King Conan #3 - Marvel Comics

KING CONAN No. 3, April 2022

Leaving the heavy criticisms targeted at Jason Aaron for this comic’s alleged “sexualisation of a character, whose real-life story is one of rape and abuse”, as well as its Alabama-born author’s subsequent public apology, to internet news sites such as “Bleeding Cool”, there’s arguably not a great deal about the publication’s twenty-page plot which would have entertained its 6,854 readers in February 2022. Indeed, with the exception of a short-lived, surprisingly touching sequence depicting Conan’s evident liking for his now zombified shipmate Thomasso, “The Princess Of Golden Ruin” continues with this mini-series’ monotonous depiction the Cimmerian repeatedly hacking his way through an innumerable army of deceased mariners; “By Crom. I’ll slay every dead man in the sea if I must!!!”

Thankfully, such senseless slaughter does eventually come to an end once the Barbarian decides he’d prefer to tackle some “Red Apes from Khitai” singlehandedly on top of a mountainous outcrop rather than more salty, stinking walking cadavers. However, this questionable survival decision leads on to the introduction of the “ill-considered” Princess Matoaka and a somewhat lengthy interlude depicting her treachery-fuelled, blood-soaked origin in “a land of plenty, farther west across the many waters.” Of course, the establishment of a “supernatural, thousand-year-old princess of a cursed island” surrounding herself with the corpses of greedy pirates does at least provide some sort of explanation behind the predicament currently facing Aquilonia’s former monarch. Yet such a contrivance as Conan and his deadly nemesis Thoth Amon simultaneously being shipwrecked upon the small landmass still debatably tests even the most willing suspension of disbelief.

Equally as unpersuasive is Aaron’s bizarre plot of her “Highness” building a boat “made from the fingernails of the Dead” to lure “a man… virile enough to ferry us across the churning sea.” The vessel both sounds and appears truly repugnant, and it probably comes as no surprise to any fan of Robert E. Howard’s creation that the veteran warrior of a hundred battles immediately senses a treacherous trap. Just why any person would willingly board such a distasteful vessel is debatably incomprehensible, especially when the two-person vessel contains no supplies, provisions, oars, sail or any other means of propulsion for that matter.

In fact, perhaps the only entertaining element to Issue Three of “King Conan” comes at its very end, when the comic flashes back to Conn’s shocking banishment by his father, and the young man’s typically ‘Cimmerian’ response to tackle it head on, sword in hand. This dual on horseback, well-pencilled by artist Mahmud Asrar and moodily coloured by Matthew Wilson, genuinely provides the book with so intriguing a cliff-hanger that it’s a pity this secondary storyline wasn't given much more ‘screen time.’

Writer: Jason Aaron, Artist: Mahmud Asrar, and Color Artist: Matthew Wilson