is the change that this title has brought upon the “Turanian lord of Khawarizm”, Jehungir Agha. Seemingly all-powerful and arrogantly confident in his ‘sovereignty’ at the beginning of this title’s run, this particular twenty-two page periodical now depicts the coastal town lord as an utterly terrified fleeing fellow, whose sole goal is to escape “the doom that overtaken his warriors” and the “iron giant [that] had sallied suddenly from the gate battering and crushing his best fighters into bits of shredded flesh and splintered bone.”

So wide-eyed and open-mouthed a coward really is unrecognisable from the “villainous Turan governor” the North Carolina-born writer has previously depicted, and yet quite wonderfully, the American author then has him suddenly switch back to the boastful Agha of old when he surprisingly spies Conan and Octavia, and allows his hatred of the pair to overshadow his terror of Xapur’s demi-god, Khel. Indeed, not only does Jehungir immediately forget his flight from the “ancient fortress city”, but unwisely lets loose an arrow at the leader of the Vilayet kozaks before charging him with his unsheathed sword; "One of us, wastrel, will not leave this place alive!”

Of course, Conan’s demonstration of his often-hidden deductive powers and Agha’s sudden reassertion of his wits, are merely forerunners to this comic’s cataclysmic conclusion as “the Hell-spawned giant was upon them once again.” Disappointingly however, the highly anticipated rematch presented between the Cimmerian and Khosatral is inauspiciously swift as Sergio Davila pencils the Kozak hetman effortlessly dispatching his foe within a matter of moments, thanks to the “great dagger of the Yuetshi” which he now wields. With hindsight, Bunn seems to have perhaps missed an opportunity here to at least extend (if not arguably improve) an element of a story which “some Howard scholars claim… is the weakest of the early Conan tales.”

Script: Cullen Bunn, Artist: Sergio Davila, and Colors: Michael Atiyeh