Conan The Barbarian #4 - Titan Comics

CONAN THE BARBARIAN No. 4, November 2023

It’s easy to see with his script for Issue Four of “Conan The Barbarian” that Jim Zub is clearly “a lifelong fan of the [titular] character”, if not an entirely devoted scholar of all things penned by Robert E. Howard. Yet whilst “Bound In Black Stone” enthrallingly smacks of something taken straight from the pages of a Forties pulp magazine, it’s reliance upon the reader needing to have a much broader knowledge of the Hyborian Age mythos to fully appreciate its cleverness, may well dissuade some perusing bibliophiles from seeing this title as a ‘jumping on point’ for the Sword and Sorcery hero.   

True, the Canadian author does spend a considerable amount of this twenty-two-page periodical explaining just why a drowning Cimmerian might suddenly encounter the ghost of a long-dead Pictish Chieftain, courtesy of a spell-binding flashback. However, despite this sequence somewhat enjoyably mirroring Conan’s encounter with Epemitreus in the 1932 short story “The Phoenix on the Sword”, its appearance arguably comes completely out of nowhere, and rather contrivingly seems to be solely based upon the adventurer just happening to have Brule’s mystical blade about his loincloth.

Perhaps this comic’s biggest disappointment though, rests with the off-screen demise of poor Brissa, who apparently rushes back to aid her heavily-muscled lover in the Black Tower only for the evil spire to fatally collapse upon her. Doubtless many within this comic’s audience will be hoping that so dismal a death for one of the tale’s foremost protagonists is simply a ploy by the Eisner Award-nominee to establish a sensational future return. But even if this proves to be the case, as it is the brave scout’s abrupt passing implies a disconcertingly lethargic way to end the book within its allotted sheet-space; “…One more victim of the Baneful Black.”

Fortunately, such quibbles are easily set aside once Rob De La Torre begins his pulse-pounding pencilling. The artist’s dynamic layouts for the aforementioned trip back to the days neighbouring King Kull’s pre-cataclysmic Atlantis are visually stunning, and should genuinely make many within this publication’s audience yearn for this comic’s creative team to produce a magazine solely based upon the supernatural exploits of the Borni Tribe’s leader too.

The regular cover art of "CONAN THE BARBARIAN" #4 by Roberto De La Torre