King-Size Conan #1 [Part Two] - Marvel Comics

KING-SIZE CONAN No. 1, December 2020

Potentially providing this anthology with perhaps its most emotional story is “Die By The Sword” by Chris Claremont, which rather intriguingly restricts itself to just an hour or two of time during the titular character’s tenure fighting for Yezdigerd of Turan against the Hyrkanian Nomads. This ten-page mini-saga initially seems to be all about the Cimmerian’s somewhat lengthy sword-fight with a female opponent who almost bests him with her lighting speed during the duo’s close combat. But then completely changes tempo, once the adventurer finally manages to deal a killing blow, and subsequently encounters the deceased's mortally wounded daughter during the chaotic battle’s aftermath.

Spurred on to try and make her final moments more bearable by trying to rationalise just why fate has been so cruel to the young girl’s dreams, Conan admittedly doesn’t deliver his viewpoint of the world as tenderly as the woman-child might want, courtesy of his gruff dismissal of the injured adolescent’s gods. However, the mercenary does stay with the increasingly weakening teenager until she finally dies beside him, admitting to her that he would enjoy sharing “a flask of ale” with both the youngster and her mother “in the next life…”

By far this book’s longest fable time-span wise is Kevin Eastman’s “Requiem”, which deals with the Cimmerian’s revenge upon a group of bandits who slaughter the village he was recently recuperating at. Disappointingly falling into the trap of simply turning the Sword and Sorcery hero into an unstoppable axe-wielding killing machine who single-handedly wades into the heavily-armed brigand’s camp without a care in the world, this rather unimaginative narrative isn’t debatably helped by the co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pencilling the tale too with his rather recognisable idiosyncratic art style.

Rounding off this comic-bound celebration, and possibly the best of the bunch, is the distinctly creepy “Ship Of The Damned” as penned by American screenwriter Steven S. DeKnight. Beautifully illustrated by Jesus Saiz, this feast for the eyes provides a palpable taste of horror for its audience as Belit boards a rudderless hulk possessed with all manner of macabre spirits, and only really disappoints with its ending which intimates that Conan knew his beloved was destined to die well before she met her gory end in Robert E. Howard's 1934 novelette “Queen of the Black Coast”, yet deliberately didn't tell the female pirate.

The variant cover art of "KING-SIZE CONAN" #1 by Carlos Pacheco